Finally, after much dilly-dallying, Microsoft has publicly conceded to stopping making HD DVD players for its Xbox 360 gaming console.

However, the company said it will continue to provide standard warranty support for its HD DVD players.
With this move, the last of the support to the dying (now dead) HD DVD format has ended. During the time the format lasted, Toshiba, Intel, NEC, and Microsoft were arguably its main proponents.

Actually, HD DVD's downfall began quite some time back when major Hollywood studios, including Sony Pictures, Walt Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, and Warner Bros Entertainment chose rival Blu-ray over HD DVD for distributing their high-definition content.

This was followed by nearly all of USA's major retail chains, the likes of Best Buy, Target, and 'last but not the least' Wal-Mart Stores, pledging support to Blu-ray over HD DVD

With Toshiba's public withdrawal of the format, the fate of HD DVD was more or less sealed, leaving Blu-ray the unchallenged victor.

Now that Microsoft has said it will stop making HD DVD players for its Xbox 360 console, Blair Westlake, a Corporate Vice President with the company's media and entertainment group, further said they will continue to give consumers the choice to enjoy digital distribution of high definition movies and TV shows directly to their living room, along with playback of DVD movies that they already own.

Just how are they planning to do this?

With HD DVD players firmly out of the way, is Microsoft now going to make attachable Blu-ray players for its Xbox 360. In any case, Sony's PS3 gaming console already has built-in Blu-ray playback capability.

Or is the company now going to increase high-definition downloads on its Xbox Live service, as it said earlier.

Guess we'll just have to wait for the official announcement...
Source: techtree

Telecom companies, Samsung and Spice have come up with entry-level handsets for the Indian market.

Samsung's "Guru100" is a stylish bar-shaped handset equipped with features such as MP3 ring tones, mobile tracker, 9 hours talk time, and up to 500 phone-book entries.
The handset sports a 3.86cm LCD screen and a speaker phone for hands-free comfort. It also includes a Hinglish sms feature that recognizes both English and Hindi words.

Priced at Rs 1,949, "Guru100" weighs 78 grams and measures 104 x 44 x 16.3mm.

Meanwhile, Spice's new entry-level camera phone, "S-585" features FM Radio, VGA camera, and music player.

The one-touch FM Radio and MP3 player comes along with inbuilt speaker phones. Users can also watch videos on the 65K TFT color display. The memory slot is expandable up to 1 GB.

The S-585 comes with essential accessories, including a dual-corded headset and USB cable, and is priced at Rs 2,999.

More info>>
South Korean electronics giant Samsung has launched "Guru100", which is a bar shaped handset boasting of "young" features like MP3 ring tones, 500 phone book entries as well as mobile tracker. The Guru100 also has a Hinglish SMS feature that seems to be the current rage among Indian youth.

A 3.86 cm LCD screen and a speaker phone complete the impressive feature list of this phone, which is priced economically at 1,949.

Meanwhile mobile carrier Spice Telecom has introduced "S-585", an entry-level phone that again seems targeted at college-going youth. With FM Radio, VGA camera, and music player, the S-585 is sure to be lapped up rapidly.

The phone also has dual-corded headset, USB cable and an expandable memory slot of up to 1 GB. The S-585 is priced modestly at Rs 2,999.

Samsung is touting the reliability of solid-state drives, while citing an explosive market for the devices in server computers.
SSDs are based on flash memory chip technology and have no moving parts. Hard-disk drives (HDDs), in contrast, use read-write heads that hover over spinning platters to access and record data. With no moving parts, SSDs avoid both the risk of mechanical failure and the mechanical delays of HDDs. Therefore, SSDs are generally faster and more reliable. The catch is the cost: SSDs are currently much more expensive than HDDs.

There are also concerns about wear. That is, flash has the potential to wear out after tens (or hundreds) of thousands of write cycles.

This characterization, however, is too simplistic, according to Michael Yang, flash marketing manager at Samsung. A flash device that is rated at 100,000 write cycles, for example, can write 100,000 times "to every single (memory) cell within the device," Yang said. In other words, the device doesn't write to the same cell over and over again but spreads out the writes over many different cells. This is achieved through "wear leveling," which is carried out by the SSD's controller, he said.

This would make it virtually impossible to wear out a flash chip. Yang said a pattern could be perpetually repeated in which a 64GB SSD is completely filled with data, erased, filled again, then erased again every hour of every day for years, and the user still wouldn't reach the theoretical write limit. He added that if a failure ever does occur, it will not occur in the flash chip itself but in the controller.

On another topic, Yang cited explosive demand in the enterprise server market that caught his company by surprise. "At first it just sounded like an interesting idea," he said. But then demand took off. As Yang explained, companies like Citibank and American Express peg server performance on IOPS or input/output operations per second. "HDDs do 120 to 150 IOPS. SSDs 10,000 to 30,000 IOPS." Because of this overwhelming speed advantage many large corporate customers are opting for SSDs, despite the significant price premium SSDs command compared with HDDs.

Regarding cost, Yang expects to see a 35 percent to 45 percent year-to-year drop in SSD prices. This will be a welcome relief since 64GB SSDs currently can add as much as $900 to the price of a notebook PC.

In the third quarter, Samsung is slated to bring out a 128GB SSD based on MLC (multi-level cell) technology--which uses multiple levels per cell to allow more bits to be stored. But the company sees even larger-capacity SSDs, ranging all the way up to 250GB, possibly before the end of the year.

The company is also working with notebook PC makers to design ultrathin notebooks with SSDs that can fit into potentially even thinner designs than the 0.76-inch thick MacBook Air, which uses SSD.

source:blogs.cnet.com

Japanese engineers were quick to pour scorn on the MacBook Air. This critique comes courtesy of Nikkei Electronics, a major Japanese electronics monthly, which did a teardown of the Air.

Here's the seeming challenge: The Japanese PC industry must come up with a reason why their own PC suppliers--NEC, Toshiba, Sony, Fujitsu--don't have a riveting 0.75-inch-thin notebook design on the market in the U.S. The answer, for them, is simple: a Japanese company would never approve of the design.
MacBook Air(Credit: Apple)

(Actually Mitsubishi did design an Air-thin notebook called the Pedion back in 1997, but the shallow keyboard was almost unusable--and no one bought it. IBM Japan and Sharp, among others, have made ultrathin notebooks but none that wowed consumers like the Air.)

So, let's do a teardown of the Nikkei Electronics teardown piece.

Though the English is here, let me dissect some of the original Japanese (I worked, reluctantly, as a part-time translator at a Japanese communications company in Tokyo for close to four years.) The article headline uses the phrase "muda nashi" to refer to the exterior, and "muda darake" to refer to the inside of the Air. In short, the exterior of the Air is clean, with no waste (muda nashi), but the internals are a complete waste (muda darake). My (not literal) translation: the Air looks good on the outside but is a piece of junk on the inside. This criticism seems beyond constructive to me and borders on spite. (I will explain why below.)

Let's look at another part. "Sugoi to kanjiru tokoro wa hitotsu mo nai." Translation: "There is not one thing (about the Air) that impresses." Then the engineer adds: "If it was us, we could make it cheaper." This sentiment (that the Air doesn't have even one redeeming technological quality) shows that the person making the statement almost holds an animus toward the Air.

My question. If this guy's company (NEC, Toshiba?) could make a cheaper, better Air, why hasn't it done it?

Other alleged shortcomings: an engineer asserts that the keyboard has too many screws and alludes to possibly less-than-perfect hinges. The team also hazards a guess that the Air was made by HonHai Precision Industry of Taiwan.

That's not to say the article is all gratuitous criticism. An engineer speculates that there wasn't enough feedback from the factory (or factories) that made the Air. And, along these lines, another engineer said the design indicates that Apple's main focus is on software and user interfaces, not the particulars of system manufacturing. These may be valid observations. By definition, any PC company that uses a contract manufacturer is removed from the manufacturing process. Certainly more than, let's say, Compaq was in 1994 when it made its PCs within the same building complex in Houston that housed its executives. But all PC makers today outsource manufacturing, including the Japanese.

That said, the problem with the Nikkei Electronics article is that the engineers are from major Japanese PC makers (though their affiliations are never revealed). It seems clear that at least some of the team may have a vested interest in poking holes in the Air's design because they work for companies that directly compete with Apple and are likely archrivals of Apple. Imagine asking a team of AMD engineers about an Intel chip design. The response would be nothing short of libel.

Also, the Japanese press never targets a domestic manufacturer in this way. In other words, it is not politically correct (in Japan) to tear down a device from Sony or Fujitsu or Sharp and subject it to open disdain (though I'm sure this is done internally at Japanese companies). This kind of hypercritical analysis is reserved for foreign manufacturers: Amercian, Korean, Chinese, and others. The upshot: this assessment by the Nikkei team may contain some valid points, but the premise of the article seems bogus

Author's note: Though I translated extensively (as part of my job) in Japan for a number of years, in this case, I have consulted with native Japanese speakers too. In short, the dynamics of pairing "muda nashi" with "muda darake" changes the combined meaning. Muda darake alone means "a lot of unnecessary waste" or an "excess" of waste. But, in my opinion, the implication is more harsh, i.e., the outside is nice but the inside is junky.
source:blogs.cnet.com

In the context of computing and software, a Trojan horse, or simply trojan, is a piece of software which appears to perform a certain action but in fact performs another such as a computer virus. Contrary to popular belief, this action, usually encoded in a hidden payload, may or may not be actually malicious, but Trojan horses are notorious today for their use in the installation of backdoor programs. Simply put, a Trojan horse is not a computer virus in most cases. Unlike such malware, it does not propagate by self-replication but relies heavily on the exploitation of an end-user (see Social engineering). It is instead a categorical attribute which can encompass many different forms of codes. Therefore, a computer worm or virus may be a Trojan horse. The term is derived from the classical story of the Trojan Horse.

Story of the Trojan horse

In the context of computing and software, a Trojan horse, or simply trojan, is a piece of software which appears to perform a certain action but in fact performs another such as a computer virus. Contrary to popular belief, this action, usually encoded in a hidden payload, may or may not be actually malicious, but Trojan horses are notorious today for their use in the installation of backdoor programs. Simply put, a Trojan horse is not a computer virus in most cases. Unlike such malware, it does not propagate by self-replication but relies heavily on the exploitation of an end-user (see Social engineering). It is instead a categorical attribute which can encompass many different forms of codes. Therefore, a computer worm or virus may be a Trojan horse. The term is derived from the classical story of the Trojan Horse.

The end of the Trojan war came with one final plan. Odysseus devised a new ruse—a giant hollow wooden horse, an animal that was sacred to the Trojans. It was built by Epeius and guided by Athena, from the wood of a cornel tree grove sacred to Apollo, with the inscription:

The Greeks dedicate this thank-offering to Athena for their return home.

The hollow horse was filled with soldiers led by Odysseus. The rest of the army burned the camp and sailed for Tenedos.

When the Trojans discovered that the Greeks were gone, believing the war was over, they "joyfully dragged the horse inside the city", while they debated what to do with it. Some thought they ought to hurl it down from the rocks, others thought they should burn it, while others said they ought to dedicate it to Athena.

Both Cassandra and Laocoön warned against keeping the horse. While Cassandra had been given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, she was also cursed by Apollo to never be believed. Serpents then came out of the sea and devoured either Laocoön and one of his two sons, Laocoön and both his sons, or only his sons, a portent which so alarmed the followers of Aeneas that they withdrew to Ida.The Trojans decided to keep the horse and turned to a night of mad revelry and celebration. Sinon, an Achaean spy, signaled the fleet stationed at Tenedos when "it was midnight and the clear moon was rising" and the soldiers from inside the horse emerged and killed the guards and finally TROY was ruined by the GREEKS.

This story clearly shows how the TROJAN virus affects your system.


Source: Wikipedia

If a genie granted you a wish, would "The ability to access other people's Gmail accounts" be it? Abdulaziz Al-Shalabi from Kuwait wasn't visited by a genie, but he was granted access to Gmail accounts that were not his -- for a considerable period of time at that!

The goof-up began last weekend and only stopped on Wednesday. As it happened, Al-Shalabi was incessantly trying to access his Gmail, and he just wasn't able to. It's not clear whether entering his own username and password -- or random ones -- allowed him access to other Gmail accounts. But as he reported to News.com, he got a peek into the private information of over 30 Gmail users.
The problem apparently occurred only over Al-Shalabi's ISP and with Gmail accounts; it didn't work with Hotmail accounts, for example. Having heard the news, a Gmail user in Sri Lanka reported a similar experience.

Acknowledging the problem, a Google spokesman said the goof-up had occurred in Kuwait because of a server caching problem the ISP was facing. He said Google was in contact with the ISP in question in order to find a solution. It's not known whether other Google sites were also affected by the ISP's problem, and if so, to what extent.

This is certainly a one-off incident, and we're certainly not trying to say you should switch away from Gmail. What's to be learnt is that the system isn't foolproof, and that it's possible for your mail to become accessible to others -- which, we bet, most of you would have thought impossible (unless your password is "abc123" and someone guessed it, in which case you deserve it).

If you're the really paranoid kind, and this bit of news has shaken you more than a bit, you might consider encrypting sensitive mails (such as those in which you call your boss an unfortunate accident of evolution) using a free service such as Hushmail.

Source:techtree.com

Posted on February 23, 2008.

What is NOD32 ?

• NOD32 is an antivirus package made by the Slovak company Eset.
• Versions are available for Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and other platforms.
• A NOD32 Enterprise Edition is available that consists of NOD32 AntiVirus and NOD32 Remote Administrator.
• The NOD32 Remote Administrator program allows a network administrator to monitor anti-virus functions, push installations and upgrades to unprotected PCs on the network, and update configuration files from a central location.

NOD32 was born in the early 1990s when computer viruses were becoming increasingly prevalent.

What does it provide ?

• AMON (Antivirus MONitor) - scans files as they are accessed by the system, preventing a virus from executing on the system.
• DMON (Document MONitor) - scans Microsoft Office documents and files for macro viruses as they are opened and saved by Office applications.
• IMON (Internet MONitor) - intercepts traffic on common protocols such as POP3 and HTTP to detect and intercept viruses before they are saved to discs.
• EMON (E-mail MONitor) - An auxiliary module for scanning incoming/outgoing e-mails via the MAPI interface, such as Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Client.
• XMON (MS eXchange MONitor) - scans incoming and outgoing mail when NOD32 is running and licensed for Microsoft Exchange Server - ie, running on a server environment. This module is not present on workstations at all.

What makes it the best ?

• NOD32 is written largely in assembly code, which contributes to its low use of system resources and high scanning speed.
• NOD32 can process more than 23MB per second while scanning on a Pentium 4 based PC.
  It uses less than 20MB of memory in total.The physical RAM used is often just a third of that.
• According to a 2005 Virus Bulletin test, NOD32 performs scans two to five times faster than other antivirus competitors.
• In a networked environment NOD32 clients can update from a central “mirror server” on the network, reducing bandwidth usage since new definitions need only be downloaded once by the mirror server as opposed to once for each client.
• In addition to signature files, NOD32’s scan engine uses heuristic detection (called “ThreatSense” by Eset) to provide better protection against newly released viruses.

Also Visit: ESET website

The high-definition DVD war that ended this week saw Blu-ray emerge victorious from the field of battle.

Now that the dust has settled a bit, we're tackling questions from people
who might be wondering what all the fuss is about.Just as Beta and VHS went head-to-head in the '80s, HD DVD and Blu-ray spent

the last two years battling to see which would be the eventual successor to DVD,
bringing crystal clear, high-definition picture and sound to our living rooms.
And as Sean Connery famously said in Highlander, "In the end, there can be
only one."

There was never a doubt that one format would triumph, the only questions
were which one and how soon. The big backers for each side (Toshiba and
Microsoft for HD DVD; Sony, Panasonic, Samsung and others for Blu-ray) gambled
they'd be victorious, but -- to stay with the Highlander analogy -- Blu-ray
chopped off HD DVD's head.

Decline of HD DVD

Citing consumer confusion and indifference as a reason for lackluster high-definition software sales, Warner Bros. announced they would stop supporting HD DVD by June 2008, and the company would release software only on Blu-ray Disc.

This was followed by news of Netflix phasing out support for the format, and Best Buy's decision to recommend Blu-ray Disc over HD DVD in its retail locations.

Wal-Mart announced that they would be supporting only Blu-ray by June 2008.

On February 19, 2008, Toshiba announced their decision to discontinue development and marketing of the HD DVD format. The company citied "recent major changes in the market". According to Toshiba, HD DVD Player (replay only) had sold approx. 10,000 sets in Japan and approx. 700,000 worldwide. TV broadcasting program recordable HD DVD recorders sold approx. 20,000 in Japan. HD DVD Drive for PC, add-on for Microsoft Xbox 360 and others is approx. 20,000 in Japan and approx. 300,000 worldwide. Toshiba will continue support by holding spare parts for 8 years after complete close of HD DVD business . Shipments of HD DVD machines to retailers will be reduced and will stop by the end of March 2008. Toshiba plans to continue to market recordable HD DVD discs. The company plans to solicit media manufacturers for recordable HD DVD media.

What is HD DVD ?

HD DVD or High-Definition DVD is a high-density optical disc format designed for the storage of data and high-definition video.

HD DVD was designed by a consortium of companies (principally Toshiba and NEC) to be the successor to the standard DVD format. Toshiba made an official announcement on February 19, 2008 that the company would no longer develop, manufacture, and market HD DVD players and recorders, effectively ending the high definition optical disc format war

Attempts to avoid a format war

In an attempt to avoid a costly format war, the Blu-ray Disc Association and DVD Forum attempted to negotiate a compromise in early 2005. One of the issues was that Blu-ray's supporters wanted to use a Java-based platform for interactivity (BD-J), while the DVD Forum was promoting Microsoft's "iHD" (which became HDi). A much larger issue, though, was the physical formats of the discs themselves; the Blu-ray Disc Association's member companies did not want to risk losing billions of dollars in royalties as they had done with standard DVD. An agreement seemed close, but negotiations proceeded slowly and ultimately stalled.On August 22, 2005, the Blu-ray Disc Association and DVD Forum announced that the negotiations to unify their standards had failed. Rumours surfaced that talks had stalled; publicly, the same reasons of physical format incompatibility were cited.
In the end of September, Microsoft and Intel jointly announced their support for HD DVD.

Hewlett Packard (HP) made a last ditch attempt to broker a peace between the Blu-ray Disc Association and Microsoft by demanding that Blu-ray association adopt Microsoft's HDi instead of its own Java solution and threatening to support HD DVD instead.However, the Blu-ray Disc group did not accept HP's proposal.

Read :Blu ray

Website: http://www.quickheal.co.in
Quick Heal India’s leading antivirus software walked another step ahead with Microsoft. Microsoft certified Quick Heal Technologies (P) Ltd. (previously known as Cat Computer Services Pvt. Ltd.) as its Independent Software Vendor (ISV) for providing antivirus solution for Microsoft operating systems and generic mail protection service.

Website http://www.mojopac.com/

it is offering a software that can help you virtually carry your desktop anywhere loaded with applications.

It is available for free on the website

What the website says

Your experience using Mojopac is exactly as if you are using an ultra portable PC (your MojoPac device) and docking it to a computer (the Host PC you are plugged into).

Your MojoPac PC is running from your portable device, but it is borrowing the resources (screen, processor, CD/DVD drives, internet connection, printers, etc.) of the Host PC. In other words, MojoPac is your real PC (your applications, settings, data), and any computer it is connected to is being used as a utility to run MojoPac.

Creating a MojoPac PC: Creating a brand new MojoPac PC takes less than 3 minutes.

• Plug your portable storage device (such as an iPod or a USB Flash or Hard Drive) into any Windows XP PC. Download MojoPac from our website and install it onto the device.
• Once you have installed MojoPac, you can log into this MojoPac PC you created (which is running from your portable device), and bring up your newly created MojoPac desktop (MojoView). What you see is similar to a brand new Windows XP PC, and behaves exactly the same.
• You can now install your applications from MojoView. The applications installed in the MojoView will be available for you on any PC you would connect and run MojoPac

Using a MojojPac PC: You can plug your MojoPac enabled device to any Windows XP computer (Host PC), and you will immediately be presented with your personal applications, files and environment - and it looks exactly like a standard PC experience. In your MojoPac PC view (MojoView), installing applications is similar to installing applications on any PC - simply load the application installer CD/DVD, or download the application installer from the web and proceed as you would on any normal PC. In fact, in your MojoView, your "C" drive represents your MojoPac device, NOT the Host PC. So applications install in the right place automatically, no extra steps required.

MojoPac lives side-by-side with the Host PC: When you bring up your MojoPac PC after plugging your device into a Host PC, the Host PC will keep running as it was before the connection. You don't need to change the Host PC's settings, install anything on it, or close any of the applications that were running on it. Even more importantly, you can go back and forth between your MojoPac PC view and your Host PC view - you can work on both PCs at the same time, and operate both environments simultaneously. Using your MojoPac toolbar (MojoBar) you can easily toggle back and forth between the host PC view and your MojoPac view. Each presents you with whatever personal preferences and environments you have chosen for that system and MojoPac will never alter the settings or status of the host PC.

currently: only XP compatible, also sounds a bit confusing, but yes it has got great potential.

source:www.mojopac.com

The internet revolution is on and a lot of people are cashing in on it.The basic thing you need to follow the same trend is a website.But what kind of website?
A website can increase traffic and it can also turn away traffic. I have seen quite a lot of websites and depending on the nature of my work, I used a particular one. I liked a few websites and also disliked a few.So I decided to list 5 important features that could make a website successful

1. Genuine(unique) content/concept
2. Focussed area
3. Simplicity
4. Ease of access
5. Relevance
   

Tom Drapeau, director of Netscape, AOL, who famously stopped development on Netscape in December last year, and who set Feb 1, 2008 as the deadline for ending all support to the browser was the same person who on Wednesday pushed forth the deadline to March 1st this year.
The reason he cited is that Netscape and partners need more time to complete work on the tools necessary for users to migrate to Mozilla's Firefox or Flock's Flock browsers.

In a post to the Netscape blog, Drapeau explained that Mozilla, Flock, and AOL are working towards providing tools to ease migration to the recommended Flock and Firefox alternatives.

He also said that for Netscape 9 users, an upgrade would be issued through the browser's integrated update feature to help streamline the process of choosing between alternatives (Firefox and Flock).

But even for Drapeau, Flock is a new recommendation, because in December 2007, he had recommended only Firefox as possible successor to Netscape. Flock is a free browser with social networking features, and is built on Firefox code base.

Drapeau hasn't elaborated on the kind of tools the companies are working on. But in all likelihood, they would be some sort of Netscape-to-Firefox migration assistant.

Currently, users need to manually copy the Netscape "profiles.ini" file and its folder to Firefox's directory in order to migrate from Netscape to Firefox. Whereas, Flock's latest version 1.06 includes Netscape migration features.

With AOL support of Netscape now extended to one more month, it still isn't clear why the company has decided to end support in the first place.

Last year, Drapeau had mentioned the reasons for ending support as "AOL's current business focus", and the inability to revive Netscape's dying market share vis-a-vis other browsers.
source:techreef