HS Technology

Finished Logo Project Debugger

2007-05-29T10:40:00.000+08:00

http://mfiles.naver.net/6dba5a8c97cba1173f66/data17/2007/5/29/282/hyeon_logo-cth1249.bin

MAKE SURE THAT YOU RENAME .BIN TO .EXE

Paul's Project

2007-05-28T22:39:00.000+08:00

Public Class Form1 Private Structure LayOutSettings Dim PictureFileName Dim MyCurrentSettingFileName As String End Structure Private MyLayOut As New LayOutSettings
Private Sub Form1_KeyDown(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.KeyEventArgs) Handles Me.KeyDown Select Case e.KeyCode Case Keys.Down If e.Control = True Then Label1.Top = (Label1.Top + 10) Else : Me.Opacity = Me.Opacity - 0.1 End If Case Keys.Up If e.Control = True Then Label1.Top = Label1.Top - 10 Else Me.Opacity = Me.Opacity + 0.1
End If Case Keys.Left If e.Control = True Then Label1.Left = Label1.Left - 10 End If Case Keys.Right If e.Control = True Then Label1.Left = Label1.Left + 10 End If End Select End Sub
Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
Label1.BorderStyle = BorderStyle.None Me.BackColor = Color.White Me.KeyPreview = True
End Sub
Private Sub FontToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles FontToolStripMenuItem.Click FontDialog1.ShowDialog() Label1.Font = FontDialog1.Font
End Sub
Private Sub FontColorToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles FontColorToolStripMenuItem.Click ColorDialog1.ShowDialog() Label1.ForeColor = ColorDialog1.Color End Sub
Private Sub Label1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Label1.Click Form2.show() End Sub
Private Sub SolidToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles SolidToolStripMenuItem.Click Label1.BorderStyle = BorderStyle.FixedSingle End Sub
Private Sub NoneToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles NoneToolStripMenuItem.Click Label1.BorderStyle = BorderStyle.None End Sub
Private Sub SolidToolStripMenuItem1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles SolidToolStripMenuItem1.Click Me.FormBorderStyle = Windows.Forms.FormBorderStyle.Sizable End Sub
Private Sub NoneToolStripMenuItem1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles NoneToolStripMenuItem1.Click Me.FormBorderStyle = Windows.Forms.FormBorderStyle.None End Sub
Private Sub TransparencyColorToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles TransparencyColorToolStripMenuItem.Click ColorDialog1.ShowDialog() Me.TransparencyKey = ColorDialog1.Color End Sub
Private Sub LoadPictureToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles LoadPictureToolStripMenuItem.Click OpenFileDialog1.ShowDialog() MyLayOut.PictureFileName = OpenFileDialog1.FileName Me.BackgroundImage = System.Drawing.Image.FromFile(MyLayOut.PictureFileName)
End Sub
Private Sub ExitToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles ExitToolStripMenuItem.Click Me.Close() End Sub
Private Sub NewToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles NewToolStripMenuItem.Click Dim oForm As New Form1 oForm.Show() End Sub
Private Sub SaveToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles SaVeToolStripMenuItem.Click SaveFileDialog1.ShowDialog() SaveMySettings(SaveFileDialog1.FileName) ' SaveFileDialog1.ShowDialog() ' MyLayOut.MyCurrentSettingFileName = SaveFileDialog1.FileName() ' If MyLayOut.MyCurrentSettingFileName <> "" Then ' 'Dim sContents As String
' ' IO.File.WriteAllText(MyLayOut.MyCurrentSettingFileName, sContents) ' IO.File.WriteAllText(MyLayOut.MyCurrentSettingFileName, MyLayOut.TextLeft & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.TextTop & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.TextWidth & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.TextHeight & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.TextText & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.TextFont & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.TextBorder & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.FormLeft & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.FormTop & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.FormWidth & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.FormHeight & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.FormColor & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.FormBorder & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.OpacityLevel & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.TransparencyColor & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.PictureFileName & vbNewLine & Label1.ForeColor.A & vbNewLine & Label1.ForeColor.R & vbNewLine & Label1.ForeColor.G & vbNewLine & Label1.ForeColor.B)
' End If
'End Sub
'Private Sub SaveAsToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles SaveAsToolStripMenuItem.Click
' SaveFileDialog1.ShowDialog()
' MyLayOut.MyCurrentSettingFileName = SaveFileDialog1.FileName()
' If MyLayOut.MyCurrentSettingFileName <> "" Then ' IO.File.WriteAllText(MyLayOut.MyCurrentSettingFileName, MyLayOut.TextLeft & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.FormTop & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.TextHeight & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.TextWidth & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.FormLeft & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.FormTop & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.FormWidth & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.FormHeight & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.TextText & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.TextFont & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.TextColor & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.TextBorder & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.FormLeft & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.FormTop & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.FormWidth & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.FormHeight & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.FormColor & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.FormBorder & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.OpacityLevel & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.TransparencyColor & vbNewLine & MyLayOut.PictureFileName) ' End If End Sub
Private Sub BorderToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles BorderToolStripMenuItem.Click
End Sub
Private Sub MoveAmountToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MoveAmountToolStripMenuItem.Click
End Sub
Private Sub FileToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles FileToolStripMenuItem.Click 'MyLayOut.TextLeft = Label1.Left 'MyLayOut.TextTop = Label1.Top 'MyLayOut.TextWidth = Label1.Width 'MyLayOut.TextHeight = Label1.Height ''MyLayOut.TextMoveAmount = "" 'MyLayOut.TextText = Label1.Text 'MyLayOut.TextFont = Label1.Font.Name 'MyLayOut.TextColor = Label1.ForeColor.Name 'MyLayOut.TextBorder = Label1.BorderStyle
'MyLayOut.FormLeft = Me.Left 'MyLayOut.FormTop = Me.Top 'MyLayOut.FormWidth = Me.Width 'MyLayOut.FormHeight = Me.Height ''MyLayOut.FormMoveAmount = "" 'MyLayOut.FormColor = Me.BackColor.Name 'MyLayOut.FormBorder = Me.FormBorderStyle
'MyLayOut.OpacityLevel = Me.Opacity 'MyLayOut.TransparencyColor = Me.TransparencyKey.Name
End Sub
Private Sub OpenToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles OpenToolStripMenuItem.Click OpenFileDialog1.ShowDialog() ReadMySettings(OpenFileDialog1.FileName) ' Dim sFile As String ' Dim aFields ' Dim b As Byte ' Dim MyColor1 As New Color
' OpenFileDialog1.ShowDialog() ' sFile = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(OpenFileDialog1.FileName) ' aFields = Split(sFile, vbNewLine)
' Label1.Left = aFields(0) ' Label1.Top = aFields(1) ' Label1.Width = aFields(2) ' Label1.Height = aFields(3) ' 'lblText Movement ' Label1.Text = aFields(4) ' Label1.Font = New Font(CStr(aFields(5)), 55, FontStyle.Italic, GraphicsUnit.Point, b) ' Label1.BorderStyle = 0
' Me.Left = aFields(7) ' Me.Top = aFields(8) ' Me.Width = aFields(9) ' Me.Height = aFields(10) ' 'Me Movement ' 'Me.BackColor = aFields(11) ' Me.FormBorderStyle = aFields(12)
' Me.Opacity = aFields(13) ' 'Me.TransparencyKey = aFields(14) ' If aFields(15) <> "" Then ' ' Me.BackgroundImage = aFields(15) ' End If ' MyColor1.FromArgb(aFields(16), aFields(17), aFields(18), aFields(19)) ' Label1.ForeColor = MyColor1 End Sub Private Sub ReadMySettings(ByVal sPathFile As String)
'Dim sPathFile As String = Application.StartupPath & "MyData.txt" Dim aContents Dim sFileName As String aContents = IO.File.ReadAllText(sPathFile).Split(vbNewLine)
Me.Left = aContents(0) Me.Top = aContents(1) Me.Width = aContents(2) Me.Height = aContents(3)
Me.BackColor = Color.FromArgb(aContents(4), aContents(5), aContents(6), aContents(7)) Me.TransparencyKey = Color.FromArgb(aContents(8), aContents(9), aContents(10), aContents(11))
Label1.BackColor = Color.FromArgb(aContents(12), aContents(13), aContents(14), aContents(15)) Label1.ForeColor = Color.FromArgb(aContents(16), aContents(17), aContents(18), aContents(19)) Label1.Left = aContents(20) Label1.Top = aContents(21) Label1.Text = aContents(22) Label1.Font = New Font(CStr(aContents(23)), CSng(aContents(24)), CLng(aContents(25)), CLng(aContents(26)), CByte(aContents(27))) Label1.AutoSize = True 'Me.BackgroundImage = System.Drawing.Image.FromFile(aContents(28)) 'sFileName = CStr(aContents(28)) 'Dim aSplit 'Dim aSplit2 'aSplit = Split(sFileName, ":") 'aSplit2 = Split(aSplit(1), "S")
'sFileName = Replace(aContents(28), aSplit2(0), "\") 'MsgBox(sFileName) 'MsgBox("\") Dim aSplit aSplit = Split(aContents(28), "C") MsgBox(aSplit(0)) sFileName = "C" & aSplit(1) MsgBox("a" & aContents(28))
Me.BackgroundImage = System.Drawing.Image.FromFile(sFileName) MsgBox("Finished", MsgBoxStyle.Information) End Sub Private Sub SaveMySettings(ByVal sPathFileName As String)
'Dim sPathFile As String = Application.StartupPath & "MyData.txt" Dim sContents As String
sContents = Me.Left & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Me.Top & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Me.Width & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Me.Height & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Me.BackColor.A & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Me.BackColor.R & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Me.BackColor.G & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Me.BackColor.B & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Me.TransparencyKey.A & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Me.TransparencyKey.R & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Me.TransparencyKey.G & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Me.TransparencyKey.B & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Label1.BackColor.A & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Label1.BackColor.R & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Label1.BackColor.G & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Label1.BackColor.B & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Label1.ForeColor.A & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Label1.ForeColor.R & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Label1.ForeColor.G & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Label1.ForeColor.B & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Label1.Left & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Label1.Top & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Label1.Text & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Label1.Font.Name & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Label1.Font.Size & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Label1.Font.Style & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Label1.Font.Unit & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & Label1.Font.GdiCharSet & vbNewLine sContents = sContents & MyLayOut.PictureFileName
IO.File.WriteAllText(sPathFileName, sContents, System.Text.Encoding.Unicode)
MsgBox("Saved", MsgBoxStyle.Information) End SubEnd Class

Layout application: Simplify saving and retriving settings

2007-05-25T16:09:00.000+08:00

These two function simplify saving and retriving settings for the Layout application.
You will need to add the code for the picture filename.

Private Sub ReadMySettings()

Dim sPathFile As String = Application.StartupPath & "MyData.txt"
Dim aContents

aContents = IO.File.ReadAllText(sPathFile).Split(vbNewLine)

Me.Left = aContents(0)
Me.Top = aContents(1)
Me.Width = aContents(2)
Me.Height = aContents(3)

Me.BackColor = Color.FromArgb(aContents(4), aContents(5), aContents(6), aContents(7))
Me.TransparencyKey = Color.FromArgb(aContents(8), aContents(9), aContents(10), aContents(11))

Label1.BackColor = Color.FromArgb(aContents(12), aContents(13), aContents(14), aContents(15))
Label1.ForeColor = Color.FromArgb(aContents(16), aContents(17), aContents(18), aContents(19))
Label1.Left = aContents(20)
Label1.Top = aContents(21)
Label1.Text = aContents(22)
Label1.Font = New Font(CStr(aContents(23)), CSng(aContents(24)), CLng(aContents(25)), CLng(aContents(26)), CByte(aContents(27)))
Label1.AutoSize = True

MsgBox("Finished", MsgBoxStyle.Information)

End Sub
Private Sub SaveMySettings()

Dim sPathFile As String = Application.StartupPath & "MyData.txt"
Dim sContents As String

sContents = Me.Left & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Me.Top & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Me.Width & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Me.Height & vbNewLine

sContents = sContents & Me.BackColor.A & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Me.BackColor.R & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Me.BackColor.G & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Me.BackColor.B & vbNewLine

sContents = sContents & Me.TransparencyKey.A & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Me.TransparencyKey.R & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Me.TransparencyKey.G & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Me.TransparencyKey.B & vbNewLine

sContents = sContents & Label1.BackColor.A & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Label1.BackColor.R & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Label1.BackColor.G & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Label1.BackColor.B & vbNewLine

sContents = sContents & Label1.ForeColor.A & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Label1.ForeColor.R & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Label1.ForeColor.G & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Label1.ForeColor.B & vbNewLine

sContents = sContents & Label1.Left & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Label1.Top & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Label1.Text & vbNewLine

sContents = sContents & Label1.Font.Name & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Label1.Font.Size & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Label1.Font.Style & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Label1.Font.Unit & vbNewLine
sContents = sContents & Label1.Font.GdiCharSet & vbNewLine

IO.File.WriteAllText(sPathFile, sContents)

MsgBox("Saved", MsgBoxStyle.Information)
End Sub

Window Application

2007-05-24T12:51:00.000+08:00

Lily Baik

Public Class Form1
Private Structure Layoutsettings
Dim PictureFileName As String
Dim TextHeight As String
Dim TextWidth As String
Dim TextTop As String
Dim TextLeft As String
Dim TextMoveAmount As String
Dim TextText As String
Dim TextFont As String
Dim TextColor
Dim TextBorder As String
Dim FormLeft As String
Dim FormTop As String
Dim FormWidth As String
Dim FormHeight As String
Dim FormMoveAmount As String
Dim FormColor
Dim FormBorder As String
Dim OpacityLevel As String
Dim TransparencyColor
Dim PicturePathFile As String
Dim MyCurrentSettingFile As String
End Structure
Private mylayout As New Layoutsettings

Private Sub Form1_KeyDown(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.KeyEventArgs) Handles Me.KeyDown
Select Case e.KeyCode
Case Keys.Down
If e.Control = True Then
Label1.Top = (Label1.Top + 10)
Else : Me.Opacity = Me.Opacity - 0.1
End If
Case Keys.Up
If e.Control = True Then
Label1.Top = Label1.Top - 10
Else
Me.Opacity = Me.Opacity + 0.1
End If
Case Keys.Left
If e.Control = True Then
Label1.Left = Label1.Left - 10
End If
Case Keys.Right
If e.Control = True Then
Label1.Left = Label1.Left + 10
End If
End Select
End Sub
Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
Label1.BorderStyle = BorderStyle.None
Me.BackColor = Color.White
Me.KeyPreview = True
End Sub
Private Sub FontToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles FontToolStripMenuItem.Click
FontDialog1.ShowDialog()
Label1.Font = FontDialog1.Font
End Sub
Private Sub FontColorToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles FontColorToolStripMenuItem.Click
ColorDialog1.ShowDialog()
Label1.ForeColor = ColorDialog1.Color
End Sub
Private Sub SolidToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles SolidToolStripMenuItem.Click
Label1.BorderStyle = BorderStyle.FixedSingle
End Sub
Private Sub NoneToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles NoneToolStripMenuItem.Click
Label1.BorderStyle = BorderStyle.None
End Sub
Private Sub SolidToolStripMenuItem1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles SolidToolStripMenuItem1.Click
Me.FormBorderStyle = Windows.Forms.FormBorderStyle.Sizable
End Sub
Private Sub NoneToolStripMenuItem1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles NoneToolStripMenuItem1.Click
Me.FormBorderStyle = Windows.Forms.FormBorderStyle.None
End Sub
Private Sub TransparencyColorToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles TransparencyColorToolStripMenuItem.Click
ColorDialog1.ShowDialog()
Me.TransparencyKey = ColorDialog1.Color
End Sub
Private Sub OpenFileDialog1_FileOk(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.ComponentModel.CancelEventArgs) Handles OpenFileDialog1.FileOk
End Sub
Private Sub LoadpictureToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles LoadpictureToolStripMenuItem.Click
OpenFileDialog1.ShowDialog()
mylayout.PictureFileName = OpenFileDialog1.FileName
Me.BackgroundImage = System.Drawing.Image.FromFile(mylayout.PictureFileName)
End Sub
Private Sub NewToolStripMenuItem1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles NewToolStripMenuItem1.Click
Dim oForm As New Form1
oForm.Show()
End Sub
'Private Sub SaveToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles SaveToolStripMenuItem.Click
' mylayout.TextLeft = Label1.Left
' mylayout.TextTop = Label1.Top
' mylayout.TextWidth = Label1.Width
' mylayout.TextHeight = Label1.Height
' SaveFileDialog1.ShowDialog()
' mylayout.MyCurrentSettingFile = SaveFileDialog1.FileName

'End Sub.
Private Sub SaveToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles SaveToolStripMenuItem.Click
SaveFileDialog1.ShowDialog()
mylayout.MyCurrentSettingFile = SaveFileDialog1.FileName()
mylayout.TextLeft = Label1.Left
mylayout.TextTop = Label1.Top
mylayout.TextWidth = Label1.Width
mylayout.TextHeight = Label1.Height
mylayout.TextMoveAmount = ""
mylayout.TextText = Label1.Text
mylayout.TextFont = Label1.Font.Name
mylayout.TextColor = Label1.ForeColor
mylayout.TextBorder = Label1.BorderStyle
mylayout.FormLeft = Me.Left
mylayout.FormTop = Me.Top
mylayout.FormWidth = Me.Width
mylayout.FormHeight = Me.Height
mylayout.FormMoveAmount = ""
mylayout.FormColor = Me.BackColor
mylayout.FormBorder = Me.FormBorderStyle
mylayout.OpacityLevel = Me.Opacity
mylayout.TransparencyColor = Me.TransparencyKey
mylayout.PicturePathFile=Me.BackgroundImage.
If mylayout.MyCurrentSettingFile <> "" Then
IO.File.WriteAllText(mylayout.MyCurrentSettingFile, Label1.Text & mylayout.TextWidth & mylayout.TextTop & mylayout.TextLeft & mylayout.TextHeight & mylayout.PictureFileName)
End If
End Sub
Private Sub MoveAmountToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MoveAmountToolStripMenuItem.Click
End Sub
End Class

setting and getting a color object

2007-05-24T12:36:00.001+08:00

'setting a color object using Alpha, Red, Blue, Green arguments
Label1.BackColor = Color.FromArgb(255, 212, 11, 123)

'getting a color object Alpha, Red, Blue, Green arguments
Dim MyColor As Color = Color.FromArgb(255, 212, 11, 123)
Me.TransparencyKey = MyColor

DianaJung

2007-05-23T14:19:00.001+08:00

http://rapidshare.com/files/32873424/project_________.zip.html

This conversion is written in Visual Basic .net.
Yoou wil need .Net2.0 to run this program^^

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0856EACB-4362-4B0D-8EDD-AAB15C5E04F5&displaylang=en

Converter

2007-05-22T14:59:00.000+08:00

Written using Visual Basic .net.

You will need .NET 2.0 to run the program.

"Converter" only works in a windows computer.

If you have .NET, download "Converter.zip" only

Converter:
http://rapidshare.com/files/32873945/Converter.zip.html

If the program doesn't work, try downloading .NET 2.0 from microsoft.NET Framework 2.0: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0856EACB-4362-4B0D-8EDD-AAB15C5E04F5&displaylang=en By John Cho

joanna lee

2007-05-22T14:56:00.001+08:00

http://rapidshare.com/files/32873470/conversion2.zip.html
made by
-joanna lee

"conversion"

this program will only work in a windows computer
if the program doesn't work,
then try downloading .net2 from microsoft

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0856EACB-4362-4B0D-8EDD-AAB15C5E04F5&displaylang=en

Exchanging Machine

2007-05-22T14:33:00.000+08:00

Written using Visual Basic .net.

You will need .NET 2.0 to run the program.

Exchange Machine.exe at: https://ssl.rapidshare.com/cgi-bin/collectorszone.cgi?savedfiles=1&forbiddenfiles=0

.Net 2.0 :http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0856EACB-4362-4B0D-8EDD-AAB15C5E04F5&displaylang=en

By Jacky Chen

Conversion Tool

2007-05-21T14:57:00.000+08:00

Written using Visual Basic .net.
You will need .NET 2.0 to run the program.

Download Program
Download .NET Framework 2.0 from Microsoft

- by. Minsung

BlackBerry Inside Windows Mobile By Paul Lee

2007-04-25T13:04:00.000+08:00

Until a couple of weeks ago, I was a BlackBerry user--then I switched to a Palm Treo 750 running Windows Mobile. Both devices have their advantages--and now it looks like we may get the best of both worlds.
BlackBerry manufacturer RIM announced yesterday that it's working on software that would essentially turn Windows Mobile 6-based devices into BlackBerries. In other words, folks who ran this software on a WM6 phone would get versions of the BlackBerry e-mail, calendar, and other applications, and could sync wirelessly with their companies' BlackBerry servers.
The details here are still sketchy, but if the BB-on-Windows apps do the job well, it could be a boon to anyone who works in a company that's standardized on BlackBerries but who wants a wider range of handsets to choose from. (There are already plenty of ways to get BlackBerry-style functionality on a Windows phone, including Microsoft's own mobile push server software for Exchange and Good Technology's server and client applications.)
All in all, I don't think this'll be that huge a deal--in part because RIM already released a software/service package called BlackBerry Connect that lets non-BlackBerries connect to the BlackBerry service, and it doesn't seem to have changed the world. (The Windows Mobile version isn't offered by any U.S. carrier that I know of; the Palm OS one is available for Palm-based Treos from Cingular.)
But maybe I'll be surprised--and I assume that RIM thinks it can sell more server software and service if its stuff works with any BlackBerry and any Windows Mobile phone.
And I might be interested in it myself, if it lets me get my PC World Lotus Notes e-mail and calendar with BlackBerry-like rock-solid reliability on my Treo 750. (At the moment, I'm using Cingular's XpressMail to do the job, and I'm never quite sure whether it's actually going to work or not.)

Distant world has comforts of home

2007-04-25T13:03:00.000+08:00

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-070424planet,1,6516694.story?coll=chi-news-hed

Lily Baik
By Jeremy ManierTribune staff reporterPublished April 24, 2007, 10:32 PM CDT European astronomers say they have found the first Earth-sized planet beyond this solar system with temperatures mild enough to allow liquid water—a crucial step toward answering whether our cradle of life is unique in the universe.
The planet circles the star Gliese 581 in the Libra constellation, and at 20 light years away is among the 100 stars closest to Earth. Dubbed Gliese 581c, the planet orbits very close to its star—closer than Mercury is to our sun. But astronomers with the European Southern Observatory say the star is dim enough that average temperatures on the planet would fall in the range of an ordinary Chicago spring day.
If the planet has water—a big unknown—its size and climate could make it habitable, experts said. The planet appears to be about 50 percent larger than Earth and has five times more mass, making it one of the smallest far-off planets ever detected.
The conditions look promising enough that officials with the California-based SETI Institute, which looks for signs of radio communication from alien civilizations, said they hope to give the planet a fresh look this summer. Previous radio observations of Gliese 581 in the 1990s turned up nothing unusual.
But the finding is a milestone in any case because it suggests that Earth-like planets may be common throughout the universe, astronomers said. Our galaxy alone could be home to 100 million habitable planets, if such worlds are as easy to spot as the new study indicates.
"This is a marvelous discovery," said astronomer Geoff Marcy, a principal investigator for the California and Carnegie Planet Search. Marcy's group had been racing the Europeans to find the first potentially Earth-like planet.
Next year NASA plans to launch the Kepler probe, designed to find even more Earth-sized planets outside our solar system. That probe will survey thousands of stars in hopes of catching sight of planets that cross in front of them.
As with nearly all such planetary discoveries, astronomers could not observe Gliese 581 directly because it is invisible in the glare of its sun. Instead, the European group led by Stephane Udry and Michael Mayor calculated the planet's presence from its tiny gravitational tug on the star.
The research group released its results Tuesday night and has submitted the work for publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
The hunt for far-flung planets has made dizzying progress since 1995, when Mayor and his Swiss colleagues discovered a large extrasolar planet circling a star called 51 Pegasi.
The method they use is straightforward but requires exquisitely precise measurements: Astronomers must scrutinize stars for wobbles caused by the gravity of their planets. Because most planets are tiny compared with the stars they orbit, the wobble can be extremely small.
At first, scientific critics wondered whether the wobbles were merely byproducts of the stars' natural oscillations or resulted from companion stars and not planets. But experts said the techniques have been accepted and are responsible for the discovery of 227 distant planets.
Until the last few years, the only planets found in this way were huge gas giants, similar to Jupiter or even larger. None approached Earth's relatively small size.
To find Gliese 581c, Mayor's group used a cutting-edge planet-seeking instrument at an observatory in La Silla, Chile. The telescope has a device called a spectrograph that can detect small shifts in a star's light as it moves in relation to Earth. When the star edges toward Earth, its light shifts to the blue end of the spectrum; when the star moves away, the light undergoes a red shift.
In the case of Gliese 581c, the planet's pull on the star produced minute shifts in light. The star's movement was as slow as 2 meters per second—about the speed of a person walking in a park.
"We're to the point where we can see if stars are strolling toward us or strolling away from us," said Steve Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California at Santa Cruz and a member of the California-Carnegie planet search team.
Vogt called the achievement "a landmark discovery."
If it is habitable, Gliese 581c would be a bizarre home for life. It orbits so close to the star that its year is about 13 days long, and it is probably locked with one face constantly facing its sun. On the light side of the planet the sun would dominate the sky, but because it is a relatively weak red dwarf star, average temperatures on the planet would range between 32 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
No one knows if the planet has water, or even if it has a solid surface. Some experts said the planet could be a smaller version of gaseous planets like Neptune, with a deep atmosphere and little chance for life to take hold. But models of planetary formation suggest that's unlikely, said Bruce Jakosky, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado.
"We would lean pretty strongly toward the idea that this has to be a rocky object," said Jakosky, who specializes in astrobiology—the study of how life might arise on other planets.
The odds so far suggest the galaxy may be littered with such worlds. Planets have been detected near about 5 percent of the stars at which astronomers have looked, and the discovery of Gliese 581c suggests at least 1 percent of those stars have Earth-like planets. So amid the 200 billion stars of the Milky Way galaxy, some 100 million may have planets that meet the bare requirements for life.
Beyond listening for radio transmissions, learning more about those planets will be difficult. It may be decades or longer before astronomers learn how to cancel out the glare of stars and directly observe far-off planets. And although Gliese 581 is our close neighbor in galactic terms, it would take thousands of years for the fastest modern spacecraft to reach it.
The greatest value of planet hunting may lie beyond science and in the realm of philosophy, said Vogt of UC-Santa Cruz. Peering into the void of space so far away, we're really looking for reflections of our origins.
"This is how I connect with the reason for our being," Vogt said. "Are we really rare, a freak of nature, or are there lots of places like this? I think this helps us get purchase on what this life means, and what's our place in the universe."

iRiver’s tiny PMP

2007-04-23T13:16:00.001+08:00

Brian Lee

iRiver’s super slim Clix 2 multimedia player has hit the UK thanks to specialist retailer advancedmp3players.co.uk. The tiny PMP is packed with feature such as video playback and an FM tuner, yet still manages to be ridiculously slim measuring just 13mm at its thickest point.

The tiny tot’s main claim to fame is that it can show videos on its 2.2inch OLED screen. And the videos it shows aren’t of the usual jerky variety you find on most flash-based PMPs. Oh no, this little fella will show MPEG4 and WMV movies at a smooth 30 frames per second. Naturally it can also pump out tunes in MP3, WMA and OGG formats.

Navigating the menus should be a breeze as the player retains the D-click system used on the previous model where the front of the screen acts as a four way rocker switch for moving through the menus. There’s also a built-in FM tuner and you can even setup timed recordings so it’ll automatically grab your favourite radio shows to memory.

Another neat feature is its support for Flash content downloaded from websites. It even comes with some Flash games as standard.

More news

Inventors turn creations into cash

2007-04-23T13:16:00.000+08:00

Lily Baik
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/04/20/geneva.inventions.ap/index.html

GENEVA, Switzerland (AP) -- What do the automatic fish catcher, the easy sushi-maker, and the body-shaping petticoat all have in common? They're creations of some of the world's most innovative minds for the world's laziest bodies.
Hoping to turn their contraptions into capital, some 700 inventors from 42 countries have gathered at the International Exhibition of Inventions to show off gizmos ranging from a multifunction umbrella that contains an anti-mugger alarm to personal armor made of coconut-fiber.
The fair -- the world's largest of its kind -- features some 1,000 new inventions by industrial and commercial companies, independent researchers and even amateurs like one who offers a way to eat spare ribs without burning your fingers.
Solutions for those resistant to exertion seem to be a recurring theme at this year's 35th edition, which runs until Sunday.
One notable invention is the spring-loaded fish hook -- the equivalent of an underwater mouse trap. After attaching the float to the fishing pole, the "sportsman" lowers a lever into the set position. The fish has only to nibble on the bait to trigger the spring and find itself with a dart through the lips. (Caution: Do not bait the hook while the device is cocked, the pamphlet warns).
But isn't that considered cheating?
"Well, it could be," admitted inventor Michael Adcock, the only U.S. entry at the fair. "It's a lazy-man's way of fishing. That way you can drink more beer. That's what more fishermen are really out there for anyway. ... Normally, you've got to be watching the float. With this, you can look away, take a sip, do whatever."
He said the fish catcher is most effective for pan fish such as bream, crappie, bass and catfish.
Once they've nabbed their fresh fish, chefs who like to cut corners might be interested in Easy Sushi, a contraption that resembles a cigarette roller and allows any clumsy cook to whip up a masterful-looking maki in just minutes.
Couch potatoes who are disinclined to diet can turn to custom-made body-shaping underwear.
To parade her product, 47-year-old Taiwanese inventor and designer Pi-Yu Chuang donned one of the stylish body corsets, instantly reducing her waist from 29 to 23 inches (74 to 58 centimeters). The outfit, which costs around $800 (&euro590), encases the torso and legs, is also bust-enhancing and has a handy full bottom snap-on flap.
Mix indolence and the environment and you get the Standby Plug.
According to inventor Karl Dorn's brother Aaron, a television in standby mode still uses up to 85 percent of the power it does when switched on. Leaving a TV on standby 16 hours a day in Britain can cost users an extra £17 ($34) a year, he added. But he claimed the Standby Plug shuts down appliances completely after they go into standby mode, preventing the needless consumption of electricity.
The environment is a hot topic at this year's exhibit and not all entries are aimed at the lazy.
The portable MacStrap, a lightweight emergency power pack for handheld portable appliances such as cell phones, digital cameras, MP3 players and iPods, seems like a must for hikers and campers. Worn outdoors for 35-40 minutes, the MacStrap can power a three-minute cell phone call. About 20 hours are needed to fully charge a phone, says creator Roark McMaster.
A crematable funeral ornamentation called Memopack is another eco-friendly gem.
Made from paper but resembling a standard marble or wood plate, Memopack can be personalized with pictures, drawings, a lock of hair or letters before being placed on the coffin, and can be burned or fully biodegraded.
Inventions can only be entered only once at the Geneva show and must be patented. However, entries are not necessarily tested or screened by national authorities and cover a range from wonderful to wacky.
Some far-out ideas included scented socks; an automatic food distributor for animals that includes a medical check up; and the Q-Grip, a utensil designed to hold hot pieces of meat by the bone.
The PAP Ion Magnetic Inductor -- also known as the Papimi -- claims to increase the efficiency of the body on a cellular level through rapid electromagnetic pulses to help relieve pain. Austrian promoter Gernot Augustin also says he cured his mother of breast cancer with the apparatus.
A 75-member jury will select the best invention and award prizes in 45 other categories on Sunday. The "Oscar of Inventions" is also awarded on the basis of a popular vote from visitors.

Ancient Rainforest Revealed in Coal Mine

2007-04-23T13:13:00.000+08:00

Scientists exploring a mine have uncovered a natural Sistine chapel showing not religious paintings, but incredibly well preserved images of sprawling tree trunks and fallen leaves that once breathed life into an ancient rainforest. Replete with a diverse mix of extinct plants, the 300-million-year-old fossilized forest is revealing clues about the ecology of Earth’s first rainforests . The discovery and details of the forest are published in the May issue of the journal Geology. “We’re looking at one instance in time over a large area. It’s literally a snapshot in time of a multiple square mile area,” said study team member Scott Elrick of the Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS). Forest findOver millions of years as sediments and plant material pile up, layer upon layer, the resulting bands become time indicators with the newest, youngest layer on the top and the oldest layer at the bottom. Typically geologists peel away a vertical slice of rocky material to look at material, including fossils, over a period of time. A coal mine offers a unique view of the past. Instead of a time sequence, illuminated in the layer upon layer of sediments, the roof of an underground mine reveals a large area within one of those sediment layers, or time periods. Miners in Illinois are used to seeing a few plant fossils strewn along a mine’s ceiling, but as they burrowed farther into this one, the sheer density and area covered by such fossils struck them as phenomenal, Elrick said. That’s when they called paleobotanist Howard Falcon-Lang from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom and William DiMichele, a curator of fossil plants at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. "It was an amazing experience. We drove down the mine in an armored vehicle, until we were a hundred meters below the surface,” Falcon-Lang said. “The fossil forest was rooted on top of the coal seam, so where the coal had been mined away the fossilized forest was visible in the ceiling of the mine.”Forest snapshotHere’s what the miners and other scientists saw underground: Relatively narrow passageways wind through the “cave,” marked off with stout 100-foot-wide pillars to ensure the roof doesn’t collapse. “It’s like in some bizarre Roman temple with tons of Corinthian pillars that are 100 feet across and only six feet tall,” Elrick told LiveScience. “As you’re walking down these passageways you see these pillars of coal on either side of you and above you—imagine an artist’s canvas painted a flat grey and that is sort of what the grey shale above the coal looks like.”The largest ever found, the fossil forest covers an area of about 40 square miles, or nearly the size of San Francisco. This ancient assemblage of flora is thought to be one of the first rainforests on Earth, emerging during the Upper Carboniferous, or Pennsylvanian, time period that extended from about 310 million to 290 million years ago. A reconstruction of the ancient forest showed that like today’s rainforests, it had a layered structure with a mix of plants now extinct: Abundant club mosses stood more than 130-feet high, towering over a sub-canopy of tree ferns and an assortment of shrubs and tree-sized horsetails that looked like giant asparagus.Flash freezeThe scientists think a major earthquake about 300 million years ago caused the region to drop below sea level where it was buried in mud. They estimate that within a period of months the forest was buried, preserving it “forever.” “Some of these tree stumps have been covered geologically speaking in a flash,” Elrick said.Because the spatial layout of the forest has been maintained, the scientists can learn about entire plant communities, not just individual plants. "This spectacular discovery allows us to track how the species make-up of the forest changed across the landscape, and how that species make-up is affected by subtle differences in the local environment," Falcon-Lang said.

David Hyun
URL:http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070423/sc_livescience/ancientrainforestrevealedincoalmine;_ylt=AnqOC3Bvt6vHXd_tCJWhz8N7hMgF

Study: Violent Video Games Don't Make Kids Violent

2007-04-23T13:11:00.000+08:00

Lily Baik
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,266811,00.html
Wednesday, April 18, 2007

LONDON —
Players of violent video games believe they are just "exhilarating" escapism which does not desensitize them to real-life mayhem, according to a new survey of one of the entertainment industry's fastest growing sectors.
However, gamers do concede that people "who are already unhinged in some way" may be pushed over the edge if they play violent games obsessively.
Responding to public and political concern about video games, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) commissioned the survey, interviewing gamers, parents and industry figures about their effect.
• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Video Gaming Center.
The Board, which classifies up to 300 games a year, concluded that for gamers, "the violence helps make the play exhilaratingly out of reach of ordinary life."
But it added, "gamers seem not to lose awareness that they are playing a game and do not mistake the game for real life."
Video games tend to polarize opinions, with some games demonized for their graphic portrayals of violence.
But one survey participant insisted they were not all living in a fantasy world that tempted them to turn violent: "I no more feel that I have actually scored a goal than I do that I have actually killed someone. I know it's not real."
Another gamer said "Sometimes when I get really angry, I go upstairs and play some games and it calms me down."
But some young gamers under the age of 15 said they found some of the violence upsetting. Uncomfortable about the level of gore portrayed in the graphics, they admitted to having nightmares.
That prompted BBFC Director David Cooke to urge parents to be vigilant. He said it was vital to ensure children were protected from games with adult content.
The survey canvassed reaction to a wide range of popular games from "Manhunt" and "Grand Theft Auto" to "World of Warcraft."
One "Manhunt" fan admitted, "I was quite addicted to it. You really were sticking an axe in someone and taking a couple of chops to their neck until their head fell off."
As for the attractions of "Grand Theft Auto" games, the survey concluded, "The sex makes a contribution to the exhilarating sense of trashing the tedious constraints of everyday life."
But with fast developing technology, today's "cool" game soon becomes outdated.
"It's like when you have a puppy, everyone wanted to know you. When it grows a year older, they don't want to know," one gamer concluded.

Ruby Tuesday - Your own MIRACLE

2007-04-23T13:10:00.000+08:00

Your Own MIRACLE - Ruby Tuesday [DJMAX PORTABLE 2 Opening Theme]
Lyrics & Vocal by Christine Jones

Close your eyes.. Take some time just to center your soul and be at one..
With the sky.. You can fly if you unfurl your wings to face the sun..
In your mind, You will find all the power you need to get things done..
And your dreams.. They can seem like mere shadows of brighter days to come...

Shoot for the moon!!
If you miss you will still be among the stars..
Don't ever stop!!
If you never give up you are guaranteed to go far..

Be your very own miracle..
You can win a race standing still.. Go on! (Go on!)
Pick those beautiful feel up from off the floor rise and soar..
Be your very own miracle..
Just believe you can, and you will.. Have faith! (Have faith!)
Every goal that you make is a chain you break to set your spirit free!

Every page you have turned in this book of your life has led you here..
Every step that you take you grow closer to conquering your fear..

Dreams can come true!!
but they depend on you and how strong you are..
Don't ever stop!!
If you never give up you are guaranteed to go far..

Be your very own miracle..
You can win a race standing still.. Go on! (Go on!)
Pick those beautiful feel up from off the floor rise and soar..
Be your very own miracle..
Just believe you can, and you will.. Have faith! (Have faith!)
Every goal that you make is a chain you break to set your spirit free!

------------------------------------------------------------

Ruby Tuesday is a music artist who is very famous in Korea, Japan, and other country for making OST musics in Djmax.

New Robot Eyes People With Human-Like Eyes By Paul Lee

2007-04-23T13:09:00.000+08:00

A new breed of robots could soon break free of assembly-line duties to assist human living in myriad ways.
MIT researchers recently demonstrated the capabilities of such a robot, named Domo, which, like the robot in a recent General Motors ad, can transcend mass-production's repetition.
It is designed to interact with humans and adapt to its environment in ways previously only imagined in science fiction.
• Click here for FOXNews.com's Patents and Innovation Center.
Presently, Domo can identify objects, reach for them and place them on shelves. Unlike an assembly-line robot, Domo can sense its surroundings using a pair of video cameras for eyes; they are connected to 12 computers.
The cameras are built into remarkably human-looking "eyeballs" for a reason, said Domo's developer, Aaron Edsinger.
"I found that, by making them immediately understandable as eyes, it was very easy to read [Domo's] eye-gaze direction, which is important when working with it," Edsinger said. "They also greatly increase people's comfort level with the robot."

Study: Teens protecting their

2007-04-23T13:07:00.000+08:00

profileshttp://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/04/19/internet.youths.ap/index.htmlLily Baik
NEW YORK (AP) -- Teens generally don't think twice about including their first names and photos on their personal online profiles, but most refrain from using full names or making their profiles fully public, a new survey finds.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project reported Wednesday that two-thirds of teens with profiles on blogs or social-networking sites have restricted access to their profiles in some fashion, such as by requiring passwords or making them available only to friends on an approved list.
The study comes amid growing concerns about online predators and other dangers on popular online hangouts like News Corp.'s MySpace and Facebook, which encourage their youth-oriented visitors to expand their circles of friends through messaging tools and personal profile pages.
Social-networking sites have responded by offering users more controls over how much they make public and warning them about revealing too much.
According to Pew, fewer than a third of teens with profiles use their last names, and a similar number include their e-mail addresses. Only 2 percent list their cell phone numbers.
But 79 percent have included photos of themselves, with girls more likely to do so. Eighty-two percent use their first names, and half identify their schools.
"Teens are manifesting the tension between wanting to keep themselves safe online and wanting to share themselves with their friends and potentially make new ones," said Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist at Pew. "Teens, particularly girls and younger teens, have gotten the message about protecting themselves on social networks, but the fun of these networks is the ability to share yourself with others on them."
Dashiell Feiler, a 16-year-old high school junior, said he keeps his profiles open, but uses at most his first name and last initial. He said people who find him tend to be friends anyway, but he left off his full name as a precaution.
"I just thought I didn't want anybody to figure out where I live," he said.
According to Pew, 45 percent of online teens do not have profiles at all, a figure that contradicts widespread perceptions that the nation's youths are continually on MySpace. Lenhart said younger teens, in particular, tend to stay away, some because they fail to meet a site's minimum age requirements.
Most of the teens with profiles say they use the sites to stay in touch with existing friends. Only half of teens with social-networking profiles say they use the sites to make new friends.
A third of teens online say they have been contacted by strangers, not necessarily through social-networking sites. Of those, 21 percent say they responded to learn more about that person, and 23 percent say they felt scared or uncomfortable by the encounter.
The telephone study of 935 American youths, ages 12 to 17, and their parents was conducted October 23 to November 19 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

U.S. billionaire returns from space trip

2007-04-23T13:06:00.002+08:00

David Hyun

KOROLYOV, Russia - An American billionaire who won a junior cosmonaut contest as a child returned Saturday from a dream voyage to the international space station, riding a Russian capsule to a soft landing on the Kazakh steppe
Charles Simonyi, a 58-year-old native of Hungary who helped design Microsoft Word and Excel, smiled and chatted with rescuers who helped him gingerly out of the Soyuz capsule and appeared energized by his $25 million, two-week trip.
The capsule carrying the space tourist, a Russian cosmonaut and a U.S. astronaut touched down after a more than three-hour return trip from the orbital station.
Simonyi looked delighted after rescuers helped him from the rounded capsule, which lay askew on the bleak grassland, and into a chair covered with fur for warmth. He smiled, grinned broadly and spoke animatedly with members of a support crew who greeted him with hugs and handshakes.
He then bit enthusiastically into a green apple — a traditional offering for space crews touching down in Kazakhstan, which is famous for the tasty fruit.
Asked about his first impressions back on Earth, a smiling Simonyi said in Russian, "The sun is shining, the weather is good," in footage broadcast on state television. Simonyi had studied Russian in school in his native Hungary and took another language course in preparation for the flight.
Cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin looked pale and tired, but soon managed a smile in a video link with Mission Control. "The first thing I felt on Earth was the smell," he told the television network.
Spanish-born U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, the last out of the capsule, sighed with relief, smiled and talked to the support crew as doctors monitored the men's vital signs.
The astronaut set the U.S. record for continuous space flight by spending 215 days in orbit, and set another U.S. record — 10 space walks over his career.
The capsule raced down to Earth after separating from the two other sections of the Soyuz TMA-9 craft following its departure from the station, where one of the final tasks the travelers performed was to move containers with biological experiments from refrigerators on the station into the Soyuz.
Russian space agency chief Anatoly Perminov said all the cosmonauts "feel wonderful."
"But of course, Charles Simonyi feels the best, which is understandable," he said. "He is already giving interviews left and right."
Simonyi arrived at the station on April 9 — also courtesy of a Soyuz, which flew into space atop a Russian rocket from the Russian-leased launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan — along with two other cosmonauts, who will remain on the station for about six months.
Also staying in orbit was Sunita Williams, an American astronaut who arrived in December.
Simonyi amassed the fortune that made his costly voyage possible through his work with computer software, including helping to develop Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.
Another household name, his friend
Martha Stewart' watched his launch from Baikonur and was at Russian Mission Control outside Moscow when the Soyuz docked. She also spoke to him during a video linkup after he boarded the station.
Simonyi followed in the footsteps of Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Gregory Olsen and Anousheh Ansari — all "space flight participants" who have traveled to the international space station aboard Russian rockets in trips brokered by U.S.-based Space Adventures Ltd.
Alexei Krasnov, head of the manned missions at the Russian space agency, praised Simonyi's determination, recounting that he won a trip to Moscow to meet with a Soviet cosmonaut as a prize in a space contest at age 13.
"So many years have passed and the dream he had has been fulfilled," Krasnov said. "It costs dearly to realize your life's dream."

URL:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070421/ap_on_sc/russia_space;_ylt=Ap0lISDatAIx15ArnIMAFjWHgsgF

Free PlayStation 3 .net Announces Industry First Guide That Shows You How to Get PlayStation 3 for Free

2007-04-23T13:06:00.001+08:00

URL: http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070420/20070420005728.html?.v=1
Brian Lee

LOS GATOS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Free PlayStation 3 .net released the industry's first free guide today that shows you how to get your own PlayStation 3 for free. The free PlayStation 3 guide details what industry websites provide the PlayStation 3 for free and how anyone in the world can acquire one without spending a cent.

Most free PlayStation 3 websites require you to participate in two or more "sponsor offers" before you can receive your free PlayStation 3, resulting in you having to spend up to $200 before you can receive your PlayStation 3. However, Free PlayStation 3.net's new guide shows you how to get the PlayStation 3 for free, without having to participate in any of these sponsor offers.

Free PlayStation 3 .net has researched and reviewed over fifty free PlayStation 3 web sites and have discovered that a few of them ask you to participate in their sponsor offers, but if you simply ignore their requests and proceed to the end of their sponsor offer pages, you will still get your free PlayStation 3.

Most visitors to these free PlayStation 3, free Wii, free XBOX 360 and free PSP websites, that decide not to participate in the sponsor offers, never proceed past the sponsor offer pages to the final page where they are asked to confirm their email address one last time and told that their game console will be mailed to them shortly.

Little do they know that on a few such web sites, that Free PlayStation 3 .net identifies, that simply proceeding to the last page will still result in them receiving their PlayStation 3 for free.

"Thanks for showing me how to get a free PlayStation 3 and free Wii without having to spend a penny!" said recent website visitor, Ashley Parks of Chicago, Illinois.

About Free PlayStation 3 .net

Free PlayStation 3 .net has been helping people acquire the PlayStation 3 for free since May 2005. Learn more at www.FreePlayStation3.net.

Nintendo Wii Still On Top In Console Sales

2007-04-23T13:06:00.000+08:00

url: http://www.slipperybrick.com/2007/04/nintendo-wii-sales-march/
Hyeon Chung

According to a report Thursday by NPD, the Nintendo Wii led the sales of current generation game consoles by once again beating out the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3. Nintendo sold 259,000 of the Wii game consoles with their new fangled controller last month, followed up by the Xbox 360 with 199,000 units sold and the PS3 selling 130,000 units. The Nintendo Wii has led unit sales in January and February, as well.
This certainly doesn’t mean that Sony and Microsoft aren’t trying, however. Microsoft has been flaunting a new Xbox Elite with a larger 120GB internal hard drive to entice more customers by holding more media, and Sony has abandoned their 20GB PS3 in the US and may be coming out with larger capacity console as well with rumors of an 80GB PS3 in the near future.
You might have noticed that we had to specify that Nintendo led sales in the CURRENT generation of game consoles. That’s because a little game console from a previous generation called the Sony PS2 selling at around $130 continues to leave all the others in its wake. The Playstation 2 sold 280,000 units in March, making a total of over 38 million units sold since the console was original launched back in Q4 of 2000.According to a report Thursday by NPD, the Nintendo Wii led the sales of current generation game consoles by once again beating out the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3. Nintendo sold 259,000 of the Wii game consoles with their new fangled controller last month, followed up by the Xbox 360 with 199,000 units sold and the PS3 selling 130,000 units. The Nintendo Wii has led unit sales in January and February, as well.
This certainly doesn’t mean that Sony and Microsoft aren’t trying, however. Microsoft has been flaunting a new Xbox Elite with a larger 120GB internal hard drive to entice more customers by holding more media, and Sony has abandoned their 20GB PS3 in the US and may be coming out with larger capacity console as well with rumors of an 80GB PS3 in the near future.
You might have noticed that we had to specify that Nintendo led sales in the CURRENT generation of game consoles. That’s because a little game console from a previous generation called the Sony PS2 selling at around $130 continues to leave all the others in its wake. The Playstation 2 sold 280,000 units in March, making a total of over 38 million units sold since the console was original launched back in Q4 of 2000.According to a report Thursday by NPD, the Nintendo Wii led the sales of current generation game consoles by once again beating out the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3. Nintendo sold 259,000 of the Wii game consoles with their new fangled controller last month, followed up by the Xbox 360 with 199,000 units sold and the PS3 selling 130,000 units. The Nintendo Wii has led unit sales in January and February, as well.
This certainly doesn’t mean that Sony and Microsoft aren’t trying, however. Microsoft has been flaunting a new Xbox Elite with a larger 120GB internal hard drive to entice more customers by holding more media, and Sony has abandoned their 20GB PS3 in the US and may be coming out with larger capacity console as well with rumors of an 80GB PS3 in the near future.
You might have noticed that we had to specify that Nintendo led sales in the CURRENT generation of game consoles. That’s because a little game console from a previous generation called the Sony PS2 selling at around $130 continues to leave all the others in its wake. The Playstation 2 sold 280,000 units in March, making a total of over 38 million units sold since the console was original launched back in Q4 of 2000.According to a report Thursday by NPD, the Nintendo Wii led the sales of current generation game consoles by once again beating out the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3. Nintendo sold 259,000 of the Wii game consoles with their new fangled controller last month, followed up by the Xbox 360 with 199,000 units sold and the PS3 selling 130,000 units. The Nintendo Wii has led unit sales in January and February, as well.

This certainly doesn’t mean that Sony and Microsoft aren’t trying, however. Microsoft has been flaunting a new Xbox Elite with a larger 120GB internal hard drive to entice more customers by holding more media, and Sony has abandoned their 20GB PS3 in the US and may be coming out with larger capacity console as well with rumors of an 80GB PS3 in the near future.

You might have noticed that we had to specify that Nintendo led sales in the CURRENT generation of game consoles. That’s because a little game console from a previous generation called the Sony PS2 selling at around $130 continues to leave all the others in its wake. The Playstation 2 sold 280,000 units in March, making a total of over 38 million units sold since the console was original launched back in Q4 of 2000.

Bill Gates says China to remain largest broadband market

2007-04-23T13:04:00.000+08:00

url: http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=172269

Hyeon Chung

China is set to remain the world's largest broadband market after recently overtaking the US, Bill Gates, chairman and co-founder of Microsoft Corp, told a forum in Beijing.

"China has surpassed the US in the number of broadband users. And once this is the largest market, it will stay the largest market. There's an advantage to having 1.3 billion people," Gates said.
He noted that price constraints for fast, reliable Internet access were falling by the wayside.

"The price of broadband has been a limiting factor, but competition is bringing the price down," he said.

According to the state-controlled China Internet Network Information Center, China had 104 million broadband users at the end of last year.

China, currently a global leader in hardware, would soon become a leader in software, he added.
"Innovation here is really growing at a rapid pace. I give a lot of credit here to the universities. China will be a leader ... it's already true for hardware, but it will also be true for software," Gates said.

He added that Microsoft had China's affection for mobile communications in mind when it recently signed a joint research deal with China's leading computer maker Lenovo.

ISC International Schools In China

2007-04-03T13:46:00.001+08:00

Qingdao MTI International School Qingdao China (USA Domain)

Qingdao MTI International School Qingdao China (China Domain)

International School in Chengdu China

International School in Shenyang China

International School in Wuhan China

International School in Tinajin China

ISC International Schools in China

2007-04-03T13:46:00.000+08:00

Qingdao MTI International School Qingdao China (USA Domain)

Qingdao MTI International School Qingdao China (China Domain)

International School in Chengdu China

International School in Shenyang China

International School in Wuhan China

International School in Tinajin China

QMIS Qingdao MTI International School China ISC

2007-04-03T13:43:00.001+08:00

Qingdao MTI International School Qingdao China

Apple TV connects your computer to your TV

2007-03-22T13:06:00.000+08:00

url : http://news3.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-03/22/content_5881199.htm

Hyeon Chung

Apple TV is a box that can connect computers and TVs without wires. After many delays, Apple TV finally went on sale Wednesday for 300 U.S. dollars.
Apple does have competition in Microsoft's Xbox 360 (400 dollars), which also acts as a bridge between PC and TV, and Netgear's week-old EVA8000 (350 dollars). Xbox 360 also has its own online movie store, and Netgear features an Internet connection for viewing YouTube videos and listening to Internet radio.
A good feature of Apple TV is it's small and quiet compared to the Xbox, but a drawback is it requires a widescreen TV -- preferably an HDTV. It doesn't work with the traditional TVs many people still have.
Apple defends its audience-limiting decision by saying the future is HDTV; Apple is just "skating to where the puck is going to be," as a product manager put it.
Apple TV doesn't come with any cables. You're supposed to supply the one your TV requires (HDMI, component video or HDMI-to-DVI adapter).
Basically, Apple TV is an iPod for your TV. It copies the iTunes library (music, podcasts, TV shows, movies) from one Mac or Windows PC on your wired or wireless home network to its 40-gigabyte hard drive and keeps the copy updated.
The drive holds about 50 hours of video or 9,000 songs; if your iTunes library is bigger than that, you can specify what subset you want copied -- only unwatched TV episodes, for example.
You can play back videos, music and photos even if the original computer is turned off or (if it's a laptop) carried away. (Photo playback requires iPhoto on the Mac, or Photoshop Album or Photoshop Elements on Windows.)
A tiny white remote control operates Apple TV's stunning high-definition white-on-black menus, which are enlivened by high-resolution album covers and photos. You can see the effect at apple.com/appletv.
The integration of iPod, iTunes and Apple TV offers frequent payoffs. For example, if you paused your iPod partway through a movie, TV show or song, Apple TV remembers your place when you resume playing it on your TV.
Although only one computer's files are actually copied to Apple TV, you can still play back the iTunes libraries of five other computers by streaming -- playing them through Apple TV without copying them. Starting playback, rewinding and fast-forwarding isn't as smooth this way, and photo playback isn't available. But it's a handy option when, say, you want to watch a movie on your TV from a visitor’s laptop.
All of this works elegantly and effortlessly. But there are lots of unanswered questions that make onlookers wonder if Apple has bigger plans for the humble Apple TV.
For example, it has an Internet connection and a hard drive; so why can't it record TV shows like a TiVo?
Furthermore, it's a little weird that menus and photos appear in spectacular high-definition, but not TV shows and movies. All iTunes videos are in standard definition, and don't look so hot on an HDTV.
And then there's the mysterious unused U.S.B. port.
Still, if you stay within the Apple ecosystem -- use its online store, its jukebox software and so on -- you get a seamless, trouble-free experience, with a greater selection of TV shows and movies than you can find from any other online store.

The dinosaurs that burrowed to safety

2007-03-22T13:02:00.001+08:00

David Hyun
URL:http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21420880-30417,00.html

A NEW kind of dinosaur that burrowed into the ground to build a protective den has been discovered in the US.
The fossil remains of an adult and two young have provided the first evidence of burrowing behaviour among dinosaurs. The discovery in Montana raises the prospect that some dinosaurs may have initially survived the catastrophic event - widely thought to have been an asteroid impact - that led to the group’s extinction 65 million years ago. Small mammals are thought to have sheltered from the “nuclear winter” that would have come after an asteroid impact by burrowing underground. The burrowing dinosaurs have been dated to 95 million years ago, in the Cretaceous period, not long before the catastrophe in evolutionary terms. Though no examples have been found that date from nearer the time of the impact, it is conceivable that some may have survived it in their dens. “Burrowing behaviour allows vertebrates to escape harsh environmental conditions,” David Varricchio, of Montana State University, who led the research, said.
“Small dinosaurs could potentially have withstood severe conditions, such as drought or daily or seasonal temperature extremes. Such behaviour would have allowed dinosaurs to occupy high mountains, desert environments and polar regions. “Survival of terrestrial vertebrates at the end-Cretaceous event has been attributed to sheltering behaviour, with the extinction of nonavian dinosaurs resulting from their inability to find an appropriate cover. Burrowing dinosaurs would challenge this argument, but these are yet to be found in the latest Cretaceous formations.” The new species, which is described in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, has been named Oryctodromeus cubicularis, which means “digging runner of the lair”. The adult found by Dr Varricchio’s team measured 2.1m and weighed 22-32kg. It and the two juveniles were at the end of a sloping tunnel more than 2m long and 70cm wide, which would have ended in a larger chamber. Several pieces of evidence indicate that the structure was a burrow built by the creatures. Its dimensions are a good fit for Oryctodromeus’s body, and the close proximity of an adult and young hints at parental care. The tunnel is similar to those made by modern burrowing animals, and there are no bite marks on the remains, making it unlikely that they were carried into the den by predators. Oryctodromeus also shows several anatomical adaptations for digging. “For a digging animal to apply a force to the ground effectively, it must counteract the equal opposing force generated,” Dr Varricchio said. “For example, mammals that dig with their forelimbs brace themselves with their hindlimbs and tail. Oryctodromeus exhibits skeletal features that among extant vertebrates are associated with such behaviour.”

Google quashes mobile phone talk

2007-03-22T13:02:00.000+08:00

url: http://www.smh.com.au/news/mobiles--handhelds/google-quashes-mobile-phone-talk/2007/03/21/1174153139660.html

Hyeon Chung

Google has poured cold water on claims it is developing a mobile phone.
The search giant said it was more logical to form partnerships with existing handset makers instead.
Google's South-East Asia managing director of sales and operations, Richard Kimber, yesterday echoed statements made by Google's chief internet evangelist, Vinton Cerf, that building hardware would be a dramatic shift in the company's business model.
"At this point in time, we are very focused on the software, not the phone," The Australian Financial Review today quoted Kimber as saying during his speech at the Search Engine Room conference in Sydney.
Kimber said Google was keen on porting its search and other technologies to mobile devices, but it was not interested in entering the crowded handset market, as Apple has recently done with its iPhone.
This is highlighted by recent deals Google has made with manufacturers such as Samsung, resulting in its search software coming preloaded on certain handsets.
Extending Google's search technology to mobile phones would allow it to serve advertising to a far wider audience - particularly those in developing countries who do not have access to a computer.
Kimber said mobile ads posed unique challenges but described them as being "extremely effective".
In a telephone interview earlier this month, Dr Cerf, who is credited with being one of the founders of the internet, said "becoming an equipment manufacturer is pretty far from our business model".
"On the other hand, we're very interested in the platforms that other people are building. We are quite eager to be part of the mobile revolution."
A Google Australia spokesman said the company was focused on developing partnerships with existing industry players but did not confirm or deny that Google was developing a handset.
"Mobile is an important area for Google and we remain focused on creating applications and establishing and growing partnerships with industry leaders to develop innovative services for users worldwide," he said.
Google's latest comments are at odds with the slew of recent reports that suggested it was shopping a phone design to potential mobile phone manufacturing partners in Asia.
In a note to clients, sighted by Reuters, London-based phone analyst Richard Windsor wrote: "Google has come out of the closet at the CeBIT trade fair admitting that it is working on a mobile phone of its own.
"This is not going to be a high-end device but a mass-market device aimed at bringing Google to users who don't have a PC."
A US venture capitalist, Simeon Simeonov, wrote in a blog post earlier this month that there was "a team of about 100 people at Google working on the Google Phone".
Simeonov said his "inside source close to the company" described the device as being a "BlackBerry-like, slick device". He added a number of recent mobile-related acquisitions made by Google backed up the rumours.
Samsung was widely rumoured to be Google's manufacturing partner; a photo published on the Engadget blog, which purported to be a prototype, showed a sparse touchscreen design similar to the iPhone.
But all of these rumours now appear to be quashed, bringing back memories from a year ago when Google was said to be building its own line of computers. Those reports were soon proved false, and the product Google was working on turned out to be a free software pack.

Problem Solved: Century-Old Math Mystery Deciphered

2007-03-22T13:01:00.000+08:00

David Hyun
URL:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=abM.SNM8uq3c&refer=us
March 21 (Bloomberg) -- Researchers using supercomputers unraveled a 120-year-old mathematics mystery, a solution they said promises advances in their field much like the mapping of the humane genome is aiding developments in medicine.
The solution of the math structure E8, unveiled this week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, would cover an area the size of Manhattan if written on paper. E8, discovered in 1887, is a mathematical problem related to equations used to explain symmetry.
``It's a big step,'' said Jeffrey Adams, 50, a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland in College Park who led the project by 18 mathematicians and computer scientists from the U.S. and Europe. ``You never know where it's going to lead.''
The project will help math researchers find solutions to problems related to symmetry, string theory and geometry, Adams said. Understanding how E8 works also might help physicists develop a unified theory that takes in gravity and other fundamental forces, said Hermann Nicolai, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany, in a report on the discovery.
The E8 solution might be the math field's equivalent to the basic knowledge produced by human-genome mapping in the 1990s and early 2000s, Adams said. That work spurred a wave of methods for analyzing genetic causes of disease and led to the discovery of genes that may predict a person's risk of disease or other biological clues that may help doctors in treatment decisions.
``I like to say that the human genome itself doesn't give you drugs and cures for cancer,'' Adams said.
Other Researchers
Besides researchers from MIT and Maryland, the project drew collaborators from France and from U.S. universities including Cornell, Harvard, Stanford, Michigan and Utah.
E8, discovered in 1887, is a mathematical problem from the Lie groups, which were developed by Norwegian Sophus Lie during his study of symmetry. Mathematicians explore symmetries in theoretical dimensions greater than the familiar three- dimensional objects such as balls and cylinders. E8 has 248 dimensions. The E8 calculation is part of a larger project on all the Lie groups.
It took researchers two years of ``pencil and paper'' work and one more for software writing before the solution could be tackled by computer, Adams said in a telephone interview. The single calculation required computer power and memory that wasn't available until recently, said the National Science Foundation, which provided funding along with the American Institute of Mathematics.
Underlying Math
``The literature on this subject is very dense and very difficult to understand,'' said team member David Vogan from MIT in the report on the project. ``Even after we understood the underlying mathematics, it still took more than two years to implement it on a computer.''
Researchers broke the puzzle into smaller parts, producing partial answers that were later assembled to find the eventual solution. The final calculation took about 77 hours on the Sage supercomputer, built by San Diego-based Western Scientific.
The calculation created a file 60 gigabytes in size, enough to store music that could play for 45 days in the MP3 format. Data on the human genome, which contains all of the genetic information of a cell, can be stored on less than a gigabyte.

PlayStation 3 launches at record price

2007-03-22T13:00:00.000+08:00

url: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21426496-2,00.html
Hyeon Chung
Launch parties for Sony’s priciest-ever game console will begin across the country tonight but there is anger over the difference between the Australian and US versions.
PS3 systems available in Europe and Australia will not have the same capabilities of the US and Japanese models, despite costing around $300 more.
The 60GB PS3 was launched in the US last November with a price tag of $US599 ($770) and costs ¥60,000 ($640) in Japan. The model on sale in Australia will cost $999.95.
And if the price tag wasn’t enough to make gamers throw their controllers out of their prams, cost-cutting measures mean the Australian versions have limited “backwards compatibility” – meaning it will not be able to play all PS1 and PS2 games.
"About 50 to 60 per cent of (earlier) games are playable in some form, but some of the big-name games like Gran Turismo 4 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas don't play properly," said Peter Bayliss, a PhD student in Video Game Theory at RMIT.
"While it's generally good news, some of the games people actually want to hold on to might not work."
Australian PS3 owners will also need to install upgrades available through PlayStation online to play PS1 and PS2 games.
Sony Computer Entertainment Australia managing director Michael Ephraim said more titles would become compatible with the PS3 over time.
The PS3 was originally scheduled to launch in Europe and Australia in November last year and was expected to support all games released for earlier models.
Billed as a "home entertainment system", the PS3 includes a 60GB hard drive, Blu-ray Disc player, high-definition TV output and an internet browser.
Pioneered by Sony, Blu-ray discs can store up to 10 times more information than a DVD. Its main competitor is the HD DVD (high-definition DVD), backed by Microsoft, Intel and Toshiba.
There are currently fewer than 100 titles available on Blu-ray in Australia and Sony will be relying in part on the PS3 to boost demand for the format.
"Sony did a lot for popularising DVD with the PS2," which included a DVD player, said Mr Bayliss.
"Some people have said they'll buy a PS3 because it's a lot cheaper than buying a stand-alone Blu-ray player at the moment."
Blu-ray players currently sell for between $1500 and $2500.
The high price of the PS3 in Australia was not unexpected, said Mr Bayliss.
"It always has been (more costly) in Australia. Part of it is increased shipping costs, but... there's simply less consumers in Australia so all the fixed costs of distribution get shared over less people," he said.
US models of the PS3 are made with part of the PS2 chipset inside, allowing it to run older games. That hardware has been replaced in European and Australian models with a software emulator, at a rumoured saving of between $20 and $30 per system.
A list of PS1 and PS2 titles compatible with the Australian PS3 has been posted online. The games are classified as "should play with noticeable issues", "minor issues" and "no known issues".
Mr Ephraim said the list included almost 75 per cent of the PS2 game catalogue.

Minsung's Results

2007-03-20T14:58:00.000+08:00

semiconductor
Source: answers.com/semiconductor
Def: Any of various solid crystalline substances, such as germanium or silicon, having electrical conductivity greater than insulators but less than good conductors, and used especially as a base material for computer chips and other electronic devices.
Inventor: TI
Date of Invention:

microprocessor
Source: answers.com/microprocessor
Def: An integrated circuit that contains the entire central processing unit of a computer on a single chip.
Inventor: Intel and TI
Date of Invention: Late 190s Early 1970s

circuit board
Source: answers.com/circuit board
Def: An insulated board on which interconnected circuits and components such as microchips are mounted or etched.
Inventor: Paul Eisler
Date of Invention: 1936

radio
Source: answers.com/radio
Def:The wireless transmission through space of electromagnetic waves in the approximate frequency range from 10 kilohertz to 300,000 megahertz.
Inventor: Heinrich Hertz and Guglielmo Marconi
Date of Invention: 1901

bluetooth
Source: answers.com/bluetooth
Def: Bluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks (PANs). Bluetooth provides a way to connect and exchange information between devices such as mobile phones, laptops, PCs, printers, digital cameras and video game consoles via a secure, globally unlicensed short-range radio frequency.
Inventor: Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia, Toshiba / Bluetooth Special Interest Group
Date of Invention: 1998

television
Source: answers.com/television
Def: a) The transmission of dynamic or sometimes static images, generally with accompanying sound, via electric or electromagnetic signals. b) An electronic apparatus that receives such signals, reproducing the images on a screen, and typically reproducing accompanying sound signals on speakers. c) The visual and audio content of such signals.
Inventor: No specific inventor.
Date of Invention: First version 1884, but was made from past experiments by others.

mechanical computer
Source: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_invented_the_first_mechanical_computerDef:
Inventor: Vannevar Buh
Date of Invention: 1928

electrical computer
Source: http://www.city-net.com/~ched/help/general/tech_history.html
Def: Inventor: Howard Aiken, IBM
Date of Invention: 1943

digital computer
Source: answers.com/digital computer http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi152.htm
Def: A computer that performs calculations and logical operations with quantities represented as digits, usually in the binary number system.
Inventor: John Atanasoff
Date of Invention: 1937

CD-ROM
Source: answers.com/cd-rom web.mit.edu/invent/iow/russell.html
Def: A compact disk that functions as read-only memory.
Inventor: James T. Russell
Date of Invention: 1965

DVD
Source: answers.com/dvd http://inventors.about.com/library/bl/bl12a.htm
Def: A high-density compact disk for storing large amounts of data, especially high-resolution audio-visual material.
Inventor: Matshusita
Date of Invention: 1996

2007-03-20T14:57:00.002+08:00

http://www.google.com/search

Definition

inventor

date of invention

semiconductorwww.inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blmicrochip.htmAn element, such as silicon, that is intermediate in electrical conductivity between conductors and insulators, through which conduction takes place by means of holes and electrons.Robert Noyce

microprocessorwww.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/microprocessor.htm - 24kA master control circuit.Ted Hoff1968

circuit boardhttp://www.answers.com/circuit%20boardBoards used in electronic devices that are made from an insulating material and contain electronic components that are interconnected to form a circuit or group of circuits that perform a specific function.Charles Ducas 1850s

radiohttp://inventors.about.com/od/rstartinventions/a/radio.htmAn instrument that uses radio waves to communicate with other vesselsNikola Tesla1943

bluetoothhttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/06/ericsson_drops_bluetooth_dev/A wireless connection that enables devices to exchange information.Ericsson

televisionhttp://www.videouniversity.com/farnhal.htmTelevision is a telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures and sound over a distancePhil, Cliff1927

mechanical computerhttp://www.answers.com/mechanical%20computer http://www.diycalculator.com/popup-h-mechcomp.shtmlA machine such as a Charles Babbage's analytical engine.Joseph-Marie Jacquard early 1800s

electrical computer

digital computerhttp://www.reference.com/search?q=digital%20computerA programmable machine which operates using binary digital data.
CD romwww.web.mit.edu/invent/iow/russell.html Compact Disk Read-Only MemoryRussell1970s

DVDwww.web.mit.edu/invent/iow/thomasf.html

Digital Versatile Disc Warren Lieberfarb 1996

Diana Jung

2007-03-20T14:57:00.001+08:00

Diana Jung
definitioninventordate of invention
semiconductordefinition: a substance, as silicon or germanium, with electrical conductivity intermediate between that of an insulator and a conductor: a basic component of various kinds of electronic circuit element (semiconductor device) used in communications, control, and detection technology and in computers. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/semiconductor)inventor: Robert Noycedate: 1970 (http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/hoff.htmhttp://www.answers.com/microprocessor)
microprocessordefinition: integrated circuit semiconductor chip that performs the bulk of the processing and controls the parts of a system; "a microprocessor functions as the central processing unit of a microcomputer"; "a disk drive contains a microprocessor to handle the internal functions of the drive" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/microprocessor)inventor: Ted Hoff (http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/microprocessor.htm)date: 1968 (http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/microprocessor.htm)
circuitboarddefinition: a sheet of insulating material used for the mounting and interconnection (often by a printed circuit) of components in electronic equipment (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/circuit%20board)inventor: Austrian engineer Paul Eisler(http://www.answers.com/circuitboard)date: 1936 (http://www.answers.com/circuitboard)
radio definition: The wireless transmission through space of electromagnetic waves in the approximate frequency range from 10 kilohertz to 300,000 megahertz (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/radio)inventor:Nicola Tesla, Guglielmo Marconi, Reginald Fessenden, Nathan Stubblefield (http://www.answers.com/who%20invented%20radio%3F)*date: 1892 (http://www.answers.com/Who%20invented%20radio%20and%20when%3F)
bluetoothdefinition: an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks (PANs). Bluetooth provides a way to connect and exchange information between devices such as mobile phones, laptops, PCs, printers, digital cameras and video game consoles via a secure, globally unlicensed short-range radio frequency. The Bluetooth specifications are developed and licensed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group.(http://www.answers.com/bluetooth)inventor: Ericsson (http://www.answers.com/Who%20invented%20bluetooth%3F)date: 1998 (http://www.answers.com/Who%20invented%20bluetooth%3F)
televisiondefinition: The transmission of dynamic or sometimes static images, generally with accompanying sound, via electric or electromagnetic signals.(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/television)inventor: The Americans will tell you it was Philo Taylor Farnsworth. The Russians and RCA will tell you it was Vladimir Zworykin. Like all complex devices, the television has many contributing inventors./ Scottish inventor, John Logie Baird, the father of this pervasive technology, first publicly demonstrated television date: 26 January 1926
mechanicalcomputerdefinition: The transmission of dynamic or sometimes static images, generally with accompanying sound, via electric or electromagnetic signals.inventor: Willoughby Smith, Paul Nipkow,John Logie Baird , Charles Francis Jenkinsdate: 1873-1926(http://www.answers.com/television)
electricalcomputerdefinition: Related to or associated with electricity, but not containing it or having its properties or characteristics; often used interchangeably with electric.inventor: John Vincent Atanasoffdate: 1974(http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/hpcwireWWW/03/1031/106295.html)
digitalcomputerdefinition: A computer that performs calculations and logical operations with quantities represented as digits, usually in the binary number system.inventor: John Vincent Atanasoffdate: 1974

BrainMan

2007-03-20T14:56:00.000+08:00

Savant Syndrome - Daniel Tammet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bVVQ0FZeys

The internet search

2007-03-20T14:20:00.000+08:00

A semiconductor is a solid whose electrical conductivity can be controlled over a wide range, either permanently or dynamically.
Stanford Ovshinsky
1904 - 1949
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/may97/862851265.Eg.r.html http://www.answers.com/semiconductor
An integrated circuit that contains the entire central processing unit of a computer on a single chip.
Marcian Edward "Ted" Hoff, Jr.
1970s
http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/hoff.htm http://www.answers.com/microprocessor
An insulated board on which interconnected circuits and components such as microchips are mounted or etched.
Paul Eisler
1936
http://www.answers.com/circuit%20board

The wireless transmission through space of electromagnetic waves in the approximate frequency range from 10 kilohertz to 300,000 megahertz.
Alexander Stepanovich Popov,Nikola Tesla,Guglielmo Marconi ,Reginald Fessenden ,Lee de Forest ,Edwin H. Armstrong, Roberto Landell de Moura,
1893-1895
http://www.answers.com/radio
A wireless personal area network (WPAN) technology from the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (http://www.bluetooth.com/)
Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba.
1998
http://www.answers.com/bluetooth
The transmission of dynamic or sometimes static images, generally with accompanying sound, via electric or electromagnetic signals.
Willoughby Smith, Paul Nipkow,John Logie Baird , Charles Francis Jenkins
1873-1926
http://www.answers.com/television
A machine such as a Charles Babbage's analytical engine.
Konrad Zuse
1938
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa050298.htm
Related to or associated with electricity, but not containing it or having its properties or characteristics; often used interchangeably with electric.
John Vincent Atanasoff
1974
http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/hpcwireWWW/03/1031/106295.html
A computer that performs calculations and logical operations with quantities represented as digits, usually in the binary number system.
John Vincent Atanasoff
1974
http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/hpcwireWWW/03/1031/106295.html
A compact disk that functions as read-only memory
James T. Russell
1960s
http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/russell.html
A high-density compact disk for storing large amounts of data, especially high-resolution audio-visual material.
Fred Thomas
1983
http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/thomasf.html

Jacky

Test

2007-03-20T14:14:00.000+08:00

Semiconductor
Definition: A material that is neither a good conductor of electricity (like copper) nor a good insulator (like rubber). The most common semiconductor materials are silicon and germanium. These materials are then doped to create an excess or lack of electrons. Computer chips, both for CPU and memory, are composed of semiconductor materials. Semiconductors make it possible to miniaturize electronic components, such as transistors. ...
Inventor: Gordon E. Moore csc.lsu.edu/~chen/HGAwardList.htm
Date of Invention: 1991 www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/m/Moore:Gordon_E=.html
Microprocessor The silicon chip with thousands of electronic components that serves as the central processing unit (CPU) in microcomputers. Ted Hoff www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/microprocessor.htm 1968 www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/microprocessor.htm Circuit Board A thin board, usually fiberglass, on which components are mounted. Also called a printed circuit board (or PCB) because the connections between the components are printed onto the board. Paul Eisler www.ecp13.gr/ 1943 http://www.answers.com/Circuit%20BoardRadio Region of the electromagnetic spectrum corresponding to radiation of the longest wavelengths. Guglielmo Marconi http://inventors.about.com/od/rstartinventions/a/radio.htm 1895 http://inventors.about.com/od/rstartinventions/a/radio.htmBluetuse Bluetooth is a computing and telecommunications industry specification that describes how mobile phones, computers and PDAs can easily interconnect with each other and with home and business phones and computers using a short wireless connection. Ericsson http://www.answers.com/bluetooth 1998 http://www.answers.com/bluetoothTelevision System that converts both audio and visual information into corresponding electrical signals which are then transmitted through wires or by radio waves to a receiver which reproduces the original information. Paul Gottlieb Nipkow http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltelevision.htm#Mechanical%20Television 1884 http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltelevision.htm#Mechanical%20TelevisionMechanical Computer Charles Babbage http://www.diycalculator.com/popup-h-mechcomp.shtml 1834 school.discovery.com/lessonplans/programs/inventioncomputertechnology/ Electrical Computer a machine for performing calculations automatically http://www.thefreedictionary.com/electronic+computer John Atanasoff http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa050898.htm 1941 http://www.k9ape.com/publicservice/Who%20Invented%20The%20Computer.htmlDigital Computer A machine that expresses data using a system of pre-set values. Digital computer representations can be broken down to simple binary expressions. All modern computers are digital as opposed to analog computers which would express values as individual points on a continuum. A slide-rule would be an analog computer. George Stibitz inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blstibitz.htm 1939 inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blstibitz.htmCD Rom CD ROM stands for Compact Disk Read-Only Memory. CD ROMs store and read massive amounts of information on a removable disk platter or solid state storage chip. Unlike the data on hard drives and diskettes, data on CD ROMs can only be read--not altered--by the user. Also called "firmware." 1984 http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa010500a.htmDVD "Digital Versatile Disk." (Formerly Digital Video Disk.) Same size as a CD but stores seven times CD capacity on a single side. DVDs can also be double-sided or dual layer. Today most DVDs are used to display full-length commercial motion pictures, plus additional material such as outtakes, director's notes, movie trailers, etc.
* Definition is all from Google

Semiconductor

2007-03-20T13:17:00.001+08:00

(Lily Baik)

http://www.answers.com/semiconductor

A solid crystalline material whose electrical conductivity is intermediate between that of a metal and an insulator. Semiconductors exhibit conduction properties that may be temperature-dependent, permitting their use as thermistors (temperature-dependent resistors), or voltage-dependent, as in varistors. By making suitable contacts to a semiconductor or by making the material suitably inhomogeneous, electrical rectification and amplification can be obtained. Semiconductor devices, rectifiers, and transistors have replaced vacuum tubes almost completely in low-power electronics, making it possible to save volume and power consumption by orders of magnitude. In the form of integrated circuits, they are vital for complicated systems. The optical properties of a semiconductor are important for the understanding and the application of the material. Photodiodes, photoconductive detectors of radiation, injection lasers, light-emitting diodes, solar-energy conversion cells, and so forth are examples of the wide variety of optoelectronic devices.

Semi- Conductor

2007-03-20T13:15:00.000+08:00

Hyeon Chung

Definition: http://www.answers.com/topic/semiconductor
Any of various solid crystalline substances, such as germanium or silicon, having electrical conductivity greater than insulators but less than good conductors, and used especially as a base material for computer chips and other electronic devices.

Inventor: http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/ovshinsky.html
In the 1950s, Stanford Ovshinsky created an entirely new realm of materials science, which in turn has given new life to the engineering of semiconductors, solar energy, and electric cars.
Stan Ovshinsky was born in Akron, Ohio in 1922. After graduating from high school, he went straight to work. In 1955, he began working the field of amorphous materials, that is, materials that lack a definite crystalline structure. Ovshinsky was the first engineer to devise a method, called "phase change," for crystalizing these disordered materials, with resulting novel uses: for example, films that gain metallic properties without losing their original optical capabilities. One result was amorphous semiconductors --- which the engineering community had previously considered an utter impossibility.
In 1960, Ovshinsky founded Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. (ECD), in order to continue and expand his work in amorphous semiconductors. Meanwhile, engineers nationwide had eagerly entered an entirely new field: "ovonics" (from Ovshinsky Electronics).
Ovshinsky earned numerous patents in the 1970s and '80s for amorphous semiconductor materials. These materials became essential to optoelectronic copying and fax machines, as well as large, flat-panel liquid crystal displays like those of computer monitors. As early as 1970, Ovshinsky had used his ovonic phase change principle to invent a reversible optical memory disk: that is, a prototype rewritable CD-ROM. Today, thirteen high tech companies around the world are developing rewritable CDs using Ovshinsky's technology.
Ovshinsky went on to use his thin-film amorphous silicon to invent a manufacturing method that might do for solar energy what the assembly line did for automobiles. In 1983, he patented a system that allowed photovoltaic solar panels to be manufactured in continuous rolls 1000 feet in length. Ovshinsky's "Continuous Amorphous Solar Cell Production System" operates much like a newspaper rollpress, speedily imprinting a plasma of amorphous silicon semiconductors in a continuous web onto a thin, anodized metal sheet.
The high energy-conversion efficiency of the thin-film cells and the high throughput of the process make Ovshinsky's photovoltaic cells a revolutionary leap forward for solar energy. They have been installed at various sites around and above the globe, from Mexican mountain villages to the Mir space station. Ovshinsky's "Uni-Solar" roofing tiles, for residential buildings, have won Popular Science's "Best of What's New" Grand Award (1996) and Discover Magazine's Discover Award in the Environment category (1997).
More recently, Ovshinsky has taken a strong step closer to a feasible electric car. After years of development, he earned a patent in 1994 for a high energy-storage, environment-friendly, maintenance-free, rechargeable battery. Although he is far from alone in the search for the perfect electric car battery, Ovshinsky's nickel metal-hydride (NiMH) model, when compared with its nickel-cadmium and lead-acid competitors, is twice as powerful, with none of their fatigue and discharge problems. In fact, Ovshinsky's battery shattered the Department of Energy's performance targets. Recently, ECD formed a joint venture with GM, whose EV1 features Ovshinsky's NiMH battery, to mass produce the battery for electric cars worldwide. A more modest version of the NiMH battery has been licensed by many of the world's major battery companies for retail consumption.
In total, Stan Ovshinsky has earned about 200 US patents, at a pace which has not flagged since the early 1970s: eight granted in 1999, and three more by February 1 of this year. He has also won many local, national and international awards for his work, which extends far beyond the products described above; and he will doubtless win further fame, as the once impossible products he has invented come into broader use.

Def. of Microchip

2007-03-20T13:09:00.000+08:00

Lily Baik
http://www.answers.com/microchip

Microchips, also termed "integrated circuits" or "chips," are small, thin rectangles of a crystalline semiconductor, usually silicon, that have been inlaid and overlaid with microscopically patterned substances so as to produce transistors and other electronic components on its surface. It is the components on the chip, not the chip itself, that are micro or too small see with the naked eye. The microchip has made it possible to miniaturize digital computers, communications circuits, controllers, and many other devices. Since 1971, whole computer CPUs (central processing units) have been placed on some microchips; these devices are termed microprocessors.

Invention & definition of Microchip

2007-03-20T13:08:00.000+08:00

Hyeon Chung

Definition: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci212564,00.html
A microchip (sometimes just called a "chip") is a unit of packaged computer circuitry (usually called an integrated circuit) that is manufactured from a material such as silicon at a very small scale. Microchips are made for program logic (logic or microprocessor chips) and for computer memory (memory or RAM chips). Microchips are also made that include both logic and memory and for special purposes such as analog-to-digital conversion, bit slicing, and gateways

Inventor: http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa080498.htm
"What we didn't realize then was that the integrated circuit would reduce the cost of electronic functions by a factor of a million to one, nothing had ever done that for anything before" - Jack Kilby
It seems that the integrated circuit was destined to be invented. Two separate inventors, unaware of each other's activities, invented almost identical integrated circuits or ICs at nearly the same time.
Jack Kilby, an engineer with a background in ceramic-based silk screen circuit boards and transistor-based hearing aids, started working for Texas Instruments in 1958. A year earlier, research engineer Robert Noyce had co-founded the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation. From 1958 to 1959, both electrical engineers were working on an answer to the same dilemma: how to make more of less.
In designing a complex electronic machine like a computer it was always necessary to increase the number of components involved in order to make technical advances. The monolithic (formed from a single crystal) integrated circuit placed the previously separated transistors, resistors, capacitors and all the connecting wiring onto a single crystal (or 'chip') made of semiconductor material. Kilby used germanium and Noyce used silicon for the semiconductor material.
In 1959 both parties applied for patents. Jack Kilby and Texas Instruments received U.S. patent #3,138,743 for miniaturized electronic circuits. Robert Noyce and the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation received U.S. patent #2,981,877 for a silicon based integrated circuit. The two companies wisely decided to cross license their technologies after several years of legal battles, creating a global market now worth about $1 trillion a year.
In 1961 the first commercially available integrated circuits came from the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation. All computers then started to be made using chips instead of the individual transistors and their accompanying parts. Texas Instruments first used the chips in Air Force computers and the Minuteman Missile in 1962. They later used the chips to produce the first electronic portable calculators. The original IC had only one transistor, three resistors and one capacitor and was the size of an adult's pinkie finger. Today an IC smaller than a penny can hold 125 million transistors.
Jack Kilby now holds patents on over sixty inventions and is also well known as the inventor of the portable calculator (1967). In 1970 he was awarded the National Medal of Science. Robert Noyce, with sixteen patents to his name, founded Intel, the company responsible for the invention of the microprocessor, in 1968. But for both men the invention of the integrated circuit stands historically as one of the most important innovations of mankind. Almost all modern products use chip technology.

What is Semiconductor?

2007-03-20T13:06:00.000+08:00

URL:http://www.answers.com/semiconductor
Brian Lee

A solid crystalline material whose electrical conductivity is intermediate between that of a metal and an insulator. Semiconductors exhibit conduction properties that may be temperature-dependent, permitting their use as thermistors (temperature-dependent resistors), or voltage-dependent, as in varistors. By making suitable contacts to a semiconductor or by making the material suitably inhomogeneous, electrical rectification and amplification can be obtained. Semiconductor devices, rectifiers, and transistors have replaced vacuum tubes almost completely in low-power electronics, making it possible to save volume and power consumption by orders of magnitude. In the form of integrated circuits, they are vital for complicated systems. The optical properties of a semiconductor are important for the understanding and the application of the material. Photodiodes, photoconductive detectors of radiation, injection lasers, light-emitting diodes, solar-energy conversion cells, and so forth are examples of the wide variety of optoelectronic devices.

invention of digital computer

2007-03-20T13:04:00.000+08:00

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-1825/digital-computer
Hyeon Chung

Blaise Pascal of France and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz of Germany invented mechanical digital calculating machines during the 17th century. The English inventor Charles Babbage, however, is generally credited with having conceived the first automatic digital computer. During the 1830s Babbage devised his so-called Analytical Engine, a mechanical device designed to combine basic arithmetic operations with decisions based on its own computations. Babbage's plans embodied most of the fundamental elements of the modern digital computer. For example, they called for sequential control—i.e., program control that included branching, looping, and both arithmetic and storage units with automatic printout. Babbage's device, however, was never completed and was forgotten until his writings were rediscovered over a century later.

Of great importance in the evolution of the digital computer was the work of the English mathematician and logician George Boole. In various essays written during the mid-1800s, Boole discussed the analogy between the symbols of algebra and those of logic as used to represent logical forms and syllogisms. His formalism, operating on only 0 and 1, became the basis of what is now called Boolean algebra, on which computer switching theory and procedures are grounded.
John V. Atanasoff, an American mathematician and physicist, is credited with building the first electronic digital computer, which he constructed from 1939 to 1942 with the assistance of his graduate student Clifford E. Berry. Konrad Zuse, a German engineer acting in virtual isolation from developments elsewhere, completed construction in 1941 of the first operational program-controlled calculating machine (Z3). In 1944 Howard Aiken and a group of engineers at International Business Machines Corporation completed work on the Harvard Mark I, a machine whose data-processing operations were controlled primarily by electric relays (switching devices).
Since the development of the Harvard Mark I, the digital computer has evolved at a rapid pace. The succession of advances in computer equipment, principally in logic circuitry, is often divided into generations, with each generation comprising a group of machines that share a common technology.
In 1946 J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly, both of the University of Pennsylvania, constructed ENIAC (an acronym for electronic numerical integrator and computer), a digital machine and the first general-purpose, electronic computer. Its computing features were derived from Atanasoff's machine; both computers included vacuum tubes instead of relays as their active logic elements, a feature that resulted in a significant increase in operating speed. The concept of a stored-program computer was introduced in the mid-1940s, and the idea of storing instruction codes as well as data in an electrically alterable memory was implemented in EDVAC (electronic discrete variable automatic computer).
The second computer generation began in the late 1950s, when digital machines utilizing transistors became commercially available. Although this type of semiconductor device had been invented in 1948, more than 10 years of developmental work was needed to render it a viable alternative to the vacuum tube. The small size of the transistor, its greater reliability, and its relatively low power consumption made it vastly superior to the tube. Its use in computer circuitry permitted the manufacture of digital systems that were considerably more efficient, smaller, and faster than their first-generation ancestors.
The late 1960s and '70s witnessed further dramatic advances in computer hardware. The first was the fabrication of the integrated circuit, a solid-state device containing hundreds of transistors, diodes, and resistors on a tiny silicon chip. This microcircuit made possible the production of mainframe (large-scale) computers of higher operating speeds, capacity, and reliability at significantly lower cost. Another type of third-generation computer that developed as a result of microelectronics was the minicomputer, a machine appreciably smaller than the standard mainframe but powerful enough to control the instruments of an entire scientific laboratory.
The development of large-scale integration (LSI) enabled hardware manufacturers to pack thousands of transistors and other related components on a single silicon chip about the size of a baby's fingernail. Such microcircuitry yielded two devices that revolutionized computer technology. The first of these was the microprocessor, which is an integrated circuit that contains all the arithmetic, logic, and control circuitry of a central processing unit. Its production resulted in the development of microcomputers, systems no larger than portable television sets yet with substantial computing power. The other important device to emerge from LSI circuitry was the semiconductor memory. Consisting of only a few chips, this compact storage device is well-suited for use in minicomputers and microcomputers. Moreover, it has found use in an increasing number of mainframes, particularly those designed for high-speed applications, because of its fast-access speed and large storage capacity.
By the beginning of the 1980s integrated circuitry had advanced to very large-scale integration (VLSI). This design and manufacturing technology greatly increased the circuit density of microprocessor, memory, and support chips—i.e., those that serve to interface microprocessors with input-output devices. By the 1990s some VLSI circuits contained more than 3 million transistors on a silicon chip less than 0.3 square inch (2 square cm) in area.
The digital computers of the 1980s and '90s employing LSI and VLSI technologies are frequently referred to as fourth-generation systems. Many of the microcomputers produced during the 1980s were equipped with a single chip on which circuits for processor, memory, and interface functions were integrated. See also supercomputer.

The History of Computers

2007-03-20T13:03:00.001+08:00

URL:http://inventors.about.com/library/blcoindex.htm
David Hyun

First man to create digital computer

2007-03-20T13:03:00.000+08:00

(Lily Baik)
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/bulgaria-faq/part7/section-1.html

The name John Atanasoff is not very well known but this is the manwho has created the modern digital computer. 50 years have passedsince John Atanasoff has created the first digital computer.

John V. Atanasoff, 91, who invented the first electroniccomputer in 1939

Earlist Mechanism by Paul Lee

2007-03-20T13:02:00.002+08:00

Examples of early mechanical computing devices included the abacus, the slide rule and arguably the astrolabe and the Antikythera mechanism (which dates from about 150-100 BC).

First Radio By Paul Lee

2007-03-20T13:02:00.001+08:00

History
Guglielmo Marconi successfully sent the first radio message across the Atlantic Ocean in December 1901 from England to Newfoundland. Marconi's radio did not receive voice or music. Rather, it received buzzing sounds created by a spark gap transmitter sending a signal using Morse code.
The radio got its voice on Christmas Eve 1906. As dozens of ship and amateur radio operators listened for the evening's traffic messages, they were amazed to hear a man's voice calling "CQ, CQ" (which means calling all stations, I have messages) instead of the customary dits and dahs of Morse code. The message was transmitted by Professor Reginald Aubrey Fessenden from a small radio station in Brant Rock, Massachusetts.
In the years from 1904 to 1914, the radio went through many refinements with the invention of the diode and triode vacuum tubes. These devices enabled better transmission and reception of voice and music. Also during this time period, the radio became standard equipment on ships crossing the oceans.
The radio came of age during World War I. Military leaders recognized its value for communicating with the infantry and ships at sea. During the WWI, many advancements were made to the radio making it more powerful and compact. In 1923, Edwin Armstrong invented the superhetrodyne radio. It was a major advancement in how a radio worked. The basic principles used in the superhetrodyne radio are still in use today.
On November 2, 1920 the first commercial radio station went on the air in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was an instant success, and began the radio revolution called the "Golden Age of Radio." The Golden Age of Radio lasted from the early 1920s through the late 1940s when television brought in a whole new era. During this Golden Age, the radio evolved from a simple device in a bulky box to a complex piece of equipment housed in beautiful wooden cabinets. People would gather around the radio and listen to the latest news and radio plays. The radio occupied a similar position as today's television set.
On June 30, 1948 the transistor was successfully demonstrated at Bell Laboratories. The transistor allowed radios to become compact, with the smallest ones able to fit in a shirt pocket. In 1959, Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce received the first patent for the integrated circuit. The space program of the 1960s would bring more advances to the integrated circuit. Now, a radio could fit in the frame of eyeglasses or inside a pair of small stereo earphones. Today, the frequency dial printed on the cabinet has been replaced with light emitting diodes or liquid crystal displays.

2007-03-19T14:32:00.000+08:00

‘R2-D2’ mail box one of only 400 in nation
http://www.jg-tc.com/articles/2007/03/17/news/news003.txt

CHARLESTON -- A new mail collection box from “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” is being offered by the Charleston Post Office.

Postal workers installed a collection box that looks like “Star Wars” droid R2-D2 early Friday morning under the University Union skywalk on Eastern Illinois University’s campus. Customers can drop their mail into the R2-D2 box, which is temporarily replacing the traditional blue one.

This box is one of about 400 R2-D2s that were installed nationwide Friday to promote a joint venture of the U.S. Postal Service and Lucasfilm Ltd., the company formed by “Star Wars” creator George Lucas. They will remain on the street for about three weeks in conjunction with the “Star Wars” 30th anniversary celebration.

Charleston Postmaster Butch Hackett said the Postal Service contacted him about a month ago to make arrangements for bringing R2-D2 to town. He said the Postal Service wanted to keep word of the Lucasfilm joint venture as quiet as possible prior to the unveiling on Friday.

“I didn’t even tell my wife. It had to be a big secret,” Hackett joked.

Hackett said he is proud Charleston was included in the relatively small number of sites for the R2-D2 collection boxes. About 50 were placed in Illinois.

The Postal Service has 280,000 collection boxes across the country. He said the presence of Eastern brought the “Star Wars” droid to Charleston.

“They went to colleges because (the Postal Service) thought college-age kids would enjoy the ‘Star Wars’ culture’,” Hackett said.

The postmaster said he recommended the skywalk as the location for Charleston’s R2-D2 because it is the most heavily used collection box on campus. He estimated it receives 250-300 pieces of mail during the average school day. He said this number could increase as people who want to see R2-D2 bring their mail with them.

Hackett said postal workers will be extra watchful of R2-D2 to ensure no one tries to take it for their personal “Star Wars” collection. He said tampering with mail and mail containers is a criminal offense.

The R2-D2 boxes feature the address of a Web site, www.uspsjedimaster.com, that gives clues about a promotion that will be offered by the Postal Service and Lucasfilm. More details about the promotion are set to be announced March 28. The Postal Service reported a customer vote on “Star Wars” stamps would be part of this promotion.

Report: Google mobile phone, software in the works

2007-03-19T14:18:00.000+08:00

http://news3.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-03/19/content_5866807.htm

BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhuanet) -- The latest Wall Street rumor is Google is developing new software to run on Google mobile phones, along with integrated applications for accessing the search engine's Internet services.
A top Google executive in Europe confirmed the existence of a phone project this week, according to the Wall Street Journal. And Spanish site Noticias.com reported Google's chief for Spain and Portugal said her company has investigated developing a mobile phone.
But, so far, no official confirmation on either project.
"Mobile is an important area for Google and we remain focused on creating applications and establishing and growing partnerships with industry leaders to develop innovative services for users worldwide," said Google spokeswoman Erin Fors in a statement. "However, we have nothing further to announce."
The first whispers about a Google phone emerged in December 2006 when The Observer reported Google seems to be interested in developing a "branded Google phone." The Observer also reported Google has held talks with Orange about a multi-billion-dollar partnership to create a "Google phone" that makes a web search simple.
The article quoted a source close to the talks, saying: "Google are software experts and are doing some amazing work compressing data so that the mobile user gets a much better experience. They don't know so much about mobiles, but they are eager to learn from Orange's years of experience."
Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Reuters in November 2006, he thinks in the future mobile phones should be free for the consumers. Not for everyone, but for those who are willing to accept watching targeted forms of advertising. Speaking with Reuters, Schmidt said mobile phones are used eight to 10 hours a day for talking, texting or Web access.
"Your mobile phone should be free," Schmidt told Reuters. "It just makes sense that subsidies should increase" as advertising rises on mobile phones.
Eric Schmidt added also he believes mobile phones may never become totally free to the consumer. At the time, Eric Schmidt also said Google had no plans to directly give away phones itself.

Samsung Digital Picture Frames Get Wi-Fi

2007-03-19T14:15:00.000+08:00

Samsung Digital Picture Frames Get Wi-Fi
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129935-c,wirelesstechnologyservices/article.html

Sunday, March 18, 2007 07:00 PM PDT

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. this week showed off a soon-to-be-released version of its digital photo frame with Wi-Fi and two larger versions that will hit markets later this year.
Samsung displayed unreleased 12-inch and 8-inch versions of the company's digital photo frames, alongside a 7-inch version of the frame that can connect with a PC over Wi-Fi. The displays were on display at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany.
The €229 (US$305) SPH-72P, which hits European markets in May, uses Wi-Fi to automatically discover and connect with PCs running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista operating system and can display photos stored in Windows Media Player 11.
Like the €179 SPH-72H model, which does not have Wi-Fi and will hit European markets at the same time, the SPH-72P has a four-in-one memory card reader and a USB port that can connect directly to a digital camera or portable hard disk.
Both picture frames have a 7-inch screen that offers a resolution of 800 pixels by 480 pixels, and they can play MP3 files and movie clips.
The SPH-72P can also display JPEG photos downloaded by RSS (Really Simple Syndication) from Web sites, such as Windows Live Spaces. But a Samsung sales executive manning the company's booth said photo frames sold in Europe may not initially support this feature.
Samsung plans to ship the 8-inch and 12-inch versions later this year, and they could be on the market during the third quarter, the sales executive said. Detailed specifications of the larger photo frames were not available.

Show goes on, partial solar eclipse today

2007-03-19T13:00:00.000+08:00

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Delhi/Show_goes_on_partial_solar_eclipse_today/articleshow/1776264.cms(By. Lily)

NEW DELHI: March has proved to be a lucky month for sky gazers. A partial solar eclipse will take place on Monday, even as some you will be reading this article.
Delhiites will open their eyes to an already eclipsed rising sun on Monday morning. After the lunar eclipse on Holi on March 4, this is the second time this month that Delhiites will get to witness an eclipse.
According to astrologers, the eclipse falling under 'leo lagna' and 'poorvabhadrapath nakshtra' wouldn't affect individuals particularly but will operate at a macro level.
"It wouldn't affect individuals per se. However, offering prayers to personal deities and offering water to the sun after the eclipse is considered good,"said Naveen Khanna, an astrologer.
Though, ruling out affects on individuals, the astrologers however added that there might be some natural calamities in store due to the eclipse.
The phenomenon is expected to be good for Aries, Gemini, Libra, Scorpio and Pisces, according to some astrologers, while it may pose challenges for sunsigns like Capricorn, Taurus, Cancer and Virgo.
The sun would be seen in city sky around 6:27 am, by which time about 8.5% of the disc would have been eclipsed. "It is a partial solar eclipse. The peak of eclipse will be around 7:06 am, when 47.8% of sun's surface will be eclipsed by the moon,"said N Rathnasree, director, Nehru Planetarium.
The eclipse will be over by 8 am, so only early risers will have a chance to watch the sun being shadowed by the moon.
The eclipse would be seen all over India, though it would be more prominent in northern regions. In eastern parts however, the eclipse will occur after sunrise.
But here is a word of caution for the sky gazers. No matter how tempting the view, do not watch the celestial phenomenon with naked eyes.
"People think it is safe to view the eclipse with naked eyes during sunrise or while the sun is setting, but it is not. One should watch it using certified filters which are easily available in planetariums,"added Rathnasree.
One can also watch it through the LCD display of a digital camera. Public skywatch will also be organised at Teen Murti grounds, which will be equipped with projection apparatus and solar filters.

Immense ice deposits found at south pole of Mars

2007-03-19T12:58:00.000+08:00

(By. Lily)

http://www.thanhniennews.com/worlds/?catid=9&newsid=26118
The topography of the south polar region of Mars A spacecraft orbiting Mars has scanned huge deposits of water ice at its south pole so plentiful they would blanket the planet in 36 feet of water if they were liquid, scientists said on Thursday. The scientists used a joint NASA-Italian Space Agency radar instrument on the European Space Agency Mars Express spacecraft to gauge the thickness and volume of ice deposits at the Martian south pole covering an area larger than Texas.
The deposits, up to 2.3 miles thick, are under a polar cap of white frozen carbon dioxide and water, and appear to be composed of at least 90 percent frozen water, with dust mixed in, according to findings published in the journal Science.
Scientists have known that water exists in frozen form at the Martian poles, but this research produced the most accurate measurements of just how much there is.
They are eager to learn about the history of water on Mars because water is fundamental to the question of whether the planet has ever harbored microbial or some other life. Liquid water is a necessity for life as we know it.
Characteristics like channels on the Martian surface strongly suggest the planet once was very wet, a contrast to its present arid, dusty condition.
Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who led the study, said the same techniques are being used to examine similar ice deposits at the Martian north pole.
Radar observations made in late 2005 and early 2006 provided the data on the south pole, and similar observations were taken of the north pole in the past several months, Plaut said.
Plaut, part of an international team of two dozen scientists, said a preliminary look at this data indicated the ice deposits in at the north pole are comparable to those at the south pole.
Search for life
"Life as we know it requires water and, in fact, at least transient liquid water for cells to survive and reproduce. So if we are expecting to find existing life on Mars we need to go to a location where water is available," Plaut said.
"So the polar regions are naturally a target because we certainly know that there's plenty of H2O there."
Some of the new information even hints at the possible existence of a thin layer of liquid water at the base of the deposits.
But while images taken by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft made public in December suggested the presence of a small amount of liquid water on the surface, researchers are baffled about the fate of most of the water. The polar deposits contain most of the known water on Mars.
Plaut said the amount of water in the Martian past may have been the equivalent of a global layer hundreds of meters deep, while the polar deposits represent a layer of perhaps tens of meters.
"We have this continuing question facing us in studies of Mars, which is: where did all the water go?" Plaut said.
"Even if you took the water in these two (polar) ice caps and added it all up, it's still not nearly enough to do all of the work that we've seen that the water has done across the surface of Mars in its history."
Plaut said it appears perhaps 10 percent of the water that once existed on Mars is now trapped in these polar deposits. Other water may exist below the planet's surface or perhaps some was lost into space through the atmosphere, Plaut said.

Battle of the game consoles

2007-03-19T12:57:00.000+08:00

url: http://www.smh.com.au/news/games/battle-of-the-game-consoles/2007/03/18/1174152859094.html
Hyeon Chung

It's all-out war between Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's new PlayStation 3. Charles Purcell tackles the question from neutral territory.

One day your grandkids will ask: "What were you doing on March 23, 2007, Daddy?" And your answer might be: "Why, I was out buying a PlayStation 3 along with the rest of Australia, son."
Yes, it's that time again, when the entire country will grind to a halt to gaze in awe upon Sony's newest technological marvel. Despite fierce opposition from the Xbox and the GameCube, the PlayStation 2 proved it was king of the gaming jungle. But will the same be said of the PlayStation 3? Sony has already given its competitors precious months to secure market share after they released their respective consoles before Sony.
Nintendo has made a brave fist of it with the Wii, but the true battle of the consoles now is between Xbox and PlayStation. The question is: just how good is the PlayStation 3? And does it have the features and content to take down Bill Gates's pride and joy?
For this face-off, I am comparing the most powerful of the two systems - the $999, 60GB PlayStation 3 (the 20GB will not be available at launch) and the $649 Xbox 360 non-core version.

[The console]
Frankly, anything is an improvement on the black behemoth that was the first Xbox. The Xbox 360 is a smooth white device much more pleasing to the eye.
The PS3 is a sexier, more futuristic proposition, however. You might marry the 360 - and keep the PS3 as your mistress. As with Henry Ford's early Model T cars, you can have any colour in the launch PS3 as long as it's black. The PS3 has just one cord to plug into the power point, rather than the chunky brick attachment that comes with the 360.
The PS3 has a front-loading slot for discs as opposed to the 360's tray loader. It also has more ports than the 360 for items such as memory sticks and the PlayStation Portable. I was impressed by how quickly and easily you could transfer music and media from the PS3 to the PSP.

[Controllers]
The PS3 controllers are modelled on the previous generation. The Sixaxis wireless controllers use motion sensor technology as an added feature to the controls, something I observed while playing the downloadable games Flow and Super Rub'a'Dub. You move the whole controller rather than press any of the buttons to control the duck in Super Rub'a'Dub (but the shark still got my baby ducks - no-o-oo). The Sixaxis controller uses Bluetooth to talk to the PS3. You can use up to seven controllers at a time, against the 360's four. There is also a button in the centre of the controller that acts as a central hub and main menu button.

Force is with USPS as R2 puts stamp on mailboxes

2007-03-19T12:55:00.000+08:00

David Hyun
http://news.bostonherald.com/national/view.bg?articleid=188816
WASHINGTON - Thirty years ago, in theaters near and far, far away, a movie opened the imaginations of millions, combining the magic of mythology and special effects to launch the “Star Wars” phenomenon.
A star of those films - the brave little robot R2-D2 - is about to take a turn collecting mail as the Postal Service and Lucasfilm Ltd. commemorate that movie launch.
The post office is wrapping mail collection boxes in some 200 cities nationwide in a special covering to look like R2-D2. It’s part of a promotion for a new stamp to be announced March 28, postal marketing chief Anita T. Bizzotto said.
“It’s a little teaser for the upcoming announcement and we decided to have a little fun with it,” she said. About 400 mailboxes will be covered to look like the stout droid. “When you look at a mailbox, the resemblance to R2-D2 is too good to pass up,” she said.
While postal officials would like people to look for these mailboxes, Bizzotto urged people not to tamper with them. That’s a crime.

Google Phone is in the works, say insiders

2007-03-19T12:54:00.001+08:00

(by. Lily)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/18/AR2007031801143.html

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc. (GOOG.O) is developing its own mobile phone, according to industry insiders and analysts, while a Google official in Spain last week acknowledged the company is "investigating" such a project.
Google isn't commenting directly on leaks from Europe and the United States which describe a low-cost, Internet-connected phone with a color, wide-screen design. Newspaper and blog reports in recent months have Google shopping its phone design to potential mobile phone manufacturing partners in Asia.
"Mobile is an important area for Google," Google spokeswoman Erin Fors said on Friday. "We remain focused on creating applications and establishing and growing partnerships with industry leaders to develop innovative services for users worldwide. However, we have nothing further to announce."
Gadget enthusiasts who only two months ago were obsessed with the potential revolutionary impact on the phone industry of Apple Inc.'s (AAPL.O) iPhone device -- due out in June and at prices starting at $500 -- have shifted their attention to whether Google is developing an even lower-cost phone.
"We obviously need another mythical mobile to drool over and speculate about -- and the natural candidate is, of course, the so-called Google phone," geek hardware site Engadget wrote earlier this month http://tinyurl.com/3b7bow.
To be sure, feverish speculation about Google products has been wrong before. Google was widely reported to be building its own line of personal computers a little over a year ago. What in fact materialized was a set of free software programs designed to make any existing Windows PCs easier to use.
But Richard Windsor, a phone analyst with brokerage Nomura in London, told clients late last week that unspecified Google representatives at a major European conference in Germany had confirmed the company is working on its own phone device.
"Google has come out of the closet at the CeBIT trade fair admitting that it is working on a mobile phone of its own," Windsor said in a note entitled "Google Phone: From myth to reality."
"This is not going to be a high-end device but a mass market device aimed at bringing Google to users who don't have a PC," he said.
Over the past year, Google has branched out beyond computers to bring Web search, e-mail, mapping and other Web services to millions of new and existing phone browsers worldwide. Rivals Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O) and Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O) also are racing to run Web services on mobile phones.
Polaris Venture Partners, said in a March 4 blog post http://tinyurl.com/2z23o7 that an "inside source close to the
The device Simeonov describes could handle voice over Internet phone-calling. He said it is being developed within a 100-person mobile phone group at Google that includes Andy Rubin, the creator of Sidekick, a popular phone/Internet device that he developed at a prior company he founded, Danger Inc.
Lending further clues, Isabel Aguilera, head of Google's Iberian operations, was quoted last week in Spanish news site Noticias.com as acknowledging the existence of a part-time project by some Google engineers to develop a mobile phone.
In her interview at http://tinyurl.com/2feypv/, translated
In January, Engadget circulated a photo purporting to be a prototype Internet phone with a wide, color screen designed by Google and built by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (005930.KS). This unconfirmed report replaced an earlier theory published by The Observer in December that Google was working with Taiwan's High Tech Computer Corp. (HTC) (2498.TW) on a mobile phone.
A source at a rival Internet company who has talked to the same mobile phone manufacturers said on Friday that "Google is going to build their own phone, whether it is with HTC or Samsung or some other ODM (original device manufacturer)."
Windsor, the London-based Nomura analyst who tracks mobile phone handset makers like Nokia (NOK1V.HE) of Finland, argues that a Google Phone "will meet with limited success and lose money" because it lacks the necessary phone industry relationships to reach the massive scale needed to compete.

Three versions of Halo 3 coming

2007-03-19T12:54:00.000+08:00

url : http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=74264

Hyeon Chung

Microsoft has confirmed that three editions of Halo 3 will be available when the game launches later this year.
First up is the plain old Standard Edition which is comprised of the standalone disc, plus a box and manual we'd wager.
Then there's the Legendary Edition which will be released "in limited quantities", according to a statement. It will come with a collectable Spartan helmet case, Halo 3 storyboard art and two bonus discs.
Advertisement
The first disc will feature exclusive behind-the-scenes footage, including a Making of Halo 3 documentary, plus a look at early game concepts. It will also include an audio-visual calibration tool "never before seen on a videogame", which has been custom designed by the Halo 3 team and will allow you to enjoy high definition footage and optimised audio.
The second disc, which will only be available with the Legendary Edition, will include remastered cinematic material from Halo 2 and Halo: Combat Evovled, complete with developer commentaries.
You'll also get a featurette about a day in the life at Bungie, plus exclusive content from the Machinima artists who created Red vs. Blue and This Spartan Life.
The Limited Edition version of Halo 3 will come in a shiny metal case. Along with the first bonus disc from the Legendary Edition, you'll get a Halo fiction and art book which features a guide to the game's universe and previously unseen material.
Microsoft also confirmed that Halo 3 will arrive in shops this autumn, though they haven't said exactly when yet.

Missing Drivers And Security Holes: Growing Pains For Vista

2007-03-19T12:53:00.001+08:00

David Hyun
http://www.playfuls.com/news_06594_Missing_Drivers_And_Security_Holes_Growing_Pains_For_Vista.html
A modern operating system like Windows Vista includes millions of lines of code. Thousands of workers toiled for years to develop Microsoft's newest product - which means all the more potential for bugs. Although Vista has already been on the market for a few weeks now, negative reports have actually been relatively mild. A few hiccups are clearly audible, however. "The biggest problem is missing drivers," says Axel Vahldiek from Hanover-based c't magazine. Without those programmes, generally provided by hardware makers, peripheral devices either cannot function properly or will not work at all. The problem isn't just limited to older or exotic hardware: the GeForce 8800 graphic chip supports the DirectX 10 graphics interface used by Vista and is found on fast, high-end graphics cards. Yet Nvidia still hadn't managed to make a driver available by the end of February. The website for the market leader in graphics chips has long offered a beta, or preliminary, version of the driver. Vahldiek warns against using such beta drivers, however: "They do not ever work error-free." Relying on them can lead to data loss, he says. Another problem with Vista is related to security: In the view of the German Federal Agency for Security in Information Technology (BSI) in Bonn, the current discussion surrounding Vista's account administration function, User Account Control (UAC), is particularly interesting, says Thomas Caspers, an expert on operating system security. The discussion was given a jolt by Polish security expert Joanna Rutkowska, who publicized a hole in the system. UAC is designed to require administrator access to install new software. That means increased security at first. Yet, according to Rutkowska it also means that games downloaded off the internet are also granted full rights. From a technical point of view, this is completely unnecessary. If malicious code is hidden in the game, then it has a clear path to the computer. Passwords are effective only for keeping curious lay users from accessing the computer. Little more than a bit of determination is needed to crack the access passwords on Windows Vista. Elcomsoft, a Russian firm, is for example offering software to perform just that job - ostensibly for users who have forgotten their password. Anyone in possession of a Vista version with the BitLocker encryption programme should use it. The software makes files encrypted with BitLocker unreadable even if an intruder gains access to the computer using the Elcomsoft programme. All in all, however, the problems with Vista more closely resemble "growing pains" than serious flaws. Vista does not assign standard rights to many antivirus programmes to access all folders, Vahldiek explains. Yet if a virus scanner cannot check through certain parts of the computer that might potentially contain bugs, it is not performing its duty. In such cases manual configuration is required. Still, no major problems have as yet turned up for Vista. Peter Knaak, computer expert for the German consumer testing organization Stiftung Warentest in Berlin presumes that some vulnerabilities will start showing up for Vista in the coming weeks and months. He therefore recommends waiting until Microsoft releases Service Pack 1 for Vista before making the switch. Service packs are a collection of updates to iron out a large group of individual problems. No date has been provided as yet for Service Pack 1, says Microsoft spokeswoman Irene Nadler. What is certain is that Microsoft will release security-related updates on a regular basis via the Update function built into Windows. INFO BOX: Vista's speech recognition as security hole Experts are reporting on a potential security hole in Windows Vista: its speech recognition system. It could be used to send commands to remote computers from over the internet - in theory, at least. According to Thomas Caspers from the German Federal Agency for Security in Information Technology (BSI) in Bonn, it remains unclear whether talking malware will end up being an amusing side note or, in certain scenarios, a genuine threat. The BSI suspects it will be the former, and is not yet recommending specific countermeasures.

Samsung Digital Picture Frames Get Wi-Fi

2007-03-19T12:53:00.000+08:00

url: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129935-c,wirelesstechnologyservices/article.html

Hyeon Chung

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. this week showed off a soon-to-be-released version of its digital photo frame with Wi-Fi and two larger versions that will hit markets later this year.
Samsung displayed unreleased 12-inch and 8-inch versions of the company's digital photo frames, alongside a 7-inch version of the frame that can connect with a PC over Wi-Fi. The displays were on display at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany.
The €229 (US$305) SPH-72P, which hits European markets in May, uses Wi-Fi to automatically discover and connect with PCs running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista operating system and can display photos stored in Windows Media Player 11.
Like the €179 SPH-72H model, which does not have Wi-Fi and will hit European markets at the same time, the SPH-72P has a four-in-one memory card reader and a USB port that can connect directly to a digital camera or portable hard disk.
Both picture frames have a 7-inch screen that offers a resolution of 800 pixels by 480 pixels, and they can play MP3 files and movie clips.
The SPH-72P can also display JPEG photos downloaded by RSS (Really Simple Syndication) from Web sites, such as Windows Live Spaces. But a Samsung sales executive manning the company's booth said photo frames sold in Europe may not initially support this feature.
Samsung plans to ship the 8-inch and 12-inch versions later this year, and they could be on the market during the third quarter, the sales executive said. Detailed specifications of the larger photo frames were not available.

What is "Naver"??

2007-03-16T12:59:00.000+08:00

url: http://www.answers.com/naver (imformation from Wikipedia)

Hyeon Chung

Naver (Hangul:네이버) is the # 1 web portal in South Korea. Naver was launched in June 1999. Using its own proprietary search engine, Naver was the first portal to provide search service in Korea including integrated searches. It has since remained in the lead in the development of Korean search service. It also provides a wide range of Internet services including a news service with comprehensive coverage from more than 90 media sources, an e-mail service, and an academic thesis search service.

Definition of Naver is the word NAVigate+ER(e.g. engineER; writER).

Mars southern polar region covered with ice: scientists

2007-03-16T12:58:00.001+08:00

http://english.people.com.cn/200703/16/eng20070316_358259.html(By. Lily)

Scientists have discovered that the southern polar region of Mars contains enough ice to cover the planet in a layer of water 36 feet (11 meters) deep.
Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, announced that an instrument on the European Space Agency's Mars Express determined that the ice on the south pole goes at least 2.3 miles (3.7 km) below the surface.
The discovery was the result of joint efforts by the Italian Space Agency and researchers at the JPL, which is part of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The team has been working to determine the thickness of the frozen water on Mars.
The study's findings are published in Thursday's online edition of "Science."
"The south pole's layered deposits of Mars cover an area bigger than Texas. The amount of water they contain has been estimated before, but never with the level of confidence this radar makes possible," said Jeffrey Plaut of JPL in Pasandena, near Los Angeles.
Scientists are using the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding, otherwise known as MARSIS, to also map the thickness of similar deposits on the north pole of Mars.
"MARSIS is showing itself to be a very powerful tool to probe underneath the Martian surface, and it's showing how our team's goals, such as probing the polar layered deposits, are being successfully achieved," said Giovanni Picardi, principal investigator of the project.
"Not only is MARSIS providing us with the first-ever views of Mars' subsurface at those depths, but the details we are seeing are truly amazing."
The polar layered deposits hold most of the known water on Mars, although other areas of the planet appear to have been very wet at other times, according to the researchers.
Discovering the history of water on Mars is key to determining whether the planet ever supported life.
The frozen water deposits are also helping researchers learn more about the internal structures of Mars.
"We didn't really know where the bottom of the deposit was," Plaut said. "Now we can see that the crust has not been depressed by the weight of the ice as it would be on Earth. The crust and upper mantle of Mars are stiffer than the Earth's, probably because the interior of Mars is so much colder."

Mars southern polar region covered with ice: scientists

2007-03-16T12:56:00.000+08:00

David Hyun
http://english.people.com.cn/200703/16/eng20070316_358259.html

Scientists have discovered that the southern polar region of Mars contains enough ice to cover the planet in a layer of water 36 feet (11 meters) deep.
Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, announced that an instrument on the European Space Agency's Mars Express determined that the ice on the south pole goes at least 2.3 miles (3.7 km) below the surface.
The discovery was the result of joint efforts by the Italian Space Agency and researchers at the JPL, which is part of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The team has been working to determine the thickness of the frozen water on Mars.
The study's findings are published in Thursday's online edition of "Science."
"The south pole's layered deposits of Mars cover an area bigger than Texas. The amount of water they contain has been estimated before, but never with the level of confidence this radar makes possible," said Jeffrey Plaut of JPL in Pasandena, near Los Angeles.
Scientists are using the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding, otherwise known as MARSIS, to also map the thickness of similar deposits on the north pole of Mars.
"MARSIS is showing itself to be a very powerful tool to probe underneath the Martian surface, and it's showing how our team's goals, such as probing the polar layered deposits, are being successfully achieved," said Giovanni Picardi, principal investigator of the project.
"Not only is MARSIS providing us with the first-ever views of Mars' subsurface at those depths, but the details we are seeing are truly amazing."
The polar layered deposits hold most of the known water on Mars, although other areas of the planet appear to have been very wet at other times, according to the researchers.
Discovering the history of water on Mars is key to determining whether the planet ever supported life.
The frozen water deposits are also helping researchers learn more about the internal structures of Mars.
"We didn't really know where the bottom of the deposit was," Plaut said. "Now we can see that the crust has not been depressed by the weight of the ice as it would be on Earth. The crust and upper mantle of Mars are stiffer than the Earth's, probably because the interior of Mars is so much colder."

Code to clean up database and add new fields

2007-03-16T09:21:00.000+08:00

Thanks to Jacky
Code to clean up database and add new fields.

On the server at:
2007SpringHSTech\P9\JackyChen\p9\vb.net\Test to replace

First Application

2007-03-15T13:07:00.000+08:00

Public Class Form1
Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
End Sub
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click WebBrowser1.Navigate(TextBox1.Text) End SubEnd Class

IBM's 65nm Cell Could Chip Away PS3 Costs

2007-03-14T13:18:00.000+08:00

(url: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/56267.html)
Hyeon Chung

One of the reasons for the high price of Sony's PlayStation 3 is the gaming console's costly 90 nanometer Cell chip. However, IBM on Monday named its first factory to begin producing less expensive 65 nanometer Cell chips. If implemented in the PS3, the smaller Cell could mean a significant drop in the console's hefty price tag.

A state-of-the-art IBM (NYSE: IBM) manufacturing plant located in East Fishkill, N.Y., has become the first facility to produce the 65 nanometer (nm) Cell Broadband Engine, the chip maker announced Monday. The Cell chip, developed through a US$400 million partnership between IBM, Toshiba and Sony (NYSE: SNE) , is the technology underpinning Sony's recently released next-generation video game console, PlayStation 3 (PS3).
IBM invested more than $2.5 billion to build what it calls "the world's most technologically advanced chip manufacturing facility." The chip will provide breakthrough performance for consumer electronics, medical imaging, design engineering and other graphics-intensive applications, according to IBM.

Less Power, Less Money
The technology incorporated inside a Cell chip is a major departure from typical processor designs found in the average PC or even the PS3's predecessor, the PlayStation 2 . Those devices operate using a single processor to perform the calculations necessary for a computer to run properly. Although Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and AMD (NYSE: AMD) have begun producing duo- and quad-core processors, the Cell processor uses a multi-core architecture combined with ultra high-speed communications capabilities that provide greatly improved, real-time response for entertainment and rich media applications, IBM said.
The Cell chip uses one dual-threaded PowerPC core and eight "synergistic" processors. Its top clock speed is greater than 4 GHz, making it capable of massive floating point processing.
At around $90, 90nm Cell processors such as the kind found in PS3s were generally considered far too expensive. That high cost is seen as one reason for the PS3's $599 price tag.
The new 65nm processor is smaller and uses less power than its predecessor. That translates into a lower price.

Necessary Steps
"This is something we knew they were going to do and they have to do it," Gartner (NYSE: IT) research fellow Martin Reynolds told TechNewsWorld.
By going to 65nm, several things happen, Reynolds said. First, the chip becomes cheaper, and therefore more chips can be produced. That, he explained, is really important should the chip be implemented in the production of Sony's PS3. "Lower production costs mean more units [and] means more people can buy games."
In addition, the 65nm process will result in a cooler chip that consumes less power and will be more reliable, another potential bonus for the PS3. "That's also important for something sitting in someone's living room," Reynolds added.
While IBM is marketing a Blade server built around the Cell processor, Reynolds does not expect to see the chip in a standard PC because of the difficulty associated with combining the Cell technology and other chips.
"It has eight processors inside the chip and they are different than the other processors in the system," Reynolds said. "So, [the computer] has to understand two languages to make it work. It works well for a lot of gaming stuff, but for a typical corporate IT department it is not such an easy thing to use."

The Golden Key
For IBM, the key is the Cell's inclusion in the PS3, Reynolds noted. That would give IBM a guaranteed market for millions of these chips each quarter, thus supplying IBM with the capital necessary to continue developing the chip and creating uses for new applications.
"So that market will fuel the development of more Cell chips. So it is paid for and IBM can continue developing the technology for other applications," he pointed out.
Martin expects IBM to take the Cell down to 45nm and reduce the price even further. The hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue the company will receive from consumer uses will enable IBM to develop more advanced versions of the processor.
"They've got the money to continue developing the technology," Reynolds concluded. "And that could help it spark in the business world."

IBM starts producing Cell chip at 65nm

2007-03-14T13:16:00.000+08:00

http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=hardware&articleId=9012968&taxonomyId=12&intsrc=kc_topDaDavid Hyun

March 12, 2007 (IDG News Service) -- IBM Corp. has started production of a more advanced version of the Cell microprocessor, the chip it developed with Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp.
The new Cell Broadband Engine is being manufactured at IBM's factory in East Fishkill, New York, using a 65-nanometer manufacturing process, which is an improvement on the current 90-nanometer process. Typically such a step in process technology results in a chip that is physically smaller and uses less power.
The Cell chip is perhaps best known for its place at the heart of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.'s (SCEI) recently-launched PlayStation 3 games console but it's also used in computers produced by IBM.
The first Cell-based computer was launched by IBM in September last year. The BladeCenter QS20 is being promoted to industrial users in the medical imaging, aerospace, defense, digital animation, communications and energy sectors. Early users include the University of Manchester and Fraunhofer Institute.
IBM has also won a contract from the U.S. Department of Energy to supply a supercomputer based on the Cell processor. Code-named "Roadrunner," the computer will be capable of up to 1,000 trillion calculations per second (one petaflop).
SCEI is planning to use a 65-nanometer version of the Cell in future versions of the PlayStation 3 to help cut manufacturing costs.

Rabbit-ear TVs about to reach end of the road

2007-03-14T13:15:00.002+08:00

url: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/03/13/MNGRHOK7S01.DTL
Hyeon Chung

Consumers who depend on old-fashioned antennas to watch television won't miss the 2009 Super Bowl, but their analog sets will stop working soon afterward.
Analog TVs will no longer receive a signal come Feb. 19, 2009, unless users update their hardware to receive a digital signal.
Federal officials announced details Monday about how that transition will work, saying the government will help consumers buy the necessary equipment to upgrade to digital -- a converter box that attaches to the TV set.
The Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) said it is setting aside $990 million to pay for the boxes. Each home can request up to two $40 coupons for a digital-to-analog converter box, which consumer electronics makers such as RCA and LG plan to produce. Prices for the box have not been determined, but industry and consumer groups have estimated they will run $50 to $75 each.
"Besides our own consumer education efforts, NTIA is working with partners such as broadcasters, consumer electronics retailers, manufacturers and consumer organizations to reach out to those most in need of the coupon program," said the telecommunication administration's Assistant Secretary for Communication and Information John Kneuer. "We welcome partners and ask that interested parties contact our office at (202) 482-6260 to learn how they can help inform the public about the coupon program."
An estimated 20 million consumers in the United States depend on a free, over-the-air signal for television. Another 15 million might have cable or satellite television service but have extra sets in their home that aren't hooked up and depend on their antennas for service.
In the Bay Area, about 325,000 residents still depend on an over-the-air signal, according to the Television Bureau of Advertising, a nonprofit trade association. Out of 2.5 million homes with television, that represents between 12 and 13 percent of the population.
Congress set the deadline several years ago in an effort to free the nation's airwaves for public safety and other services.
"The whole digital TV transition will enable public safety responders to have more spectrum for more operability and public safety uses," said Todd Sedmak, a spokesman for the telecommunications administration.
But the transition to a digital TV world might not be smooth. Consumers were expected to move to digital televisions naturally as they became cheaper and more attractive to buy. New technology and services such as high-definition television also were supposed to push consumers into upgrading their television.
And indeed, as prices continue to drop, consumers are picking up digital televisions, particularly flat-screens, in droves. But consumer groups worry that poor and middle-class families, who can't afford to spring for a new television, will get left behind in the move and that the $40 vouchers won't be enough.
"How do you get it to the people who need it?" said Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America. "Has Congress set aside enough money to make sure everyone is held harmless? The answer is: probably not. Now you have a problem of certain consumers being hurt. They have a TV set that works today and won't work tomorrow and they have to spend money to make it work again."
Cooper said broadcasters have not made it appealing for consumers to pay for a new TV set, such as by introducing better high-definition programming and other services.
"This is a dilemma made by the broadcasters," Cooper said. "If they had done their job and innovated, we would not have this problem."
Starting Jan. 1, 2008, all U.S. households will be able to start requesting the coupons, said Sedmak. If the initial $990 million allocated is used up, another $510 million will be set aside to cover the cost of the coupons. Consumers must show that they do not subscribe to cable or satellite or other television services.
Tom Lim, owner of TV Man, a television retail and repair shop in Daly City that caters mostly to poor families, said that he is waiting until 2009 to buy a digital television set. "By then, hopefully I can afford it," he said.
Consumers might also resist getting a new television if their current one still works, said Paul E. Astry, owner of Sierra TV in Burlingame. If it ain't broke, why fix it?
"I think it'll be a while before people get rid of their analogs," Astry said. "If they have them, they like to hold on to 'em."

Inkjet printers start cranking out microchips

2007-03-14T13:15:00.001+08:00

http://news.com.com/Inkjet+printers+start+cranking+out+microchips/2100-1006_3-6166429.html?tag=cd.top
(By.Lily)
Inkjet printers start cranking out microchipsSpray-on electronics can be mass manufactured, and a new factory in Austria is doing just that. By Michael Kanellos Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: March 13, 2007, 4:00 AM PDT TalkBack E-mail Print del.icio.us Digg this Nanoident Technologies is literally squirting out semiconductors.
The company has officially opened a factory in Linz, Austria, that produces organic semiconductors, which are chips made by spraying intricate patterns of specialized ink onto layers of foil and polymer.
The factory is capable of producing 40,000 square meters of semiconductors a year, says Wasiq Bokhari, CEO of Bioident, a related company that will market Nanoident chips to the health market. The initial customers will be sister companies of Nanoident, but the company has also formed alliances with water testing companies and other industrial concerns.
A traditional factory that can produce 40,000 square meters of silicon computer chips would cost about $1.3 billion and require about 5,000 employees, he said in an interview. The Nanoident factory costs about $10 million and can be run by about 50 people.
Organic semiconductors, however, won't function as memory chips in computers or as processors. They are far slower and degrade over time. Instead, organic semiconductors will be targeted at one-time-only applications such as water purity testers: insert a water drop and the chip will analyze the chemicals floating inside of the drop. The company has also devised lab-on-a-chip chips that can extract data about a person's health through a blood sample.
Organic materials have already crept into some fields. Cell phone manufacturers already sell phones with screens made from organic light emitting diodes, or OLEDs, but few other commercial applications exist. Most of the time, organic chips appear as part of scientific papers. At University of California at Berkeley, for instance, researchers have printed an organic semiconductor that can tell its user if a bottle of wine has gone bad.
Traditional silicon chips are too expensive for these types of applications, which now are conducted on lab equipment, the company says.
The company currently has yields--a measure of the number of good chips that come out of a manufacturing run--of about 70 percent and will get to 80 percent, Bokhari said.
Building the organic beastOne of the key differences between regular and organic semiconductors is how transistors get laid down. In standard chips, lithography machines sketch a circuit pattern. Trenches are then dug into silicon and filled with metal through a complex series of chemical spraying and etchings.
With organic semiconductors, 128 inkjet nozzles spray a pattern onto foil or polymer. Researchers, though, have to account for interactions between the ink and the different layers, and the performance character of the ink.
Printed semiconductors have far larger features than silicon chips. Nanoident's first chips will have features measuring 10 to 100 microns wide. That's more than 100 times larger than the features inserted into silicon chips. Current silicon chips sport 65-nanometer features (a nanometer is one thousandth of a micron).
"We can go below 10 microns, but what are the applications that would require that?" Bokhari said. "We'd need a compelling reason for high-speed devices."
Organic semiconductors, however, can come in a variety of sizes. Nanoident has built some that measure 160 centimeters a side, or more than 1.5 meters wide. These large devices are used as sensors.
"You can't do that with silicon," he said.

Gamespy confirmed as the company behind Wii online

2007-03-14T13:06:00.002+08:00

Los Angeles (CA) - After a successful stint so far with providing the middleware for online DS games, Gamespy today confirmed that it will be the provider for online multiplayer services for future Wii titles.
Pokemon Battle Revolution, which is due out on June 25, will be Nintendo's flagship title utilizing Gamespy's technology on a home console platform. The pending Super Smash Bros Brawl is also confirmed to include online multiplayer, with third party publishers expected to enter the Wii WiFi community in 2008.

Gamespy, which merged with IGN Entertainment in 2003 and then was subsequently acquired by News Corp, has been providing online multiplayer technology for the Nintendo DS since 2005. So far, the list only includes about two dozens titles and they are not really pushing the technological envelope.
Online multiplayer for the Wii will be a much more intensive project, with Nintendo promising additional services like in-game chatting and global competitions. Most online DS titles sport only a bare bones WiFi multiplayer mode.

Seas Yield Surprising Catch of Unknown Genes

2007-03-14T13:06:00.001+08:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/13/AR2007031301738.html(by.Lily)

By Rick WeissWashington Post Staff WriterWednesday, March 14, 2007; Page A01
It took some mighty fine nets, but scientists who spent two years trawling the world's oceans for bacteria and viruses have completed the most thorough census ever of marine microbial life, revealing an astonishingly diverse and bizarre microscopic menagerie.
Countering a long-held assumption that ocean waters are not rich with microbial life, the new report, released yesterday, reveals an otherworldly world of organismal ferment, including thousands of novel life forms that could help speed the development of new antibiotics and alternative energy sources and clarify the ocean's role in climate change.
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The census -- which in a single stroke has doubled the number of known genes in Earth's biological kingdom -- comes from a 21st-century version of Charles Darwin's 19th-century voyage on the HMS Beagle. Led by a Rockville-based team that circumnavigated the globe on a specially equipped sailboat, the project focused not on the microbes themselves -- most of which are too finicky to be kept alive in culture dishes -- but on their DNA, easily obtained from cells and later decoded on shore.
Perhaps most exciting, said study leader J. Craig Venter, is that the rate of discovery of new genes and proteins -- the building blocks of life -- was as great at the end of the voyage as it was at the start, suggesting that humanity is nowhere close to closing the logbooks on global biodiversity.
"Instead of being at the end of discovery, it means we're in the earliest stages," said Venter, chairman of the J. Craig Venter Institute, a nonprofit gene research center. "That is a pretty stunning view."
Mitchell Sogin of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., praised the work as a "remarkable technological achievement." Microbes account for up to 90 percent of the biomass in the oceans, he said, and control all the major biological and geochemical cycles that keep Earth's ecosystems in balance. So it is valuable to learn what those organisms are and where and how they live, he said.
The new findings, described in the March issue of the journal PLoS Biology, build on results Venter obtained during a 2003 test voyage in the Sargasso Sea, which had been considered an especially lifeless body of water. That netted more than 1 million genes entirely new to science -- evidence that Earth's seas harbor microbes far more numerous and far stranger than scientists had imagined.
The latest voyage, on Venter's 95-foot sloop, Sorcerer II, started in Nova Scotia, passed through the Panama Canal, then tagged the Galapagos, Polynesia, the Horn of Africa, the Caribbean and the U.S. East Coast, collaborating with local biologists as they went.
Every 200 miles, the team pumped 200 liters of seawater through a layered filter system that separated viruses and various kinds of cells by size. Yesterday's analysis covers about one-quarter of the samples -- from Nova Scotia to the Galapagos -- and only the viruses and smallest cells.
Yet DNA analyses on even that limited sample, conducted on an immensely powerful supercomputer designed for the project by the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, tallied genetic coding for more than 6 million new proteins, doubling the number already tabulated in the world's genetic databases.
Among them are more than 2,000 "proteorhodopsins," each of which can convert certain wavelengths of sunlight into biological energy through means wholly independent of photosynthesis, the process used by green vegetation. That gives scientists a slew of new methods to mimic for getting energy from the sun, Venter said.
Some new genes seem designed to help organisms get energy from carbon dioxide in the air, a tantalizing alternative to the oil and coal that most human technologies rely on. Researchers hope those biological blueprints may show them how to scrub greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Venter predicted that other genes will be found to direct the production of novel antibiotics, since bacteria are prodigious makers of such compounds, which they use to fend off other microbes.
The new data are being shared freely on the Web -- an approach many researchers and governments appreciate but that raised alarms in some countries that had considered profiting from the genetic heritages in their territorial waters. Although the Sorcerer team obtained permits for all their collections, there were occasional misunderstandings, Venter conceded -- one of which led to a one-week standoff in French Polynesia during which his boat was threatened by the French navy.
Sogin said follow-up surveys at different depths and locations will surely expand the database greatly.
"As amazing as this inventory is," Sogin said, "it's only scratching the surface of what's really there."

2007-03-14T13:05:00.000+08:00

Saturn's Icy Moon May Have Been Hot Enough for Life, Study Finds

2007-03-14T13:03:00.000+08:00

David Hyun
URL:http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070313-saturn-moon.html

One of the places in the solar system most likely to have extraterrestrial life may have gotten off to a hot, highly radioactive start, scientists reported yesterday at a meeting in Houston, Texas.
Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, stunned scientists two years ago when NASA's Cassini orbiter discovered geyser-like jets of water vapor shooting into space from its south pole.
RELATED Photo in the News: New Saturn Ring Found (September 21, 2006) Saturn Moon's Ice Geysers Create "Cosmic Graffiti" (February 8, 2007) Virtual Solar System
(Read: "Saturn Moon Has Water Geysers and, Just Maybe, Life" [March 10, 2006].)
Now a new study of Enceladus's plume finds that it's rich in nitrogen gas.
"This is interesting, because nitrogen is hard to produce in a body as small as Enceladus without significant heat," said John Spencer, a planetary scientist with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Spencer who was not part of the study.
The find suggests that the moon's core once reached temperatures around 1,070 degrees Fahrenheit (577 degrees Celsius)—hot enough to convert Enceladus's internal stores of ammonia into nitrogen.
This may also be hot enough to produce the possible precursors for life, said the study's lead author, Dennis Matson of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
"We've got an organic brew, a heat source, and liquid water—all key ingredients for life," Matson said in a press statement.
"And while no one is claiming that we have found life, by any means, we probably have evidence for a place that might be hospitable to life."
Cassini scientist Carolyn Porco of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said Enceladus should be a leading candidate site for future probes in search of extraterrestrial life.
"I think that if there is liquid water there, then Enceladus is the next 'go-to' place in the solar system."

Viacom sues YouTube over copyrights

2007-03-14T13:01:00.000+08:00

(url: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8NRNI701.htm)
Hyeon Chung

Media conglomerate Viacom Inc. is suing YouTube for $1 billion, claiming that the video-sharing site had built a business by using the Internet to "willfully infringe copyrights on a huge scale."
Other media companies also have major concerns about YouTube, but Viacom's was the first lawsuit filed by a major media owner.
Several media companies have reached agreements to supply YouTube with clips, including CBS Corp., General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal and the British Broadcasting Corp., but many others remain reluctant to deal with the Web site because of copyright concerns.
YouTube had been a quirky, fast-growing startup until the deep-pocketed Internet search behemoth Google Inc. bought the company last November for $1.76 billion.
But YouTube's soaring popularity, especially among younger people who are increasingly tuning out traditional media, has broadcasters frightened of losing viewers and advertising dollars.
Last month, Viacom demanded that YouTube remove more than 100,000 unauthorized clips from its site, and since that time, the company has uncovered more than 50,000 additional unauthorized clips, Viacom spokesman Jeremy Zweig said.
A quick search of YouTube's site turned up numerous clips from Viacom programs including segments from Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants" cartoon.
In the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, Viacom says YouTube "harnessed technology to willfully infringe copyrights on a huge scale" and had "brazen disregard" of intellectual property laws.
Viacom is especially at risk because many of its shows are aimed at younger viewers who also are heavy Internet users. At the same time, Viacom is trying to find other, legal ways to distribute its shows digitally, such as by selling episodes of "The Daily Show" and "South Park" for $1.99 each through Apple Inc.'s iTunes service. Those shows can then be viewed on a computer or iPod.
YouTube says it cooperates with all copyright holders and removes programming as soon as it is notified. But Viacom argues that approach lets YouTube avoid taking the initiative to curtail copyright infringement, instead shifting the burden and costs of monitoring the site onto copyright holders.
Alexander Macgillivray, associate general counsel for products and intellectual property at Google, said YouTube was protected under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which gives online service providers protection from copyright lawsuits so long as they comply with requests to remove unauthorized material.
"We're saying that the DMCA protects what we're doing," Macgillivray said in an interview. On the other hand, he said, "The DMCA is silent on what we have to do if we don't get a notice" to remove material.
Universal Music Group, a unit of France's Vivendi SA, had threatened to sue YouTube, saying it was a hub for pirated music videos, but later reached a licensing deal with them. NBC and the BBC also provide YouTube with clips.
Despite those arrangements, relations between media companies and YouTube remain tense. CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves told investors last week that its pact with YouTube had provided a big promotional boost for its shows. But he added that many big technology players "don't quite respect the content enough," although that was changing.
NBC has set up a channel to show authorized clips on YouTube, but it recently criticized the site and Google for not doing more to prevent copyrighted material from being posted online.
Bruce Sunstein, co-founder of intellectual property law firm Bromberg & Sunstein in Boston, said YouTube was still in the early stages of what was likely to be a "very long working-out of arrangements" with the owners of broadcast copyrights.
"Finding a way of peaceful coexistence is quite a struggle," Sunstein said. "Google's motto is 'Don't be evil,' and you could argue that with YouTube that motto is wearing a little thin."
Unlike the original Napster file-sharing service, which was shut down following complaints from music companies that it encouraged piracy, Sunstein said he expected YouTube and its corporate owners to eventually make peace with broadcasters. "I think YouTube very much wants to be legitimate," Sunstein said.
That doesn't mean other lawsuits won't follow Viacom's. Now that Viacom has thrown the first punch, other media companies may join the fray, Standard & Poor's analyst Scott Kessler warned in a research note.
A major lawsuit against YouTube has been widely anticipated because so much of the online video pioneer's success has been driven by easy access to copyright clips shared by its users.
While YouTube has yet to generate much revenue, its online traffic has been growing rapidly. According to comScore Media Metrix, YouTube attracted 133.5 million visitors worldwide in January, up from 9.5 million a year earlier.
Google began bracing for a legal onslaught last fall when it withheld nearly $220 million of YouTube's acquisition price in an escrow account. The Mountain View-based company also has another $11.2 billion in cash.
American Technology Research analyst Rob Sanderson believes Viacom filed the lawsuit to pressure Google into setting clear ground rules and fees for the usage of copyrighted content.
"This is all about a media company trying to protect its future," Sanderson said. "It's not about them trying to get damages for the past sins of YouTube."

Laptops to Ship With Automatic-Encryption Hard Drives

2007-03-14T13:00:00.000+08:00

URL:http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,258523,00.html
David Hyun

Seagate announced on Monday a new partnership with Fremont-based ASI Computer Technologies to start delivering laptops with the encrypting Momentus 5400 FDE.2 hard drive.
ASI, a company that typically caters to small and medium-sized value added resellers (VARs) and other customers in government, legal, financial, educational, and the health industries, will start selling the C8015 and C8015+ laptops through resellers like Newegg.com starting next month, according to Kent Tibbils, senior director of platform technologies and marketing for ASI.
The notebooks will come in 80-, 120-, and 160-gigabyte capacities, and will feature a 15.4-inch display, integrated biometric fingerprint readers, and will also support Intel Core 2 Duo, Core Duo, Core Solo, and Celeron M Mobile Processors.

to prevent duplicates

2007-03-14T12:59:00.000+08:00

(by.Lily)
Public Class Form1
Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
End Sub
Private Function addword(ByVal skey As String) As Boolean On Error Resume Next Static col As New Collection col.add("", skey) If Err.Number <> 0 Then Return False Else Return (True) End If End Function
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click MsgBox(addword(TextBox1.Text)) End SubEnd Class

Video games penetrate psyche of over a third of US adults

2007-03-14T12:57:00.000+08:00

(http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/10436/532/)
Hyeon Chung

The report shows that 36.5 percent of U.S. adults own a game console with 15.9 percent owning a hand held portable console of some kind.
A stereotype shattering 71 percent of these adults have managed to snare a spouse and two thirds have at least one child.
As game consoles have become increasingly sophisticated, families have incorporated them into their centralized home media centers, which include the television, digital recording device, digital music player, and the PC,” said Carolyn Creekmore, senior director of media analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings. “Video game technology will only benefit other media, since what makes a video game fun and exciting brings life to movies and music as well. Companies that can leverage these new technologies across a number of products will have a distinct advantage in the competitive marketplace.”
he report goes on to comment on the Nintendo Wii phenomenon, showing that traffic to the official web site Nintendo.com had increased 91 percent to 1.6 Million form February 2006. Microsoft had enjoyed a similar rise in online popularity with a 47 percent increase of those hitting Xbox.com, rising to 1.2 million in the year.
Playstation.com conversely saw a drop off of 8 percent down to a 1.0 million unique visitations. Still Sony realises that the demographic for the massive video gaming and entertainment industry is an aging one. Hence, for better or for worse, they are targeting a more mature market with their PS3, this Neilson reports seems to verify this as a just long term strategy.

PSP redesign in the works

2007-03-14T12:51:00.000+08:00

(url: http://www.playfuls.com/news_9766_Sony_Confirms_The_Redesigned_PSP.html)
Hyeon Chung

Comments made by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) executive Ray Maguire indicate that the long awaited redesign of the PSP is planned.Not many details available at this time, but one thing Maguire did confirm is that the praised PSP screen will not be part of the redesign.In an interview with gamesindustry.biz Maguire stated that the current PSP is just the “first iteration” and the aim of a revamped PSP strategy was to make the console “smaller [and] lighter” in the future.From the gamesindustry.biz article; Responding to a query on Sony’s plans for redesigning the system, Maguire added that any changes to the industrial design would not affect the size of PSP’s screen - widely seen as one of the system’s key strengths - which is "fixed". He did not offer any suggestions as to when the new iteration might be released.There has been much speculation around the PSP redesign of late, mostly around adding a Hard Drive or similar increase in storage and a change in the control system. The UMD format has turned out to be somewhat of a failure, with the UMD movies failing to ignite sales. From a gaming perspective, issues with load times also plagued the format.I imagine that UMD will remain in a redesigned PSP, if merely for backwards compatibility, Sony would look forward to a different way of delivering content however, most likely in an extended form of digital delivery online.

Macbook Catches On Fire!

2007-03-13T14:34:00.000+08:00

[via NewLaunches]

Matty from Melbourne Australia surfed the net using Safari for 30 minutes yesterday night on his Macbook, after which he close the lid put it on sleep mode and left it on the bookshelf for charging. However at 3 a.m. all hell broke loose as his girlfriend heard the Macbook hissing like a steam valve, then smoke started pouring out of it and a couple of seconds later, a very large flash fire started. On hearing her loud screams and the dog barking Matty raced to the scene.As I was running I saw a fire. At first I thought that the lamp had fallen and set fire to the curtain. As I got closer I realised it was my mac book .... burning! I picked it up and blew on it and swung it around to put the flames out. The book shelf it was sitting on was burnt and there were a couple of magazines that were on fire too. I quickly put those out and calmed down.
The battery is swollen and burnt so it's definitely the battery that exploded and caught fire. The macbook is melted on the bottom and severely charred (along with my bookshelves, books, magazines and the wall). The space bar is melted as is the track pad. The screen has been damaged a little too.Matty had purchased the Macbook in June last year and it is still under the 12 month warranty. He is looking for an efficient service center in Melbourne and is hoping that his hard drive data will be recovered.

Digital Music and the Blame Game

2007-03-13T14:20:00.001+08:00

http://blogs.pcworld.com/digitalworld/archives/2007/03/digital_music_a.html

If you thought the skirmishes over DRM and Apple's iTunes had waned, think again. The European Union's consumer protection commissioner Meglena Kuneva recently directed some barbed words toward Apple, criticizing its use of Fairplay DRM and the closed iTunes/iPod system. This is nothing new, but it does make for an interesting companion to another report that the major music labels still don't seem to have a viable digital music strategy other than putting their music on iTunes, then complaining about it.
Like the captain said, what we have here is a failure to communicate. For those who haven't been keeping score: Kuneva (who, a spokeswoman stressed, was airing her own views) and several European countries have been speaking out against DRM in general, and iTunes in particular. Apple's Steve Jobs has pointed the finger at the music industry for requiring DRM. The music industry blames Apple for having a closed system and for locking prices.
What no one has proposed -- at least, not seriously -- is dialogue. The major music labels currently pick and choose where their tracks will go, generally releasing them on iTunes. This cuts out a quarter of the MP3-player-owning market; can you think of any other industry that deliberately ignores such a high number of potential customers?
Apple, meanwhile, quite rightly does not want to be the only one to give up its DRM scheme. All other things being equal, it would put a major dent in iPod sales.
Things would go a lot smoother if the music industry made its content available across all media, like it used to do in the analog world. Or, if Apple found some way to open up iTunes in such a way that would minimize its risk. Neither entity will do these things on their own, so they have to find a third way: sit down, bring Microsoft and the rest of the PlaysForSure community to the table, and work something out. (Apple should initiate this, as right now they're the ones with the upper hand.) Endless finger-pointing isn't doing anyone any good.

Cool cars are invented!!!

2007-03-13T14:19:00.000+08:00

Dude, Where's My Jetpack?
2.26.2007
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/feb/jetpack-future-technologies

Flying Car
Look at your car sitting there in the driveway—sad, squat, all four tires on the pavement. You should feel sorry for your car for the same reason that you should feel sorry for yourself: You are both flightless. Optimistic drivers of the past imagined a future in which the stubby tail fins of their cars morphed into broad wings. According to the car companies presenting at the World's Fair of 1939, your driveway was destined to become a runway, the highway a skyway, and the only speed limit the speed of sound.
The first attempts at creating flying cars were fairly simple—install an airplane engine and two wings on a regular car. The first attempts were also disastrous. Henry Ford's "sky flivver" flew in 1928, but production was nixed after an unlucky pilot died in a crash. In 1956, Moulton Taylor, an engineer who earlier had helped develop the cruise missile, unveiled the Aerocar. The little yellow Aerocar could leap from the highway at 55 miles per hour and cruise up to 100 mph at around 12,000 feet with a range of up to 300 miles. The Aerocar worked fine conceptually, but it was too impractical for everyday use—a business deal for full-scale production fell through in the early 1970s. The only remaining Aerocar prototype was purchased by a fan who saw it advertised in the classifieds.
If you are averse to purchasing dangerous relics listed in obscure newspaper ads and you still want to acquire a flying car, the solution may be to let NASA take care of it. That's right, NASA gave us gooey foam pillows, dehydrated ice cream, and those shiny space blankets, and it may yet fork over the flying car. NASA scientists working on the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) project are making inroads on the two main problems holding back personal air travel on a massive, nationwide scale: midair collisions and complicated piloting mechanisms.
The Moller M400 Skycar launches like a helicopter, flies like an airplane, and drives like a car; unfortunately, you still can't buy one.
NASA eschews the term "flying car," preferring "personal air vehicle" instead. Nevertheless, NASA has imagined flying cars that would humiliate George Jetson. Until their vehicle program was eliminated in 2005, the folks at Langley Research Center planned to roll out three prototypes in sequence: a small prop plane that would tuck its wings in on the highway (it shouldn't cost any more than a Mercedes-Benz); a two-seater with rear-propeller drive; and, for tight parking spots, one capable of vertical takeoff. Merely providing the vehicles would not be enough, however. If everyday people are to use them, scientists must know how to track thousands of these car-planes. And knowing is half the battle.
Collision-deterring navigation systems are key to transforming highways into skyways. Personal air vehicles will use GPS and cell phone technology to automatically broadcast information about location and speed to ground-based towers. From the ground, an automated computer system will update the flight path of every sky vehicle and provide instant directions—automatically avoiding collisions and minimizing flight time. Meanwhile, onboard sensors will detect nearby trees, buildings, and power lines. And the jackpot bonus item for the sky-car consumer: For most of the flight the human "driver" can take care of anything besides flying, like eating a whole bag of potato chips.
NASA's dream cars may be exciting (and legitimate), but they aren't available to the public right this second. So turn your attention to the Moller M400 Skycar—a partially tested prototype offered in the 2005 Neiman Marcus gift catalog. Paul Moller, a former engineering professor at the University of California at Davis, has spent all of his money and more than 40 years trying to build a flying car. The current model is a cherry-red coupe that looks as though it should be dogfighting TIE fighters outside the Death Star. The futuristic Skycar has four seats (carrying up to 750 pounds), a maximum airspeed of 375 mph, and a range of about 750 miles. On the ground, the Skycar should travel a dinky 30 to 35 mph, just fast enough to get to an empty parking lot and stun everyone with a sweet vertical takeoff. Prototypes like the Skycar have been on the verge of full-scale production for almost a century, though, and it may be another hundred years before you can score that most badass symbol of the space age, the flying car.

Intel unveils 50-watt quad-core server processors

2007-03-13T14:17:00.000+08:00

Intel unveils 50-watt quad-core server processors Printer friendly

http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20070313PR200.html

Further expanding its quad-core processor family lineup, Intel has announced two energy-efficient 50-watt server processors that represent a decrease ranging from 35% to nearly 60% in power from Intel's existing 80- and 120-watt quad-core server products.
These new processors, requiring just 12.5 watts of power for each of the four cores, deliver similar performance yet set a new standard in energy efficiency, said Intel, which has introduced 11 server, workstation and desktop PC quad-core processors since November 2006.
The two low-voltage processors, the Intel Xeon processor L5320 and L5310, operate at 1.86GHz and 1.60GHz respectively, feature a unique 8MB of on die cache for faster memory data communication and run on dedicated 1066MHz front side buses. In 1,000 unit quantities the L5320 is priced at US$519 and the L5310 at US$455.
These processors can be coupled with Intel's existing "Bensley" server platform and have been designed to be "drop-in" compatible with the existing dual-core and quad-core Intel Xeon processor families.
Servers based on the new low-power, quad-core processors are designed for dense Internet datacenters, blade servers and industries such as financial services where the scale and density of servers are highly sensitive to power, real estate and cooling costs. The potential for cost savings by replacing aging infrastructure with quad-core Intel Xeon processors and deploying virtualization technology can be as much as US$6,000 per year over the lifetime of each server based on Intel's own evaluations.
In addition, these new processors represent a nearly ten-fold improvement in power consumption per core in just one and half years, said Intel.
Servers based on these new processors are expected to be available worldwide over the next few months from Acer, Dell, Digital Henge, Fujitsu Siemens, Hewlett Packard (HP), HCL, IBM, Rackable Systems, Samsung Electronics, Verari, Wipro and other companies.

AddWord Function

2007-03-13T13:18:00.000+08:00

This code is used to test the AddWord Function

Public Class Form1
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
Dim bSuccess As Boolean
bSuccess = AddWord(TextBox1.Text)
MsgBox(bSuccess)
End Sub
Private Function AddWord(ByVal sKey As String) As Boolean
On Error Resume Next
Static Col As New Collection
Col.Add("", sKey)
If Err.Number <> 0 Then
Return False
Else
Return True
End If
End Function
End Class

Flash memory drives now available from Intel

2007-03-13T13:15:00.000+08:00

Flash memory isn't just for cell phones anymore. Flash drives are moving up into PCs and servers, and Intel wants to get in on the action with a new drive.
The company formally launched the Intel Z-U130 Value Solid-State Drive (just rolls right off the tongue) on Monday, promising to deliver the drives to PC and server companies as either replacement hard drives or performance enhancers. These drives aren't going to be replacing your hard drive in most situations--at least for now--but could provide a more reliable low-cost way of storing information in PCs for emerging markets, said Greg Matson, product marketing manager for Intel's NAND flash memory division.
The drives can also be used in PCs or servers to help the operating system boot faster, he said. Intel is not disclosing pricing for the drives, which range in capacity from 1GB to 8GB. But he said that the drives would cost less than half the price of a $40 to $50 low-end PC hard drive.
Intel is still planning to deliver a separate flash memory technology known as Robson along with the introduction of its Santa Rosa notebook technology, expected in the first half of this year. Robson is designed to help boost performance but was engineered specifically for a notebook.

After False Claim, Wikipedia to Check Degrees

2007-03-13T13:12:00.000+08:00

After an influential contributor and administrator at the online encyclopedia Wikipedia was found last week to have invented a history of academic credentials, Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s co-founder and globetrotting advocate, called for a voluntary system for accrediting contributors who say they have advanced degrees, like a Ph.D or M.D.

The details of how Mr. Wales’s system would work are still being bandied about, and include the idea of having users fax copies of their diplomas to Wikipedia’s offices, or relying on a “circle of trust,” whereby a trusted individual would be in charge of verification. Mr. Wales said he thought that some version of his proposal would begin on the site “in a week.”
But reaction within the fiercely egalitarian Wikipedia world has not been universally favorable. Many writing on Mr. Wales’s user page seemed dumbstruck at the idea of Wikipedia spending its time to verify academic authority when the site’s motto is “the encyclopedia anyone can edit.”
Florence Devouard, Mr. Wales’s successor as the head of Wikimedia Foundation board, the parent of the many Wikipedias in scores of languages, said she was “not supportive” of the proposal. “I think what matters is the quality of the content, which we can improve by enforcing policies such as ‘cite your source,’ not the quality of credentials showed by an editor,” she added.
Mr. Wales was reacting to the public fallout from the revelation that a contributor and Wikipedia administrator named Essjay who claimed to be a tenured professor in Catholic law was in fact Ryan Jordan, a 24-year-old from Louisville, Ky. Mr. Wales said that the Essjay controversy was evidence of “growing pains” for the site, a worldwide phenomenon that has become a default research tool for nearly everyone who uses the Internet.
And while he said “the moral of the story is what makes for a good Wikipedian is not a good credential,” he added that it was important that the general public not think that Wikipedia is “written by a bunch of 12-year-olds.”

Intel Readies Power-Saving Quad-Core Xeons

2007-03-13T13:09:00.000+08:00

David Hyun
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129716-c,xeon/article.html

Intel Corp. quad-core microprocessors that work at an energy-efficient 50 watts per processor will officially be on the market starting Monday, according to the company.
Each of the four cores in its new Xeon L5320 and L5310 will consume just 12.5 watts of electricity, according to Intel. The company claims the new Xeons use between 35 percent and nearly 60 percent less power than its existing 80-watt and 120-watt quad-core server products.
The L5320 operates at 1.86 GHz and the L5310 at 1.60 GHz. They both feature 8M bytes of on-die cache for faster memory data communication. In quantities of 1,000 units, the L5320 is priced at US$519 and the L5310 at $455.
The new Xeons can be coupled with Intel's existing Bensley server platform, replacing existing dual-core or quad-core Intel processors.
Intel and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. are locked in competition for dominance in the quad-core chip market, as enterprises demand more performance out of servers. Meanwhile, customers are demanding greater energy efficiency as data center electrical costs rise.
AMD in February released details of its coming new quad-core chip, code-named Barcelona, at a technical conference in San Francisco.
Barcelona, due to be released midyear, improves performance and energy efficiency over the competition and over AMD's own dual-core processor, the Opteron, which it introduced in 2003, said Brent Kerby, product marketing manager for Opteron, in an earlier IDG News Service interview.
Servers based on the new Xeons are expected to be available worldwide over the next few months from such server manufacturers as Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp. and others.

SEC: 3 traders toyed with Google options

2007-03-13T13:08:00.001+08:00

David Hyun
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/hacking/2007-03-12-cyber-scam-stocks_N.htm

It's not just penny stocks that cybercrooks are manipulating for illicit profit.The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday announced civil charges against three men who allegedly manipulated Google "put options" and Sun Microsystems shares after-hours as part of scams built around using stolen log-ins to break into online brokerage accounts.
The Justice Department also issued criminal indictments against the three accusing them of breaching consumer accounts at E-Trade, TD Ameritrade, Merrill Lynch and Fidelity Brokerage Services.
The SEC's complaint, the fourth since December, shows how clever cybercriminals have become in defeating security systems. "These aren't social misfits operating from Mom's house," says Paul Moriarty, director of Internet content security at Trend Micro. "These are people who are really going after this to try and make money."
Civil and criminal charges have been filed against Jaisankar Marimuthu 32, and brothers Chockalingam Ramanathan, 33, of Chenmai, India, and Thirugnanam Ramanathan, 34, an Indian national who lives in Malaysia. The trio allegedly sold off dozens of portfolios, then used the proceeds to buy positions in — and thus drive up the price — of shares and options they held.
One brokerage account holder who was a victim left for a five-day Alaskan fishing trip with a portfolio worth $180,000 and returned to find the balance at negative $200,000, according to the SEC.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Google Securities and Exchange Commission Ameritrade Brokerage Cybercrooks can easily breach online brokerage accounts because most require just a username and password to access over the Internet, Moriarty says. Stolen log-on data for online brokerage accounts is readily available on Internet chat channels and websites, called carding forums, where cybercriminals congregate.
A typical price: 10% of the balance in the account, says Dan Clements, CEO of security firm CardCops.
While breaking into online accounts is straightforward, getting cash out takes work. Cyberthieves "sometimes strike out, or don't make all that much," says John Reed Stark, chief of the SEC's Office of Internet Enforcement. "Of all the Internet fraud schemes, these are certainly the most complex."
In this particular case, the SEC alleges that the suspects set up their own online accounts at lesser-known brokerages — ChoiceTrade, Firstrade, OptionsXpress and TradeKing — and then amassed shares in thinly traded securities, which are susceptible to wide price fluctuations.
In the case of Google, a heavily traded company, they acquired shares of a "put option," essentially a 5-cents-per-share bet that Google's share price would plummet 40% within two months. Then the fancy footwork began. According the SEC complaint the Google heist worked like this:
Several times last October, the suspects intruded into online accounts at Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade and Fidelity Brokerage Services. They sold off the portfolios and used the proceeds to buy Google put options, briefly driving the price up as high as 15 cents per share. They then sold put options acquired earlier for 5 cents per share for double or triple what they paid. Timing had to be perfect. Marimuthu, who was arrested in Hong Kong last December, earned $26,890, while Thirugnanam Ramanathan, arrested in Hong Kong in January, made $1,800. Chockalingam Ramanathan, who's still at large, earned $3,560, the SEC complaint says.
Working together since last July, the three earned $121,500, though the cost to the affected online brokerages to make victimized account holders whole was much higher: $875,000, the SEC says.
U.S. authorities plan to seek extradition of the suspects, Stark says.

Samsung Reveals 8GB Memory Chip

2007-03-13T13:02:00.000+08:00

Samsung Electronics on Monday said it has developed a high-density, eight-gigabyte memory chip dubbed the moviNAND which it will begin mass-producing in the second quarter of the year.
The moviNAND consists of a NAND flash memory chip and a multimedia card controller. The new product provides twice the capacity and performance of a 4GB version and will enable electronics makers to develop smaller mobile devices in a wider variety of designs.
The moviNAND follows the standards for high-density embedded flash memory applications developed by the JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) and MMCA (MultiMediaCard Association.)
The value of the total market volume of the new product is predicted to reach about US$4 billion over the next four years. Samsung expects the moviNAND will gain popularity with cellphone and navigator makers with its high-density, high-speed, but low-noise performance.
(englishnews@chosun.com )

Europe continues push for iTunes interoperability

2007-03-12T14:41:00.001+08:00

http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/10368/53/
European pressure on DRM schemes that restrict the use of purchased music to particular types of player (think iTunes and iPod) has stepped up a notch.

EU Consumer Protection Commissioner Meglena Kuneva has been quoted as saying "Do you think it's fine that a CD plays in all CD players but that an iTunes song only plays in an iPod? I don't. Something has to change."
While this overlooks the fact that tracks purchased from the iTunes Store can legitimately be transferred to audio CD - Apple's iTunes software will do this for you - going from protected AAC to CD to MP3 (or some other format supported by other mobile players) does result in some loss of quality, much like photocopying a photocopy.
Scandinavian countries, led by Norway, have been pressing Apple to provide interoperability between iTunes tracks and other manufacturers' players. Apple has until 1 October 2007 to bring the iTunes store into line with Norwegian law.
It remains to be seen how Apple will respond, but one possibility is that it will close the iTunes store to countries where its current business model is considered illegal.
For its part, Apple has been trying to deflect criticism onto the record companies. It was largely Apple's success in persuading those companies that its DRM was sufficiently secure that attracted them to the iTunes Store.
It's not beyond the realms of possibility that Apple could - with the labels' cooperation - use the Norwegian situation to test market reaction to DRM-free music. If sales hold up and there's no corresponding drop in sales of the same titles in other geographies, the sale of unprotected content could spread.
Apple does seem to be strongly against the alternative, which is to allow other companies to use its DRM scheme as mandated by recent French legislation.
The EU is know to be working towards unifying member nations' consumer protection laws, and several countries have expressed concern that there is not the same degree of interoperability between music sold online and portable players from different manufacturers as there is between CDs and CD players, or DVDs and DVD players.
The heart of the issue is the 'lock in' problem - to keep using their libraries of purchased content on portable players, iPod owners must keep buying iPods, Zune owners must keep buying Zunes, and so on.

S.Korea chip makers up anew on NAND memory hopes

2007-03-12T14:38:00.000+08:00

S.Korea chip makers up anew on NAND memory hopes
Mon Mar 12, 2007 11:17 AM IST

http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2007-03-12T111028Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-290615-1.xml&archived=False

By Rafael Nam
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean chip makers including Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. extended this month's gains on Monday as prices of NAND flash memory chips used in digital gadgets are expected to rebound, pulling up earnings.
Easing worries about the global economy, following well received jobs data in the United States and solid economic growth in Japan, also boosted the export-oriented sector.
Valuations are playing a role as well, after shares in South Korean chip makers had tumbled for several months on worries about falling prices of memory chips, which threatened to worsen first half earnings that are traditionally marked by weak demand.
"The bottom for memory chip prices is not too far away. Flash memory is close to hitting a bottom, although DRAM prices could continue on a downward trend," said Chung Chan-won, an analyst at Daewoo Securities.
"We do think the earnings trends in Korean chip makers is softening, but share prices are reflecting a hard landing scenario. They are quite low compared to their long-term earnings valuations," he added.
Samsung Electronics, the world's biggest maker of memory chips, rose as much as 2.6 percent. Shares were up 2.39 percent at 600,000 won as of 0438 GMT, marking its fifth day of gains. That compared with a 0.95 percent gain in the main index.
Hynix Semiconductor Inc. advanced 1.08 percent to 32,850 won, its third consecutive daily gain.
Analysts have cut earnings forecasts for Samsung Electronics and Hynix as NAND flash memory chip prices have fallen, while those for DRAM chips, used in computers, have peaked after gaining strongly through the end of last year.
Despite the estimate cuts, investors appear to be increasingly optimistic about the sector.
Goldman Sachs on Monday cut its 2007 earnings-per-share forecast for Samsung Electronics by 11 percent citing lower memory chip prices, but maintained its buy rating on the stock and said it could gain as much as 25 percent from current levels given its low valuations and cost reduction efforts.
The U.S. investment house said Samsung was trading at a price to book ratio of 1.75 times 2007 earnings, a measure some analysts prefer to determine a company's valuations, close to the chip maker's historic low of 1.5 times. Its five year trading range has been 1.5 times to 2.5 times.
Last week Merrill Lynch cut its target prices on South Korean chip makers Samsung and Hynix but reiterated its buy rating on both, saying the risk to flash memory chip prices would decrease in the second quarter, which would be followed by a sales recovery in the third quarter.
"We expect NAND to lead the recovery in 2H (second half) and growth in 2008, resulting from a superior pricing environment coupled with global capacity constraints to meet the demand from new applications," Merrill said in its report.
Some investors are banking on new applications to drive shares, with speculation last week that Apple Inc. may sell small computers powered by flash memory chips helping give a bounce to chip maker shares.
Samsung shares have gained 3.3 percent so far in March as of Friday, heading to its first monthly rise in four months. Hynix shares have gained 4.3 percent, en route to its first monthly rise in three months.

2007-03-12T14:37:00.000+08:00

Digital data will increase sixfold by 2010: study
8 Mar 2007 10

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/03/08/digital_data_explosion/

Imagine 12 stacks of Harry Potter books reaching from Earth to the Sun - that's equivalent to the amount of data stored on digital devices within three years.

New research suggests digital information will occupy a staggering 988 billion gigabytes of storage space in 2010 - more than six times its current quantity.

It seems that all of our digital activity is adding up, particularly data heavy applications such as video downloads from YouTube and digital music from sites like iTunes.

According to a new IDC report, the digital universe measured 161 billion gigabytes (or 161 exabytes) in 2006. This is approximately more than three million times the information in all the books ever written - a staggering amount of detail to accumulate in a such short space of time.

The EMC-sponsored study measured and forecast the amounts and types of digital information created and copied in the world up until 2010. This includes digital images, video, email, music and other types of information.

It seems that snap-happy digital camera owners are making up a large proportion of the digital universe, with images being captured by more than 1 billion devices, from cameras and phones to medical scanners and security cameras.

More than 150 billion images were captured on digital cameras in 2006, with a further 100 billion captured on mobile phones. According to IDC, more than 500 billion images will be captured by 2010.

Meanwhile, more people are regularly getting online than ever before. In 1996, when the web as we know it was a mere two years old, only 48 million people used the internet on a regular basis. By 2006, however, this figure had grown to 1.1 billion, a figure that IDC expects to rise by another 500 million users by 2010.

Email usage has also surged, with the number of email mailboxes growing from 253 million in 1998 to almost 1.6 billion in 2006. The popular communication method has grown three times faster than the number of people actually using it.

Internet instant messaging (IM) is also expected to grow in popularity, with 250 million accounts predicted by 2010.

"The incredible growth and sheer amount of the different types of information being generated from so many different places represents more than just a worldwide information explosion of unprecedented scale," said John Gantz, chief research officer and senior vice president at IDC. "It represents an entire shift in how information has moved from analogue form, where it was finite, to digital form, where it's infinite."

Although almost 70 per cent of the digital universe will be generated by individuals by 2010, the study found organisations will be responsible for the security, privacy, reliability and compliance of at least 85 per cent of it, through data centres, telephone and hosting switches, or data back-up depositories.

"This explosive growth will change the way organisations and IT professionals do their jobs, and the way we consumers use information," said Mark Lewis, EMC executive vice president and chief development officer.

"Given that 85 per cent per cent of the information created and copied will be the responsibility of organisations and businesses, we must take steps as an industry to ensure we develop flexible, reliable and secure information infrastructures to handle the deluge."

Sony to cut costs for European PlayStation 3 by removing chip

2007-03-12T14:35:00.000+08:00

Sony to cut costs for European PlayStation 3 by removing chip

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2007-03-09-ps3-chip-cut_N.htm

TOKYO (Reuters) — Sony is removing a chip from the European version of its new PlayStation 3 (PS3) game console, a move that cuts costs but means users cannot play some of their old games.Sony shares rose nearly 3% after the news, which is expected to expedite efforts by the Tokyo-based electronics and entertainment conglomerate to turn its PS3 operations profitable — a focus for investors.
Sony, locked in a three-way battle with Microsoft and Nintendo for dominance of the $30 billion video game industry, now makes a loss for each PS3 it sells.
Both Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's Xbox 360 are cheaper than Sony's latest PlayStation and have been outselling it, although the Xbox 360 has been on the market longer.
The PS3 is to go on sale in Europe on March 23, following its North American and Japanese launches late last year.
Unlike the PS3 being sold in the United States and Japan, the European version will not carry a Sony-made microchip that offers graphic- and data-processing functions for PS2 games, cutting production costs, said a spokesman for game unit Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE).
The console will still be equipped with a different chip that processes graphics for PS2 games, but the backward compatibility of the machine will be lessened, the spokesman said.
Sony packs the PS3 with its cutting-edge technology such as a Blu-ray high-definition DVD player and the Cell microchip, dubbed a "supercomputer on a chip", which provides lifelike graphics and high-speed downloading of game software and video clips.
But they have driven up production costs, dragging Sony's game operations into a deep loss for the business year ending March 31.
Sony said in January it expected losses in its game unit to exceed its previous estimate of 200 billion yen this business year, but would aim to break even on games in the year starting April 1.
In another cost-cutting measure, Sony is planning to introduce Cell chips with circuitry width of 65 nanometres this year, replacing the current 90-nanometre ones.
Narrower circuitry makes microchips smaller, cutting per-chip production costs. A nanometre is one billionth of a metre.
The basic model of the PS3 sells for 49,980 yen ($426.5) in Japan and $499 in the United States, double the price of Nintendo's Wii.
Sony saw its television business posting a profit for the first time in two years in October-December, making its game division's profitability the biggest concern for investors.
Shares in Sony closed up 2.8% at 6,160 yen, outpacing the Tokyo stock market's electrical machinery index IELEC, which rose 1.22%. ($1=117.17 Yen)

Starting Right Away!

2007-03-12T14:29:00.000+08:00

You guys probably know that everytime you run the program, there'll be like "RadioButton1," "RadioButton2," etc. To get into the "game," you'd need to click the "Next" button. This is a fix so that you can start the game straightaway.

Under Form1_Load(), add at the very bottom:

NextRecord()

So that it'll look like:

m_aAllRecordsArray = Split(m_sAllRecords, vbNewLine)
NextRecord()
End Sub

Next, cut all contents from the function, Button1_Click and paste it in a new function called, NextRecord().

Finally, in the "command-less" Button1_Click function, add:

NextRecord()

So it looks like:

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As
System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
NextRecord()
End Sub

Done.

2007-03-12T14:28:00.000+08:00

New technology helps catch child predators
March 10, 2007 07:46 AM
http://www.waff.com/Global/story.asp?S=6206122&nav=0hBE

Class is in session for your children, sure, but also for authorities trying to stop child predators on-line.

The experts say technology is changing crime.

What one can do with a computer is bound only by the imagination.

We've been following the efforts to keep up with technologically advanced crimes.

Stepping up the effort is the focus of this WAFF 48 Investigators Report. In July we told you about a new cyber crime fighting tool coming to town

In January we introduced you to that tool, an Alabama computer forensics lab here in Huntsville.

It's one of three labs across the state and Alabama is one of only two states in the country to implement such a program.

Two weeks ago, we told you about a Vernon man, arrested on 149 counts of child porn. He was busted by the ACFL, a group set to expand by building a national computer forensics institute about a hundred miles away in Hoover Alabama.

Thousands of investigators from across the world will converge on that institute, training how to combat all types of cyber crime, from homicide, to identity theft, to kiddie porn.

Center directors say it'll be many months before that institute opens, but in the meantime, interim training courses will be underway in temporary facilities.

EU Consumer Chief Kuneva Criticizes iTunes iPod Combo

2007-03-12T14:27:00.000+08:00

http://www.playfuls.com/news_06487_EU_Consumer_Chief_Kuneva_Criticizes_iTunes_iPod_Combo.html

European Union consumer chief Meglena Kuneva has expressed her opinion about Apple’s policy to allow iTunes’ songs to be played only on iPods. “Do you think it’s fine that a CD plays in all CD players but that an iTunes song only plays in an iPod? I don’t. Something has to change,” said EU Consumer Protection Commissioner Kuneva, according to Reuters. It’s still unclear if Kuneva’s remark is an official position or just a personal opinon, but Apple is facing a lot of pressure in Europe to make iTunes interoperable.
In January this year, the Norwegian government declared iTunes illegal and gave Apple until Oct. 1 to let competitor devices play songs downloaded from the iTunes music store. Also, consumer rights groups in Finland, France and Germany filed similar complaints and issued a joint statement with their counterparts in Norway criticizing Apple.
The problems for Apple in Europe have begun last year when France threatened to pass a law forcing the company to make iTunes tracks compatible with all devices. After Apple called the law state-sponsored piracy and have threatened that will close its iTunes store in France, the French senate softened the law. The French senate has added language to the bill so that a company that agrees to provide its proprietary codes to rivals will receive a license fee along with guarantees that the transfer of information will not weaken its copyright protection measures.
iTunes Store was launched initially to promote iPod player, but in three years Apple has managed to transform into the biggest online music download service. In February 2006, Apple has celebrated the 1 billionth download from iTunes. According to Nielsen NetRatings, a provider of Internet media and market research, traffic to Apple's iTunes Web site and use of the iTunes application has spectacularly increased in the last two years, reaching nearly 14 percent of the active Internet population.
Last month in an open letter, Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, expressed his opinion about the issues in Europe. “Those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.” wrote Steve Jobs.

Sony unveils virtual PlayStation world

2007-03-12T14:25:00.000+08:00

Sony unveils virtual PlayStation world
By ASHER MOSES - SMH Monday, 12 March 2007

http://www.stuff.co.nz/3988670a28.html

Sony pulled another rabbit out of its hat when it revealed a new freebie for PlayStation 3 owners - an online, 3D virtual world in which gamers can hang out and communicate with each other.
The announcement almost created a public relations disaster for the games console market leader, which went to enormous lengths last week to keep it under wraps.
Demonstrating the service - dubbed PlayStation Home - at the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, Sony worldwide studios president Phil Harrison said he expected the free download for the PS3 to be available from August.
The virtual world, which is uncannily similar to Second Life, will help take the sting out of the PS3's $1200 price and delayed March 23 release date.
Sony said in a statement that Home "allows PS3 users to interact, communicate, join online games, shop, share private content and even build and show off their own personal spaces to others in real time".
Last week, popular gaming blog Kotaku killed Sony's surprise by leaking extensive details about Home and predicting the GDC announcement. It led Sony to cut off all communications with the blog, but that decision was reversed after a huge public uproar by the gaming community and journalists.
Those who attended Harrison's Home demonstrations today described it as drawing inspiration from Second Life, the social networking site MySpace and the video sharing service YouTube.
Each user is represented in the virtual world by a fully customisable 3D character called an "avatar", which has its own private space or "apartment".
From their apartments, inhabitants can launch straight into multiplayer games or share their photos, video and music content.
In addition to the private apartments, there are also various common areas where users can interact and compete with each other in arcade games such as pool or bowling.
It is unclear whether third parties will be allowed to set up bases within the virtual world or sell products to its inhabitants - a hallmark feature of the Second Life economy - but Sony does plan to commercialise Home with in-world ads.
Sony is also expected to sell clothing for avatars and apartment furniture, but details on this are sparse.
Home is the latest in a series of freebies Sony is offering prospective PS3 buyers; late last month, its managing director for Australia and New Zealand, Michael Ephraim, announced that the first 20,000 people to register their PS3 online would receive a free copy of the James Bond film Casino Royale.
Further, all PS3 buyers will be offered the game Gran Turismo: HD as a free download from the PlayStation Network.
Sony hopes these incentives, coupled with the PS3's ability to play Blu-ray movies and act as a multimedia hub, will convince Australians to choose the PS3 over the cheaper Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360.
The Wii and Xbox 360 can be had for $399.95 and $650 respectively, but it appears that neither can compete with the PS3 as an all-round entertainment system.
In fact, the PS3's photo, music and movie viewing capabilities, as well as the built-in internet browser, are being marketed just as heavily as the gaming features.

2007-03-12T14:22:00.000+08:00

Digital universe 'infinite'
10/03/2007 18:26 - (SA)
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,9294,2-13-1443_2081420,00.html

Johannesburg - Just how big is the digital universe? About 161 billion gigabytes and growing fast, according to new research.

EMC Corporation, an information infrastructure solutions business, said the research it sponsored found that "the 2006 digital universe was 161 billion gigabytes, or 161 exabytes, in size" and a six-fold growth to 988 exabytes was predicted by 2010.

"This digital universe equals approximately three million times the information in all the books ever written - or the equivalent of 12 stacks of books, each extending more than 93 million miles from the earth to the sun," said EMC.

"It represents an entire shift in how information has moved from analogue form, where it was finite, to digital form, where it's infinite," said chief research officer and senior vice-president of IDC, John Gantz. IDC did the research.

"While nearly 70% of the digital universe will be generated by individuals by 2010, most of this content will be touched by an organisation along the way - on a network, in a data centre, at a hosting site, at a telephone or internet switch, or in a backup system.

Organisations in control

"Organisations - including businesses of all sizes, agencies, governments and associations - will be responsible for the security, privacy, reliability and compliance of at least 85 percent of the information," said EMC.

"This ever-growing mass of information is putting a considerable strain on the IT infrastructures we have in place today," said CEO of EMC South Africa Frank Touwen.

He said it would change the way organisations and IT professionals worked and the way consumers used information.

Most of the digital information is images, captured by more than one billion devices around the world, including digital cameras and cellphones.

The information includes e-mails generated from 1.6 billion e-mail boxes last year and 1.1 billion internet users.

New device 'uses emotions to play games'

2007-03-12T13:17:00.001+08:00

http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/New-device-uses-emotions-to-play-games/2007/03/12/1173548082973.htmlEmail Print Normal font Large font March 12, 2007 - 2:29PM(By. Lily)

In a world where gamers can spend days on end intimately coupled to their PCs, one Australian company is seeking to intensify the relationship between man and machine.
Emotiv Systems has shifted its main headquarters from Sydney to San Francisco as it moves to secure support for a mind-reading device it believes will profoundly change the way humans interact with computers.
The fledgling business has secured about $6.3 million in venture capital and Australian government grants for the marketing of the Emotiv Development Kit (EDK), a product the company is initially pitching at game developers.
The kit, recently unveiled at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, includes the company's headset, dubbed Project Epoc, a device able to detect electrical activity in the brain.
The EDK reads these signals and interpolates them into meaningful information - in other words, it can read a limited vocabulary of thoughts and emotions.
The kit comprises three applications known as Expressiv, Affectiv and Cognitiv.
Expressiv can also work out a user's facial expression, recreating this on the face of an "avatar" - a graphical representation of a user.
The intent is to make the social networking experience in platforms such as Second Life more natural.
Emotiv chief product officer Randy Breen, previously product development head at LucasArts, says advances in the way the gaming industry currently works are driving the project.
"The problem is that graphics and sound have improved dramatically to a point where the improvements are becoming more subtle and the costs to support them are making it more difficult to find profit for the developers," Breen says.
"There's pressure on where the innovation is coming from.
"Historically, the game controller hasn't changed very much over a long period of time so that in recent years we've started to see more unusual hardware coming to market."
Breen describes Expressiv as a significantly more advanced take on "emotes", symbols that users employ to convey a feeling or action over the electronic written medium.
Users will be able to communicate not just conscious intent but more immediate non-conscious responses such as laughter, smiling or wincing.
"Emotes do that to some extent now but it's really different when there's a barrier that requires you to consciously think about communicating laughing," Breen says.
"Communicating that text and then sending it off and the other person reads it - the reaction to that is not as immediate, not as real."

Mobile phones are new frontier in advertising

2007-03-12T13:12:00.001+08:00

Site: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/11/business/ad12.php
(by. Lily)
Eric Pfanner
Old media got left behind in the race to go online, in part because the prospects for advertising, traditionally the major revenue generator for newspapers, magazines and television, seemed unclear on the Internet. Then online advertising took off, and old media are still playing catch-up.
Now, with the next iteration of the Internet, the mobile Web, spreading around the world, publishers and other content providers are trying to keep up, lest they get in late on another advertising bonanza.
Last week in London, the Online Publishers Association released a study showing that use of the mobile Internet is on the rise, along with acceptance of mobile advertising.
Today in Technology & Media
Wireless: Operating systems present problems for mobile phone makers Telecoms fighting in tough TV arena French election could determine future of government-supported France 24 news channelThe survey, conducted by TNS Media and Entertainment in the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, found that 76 percent of cellphone owners in those countries now have access to the Web from mobile devices. The researchers, who polled about 1,000 people in each country, found that more than a third of those with mobile Web access used such services. The Web-using population ranged from 34 percent in France to 54 percent in Britain.
Studies commissioned by trade organizations are sometimes just disguised marketing exercises, and indeed the publishers' group's numbers seem surprisingly high, compared with other recent surveys of Web access by mobile phone users. According to M:Metrics, a research firm based in Seattle, 14 percent of British cellphone users accessed the Web for news and information in the fourth quarter. In Germany, a mere 3.2 percent did so, according to the firm.
Still, even if the lower estimates are right, mobile marketing could be a big thing, simply because the numbers are enormous. Some oft-repeated measures: Around one billion mobile phones will be sold around the world this year. Globally, there are more cellphones than PCs.
"I always hear about the cellphone as being the 'third screen,' but I think about it as the first one," said Bob Greenberg, chief executive of R/GA, an agency based in New York that specializes in digital advertising, speaking at a conference sponsored by the publishers' association. "It's with me all the time."
In advertising terms, however, the mobile remains very much the third screen, behind television and the PC. Outside Asia, where mobile advertising has grown rapidly in markets like Japan, activity is still dominated by "text and response" campaigns that ask users to send text messages for more information on a product, or to enter a contest, for example.
The personal nature of the link between cellphones and their users has made marketers tread carefully. Some kinds of mobile advertising — unsolicited text-message spam, for instance — are illegal or against advertising regulatory codes in many countries.
The online publishers' survey indicated that consumers remain wary. Only 18 percent of respondents in the United States said they were receptive to the idea of watching ads in exchange for free mobile content. The percentage was higher in Europe, where 37 percent said they would do so.
But the study also showed how effective mobile advertising could be, if the personal space can be entered deftly. Sizable percentages of respondents said they had visited a Web site, for instance, or requested more information about a product, as a result of a mobile ad.
In an effort to get more marketers into mobile, Nokia last week announced two new services that aim to stimulate the development of mobile advertising. One of the new programs will help digital advertising specialists roll out campaigns for cellphone-based media applications like music players and navigation systems. The other will help agencies adapt digital campaigns for the mobile web.
"It was kind of natural for us to try to figure out how advertising will work inside these platforms," said Harry Santamaki, vice president for multimedia strategy and business development at Nokia.
With mobile media embracing an increasingly diverse array of devices and formats, from video game players to portable newspaper readers, that may be no easy task. But, if you believe the marketing, the payoff could be sizable.

Wikipedia Founder Plans To Launch Search Engine

2007-03-12T12:58:00.002+08:00

David Hyun
URL:
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7006697731

Tokyo, Japan (AHN) - Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on Thursday indicated his plans to launch an open source search engine early next year. According to Wales, the first test version of the search engine could be released sometime in 2007 so that programmers could spot and remove the bugs that only become visible with real-world usage.
Speaking at a news conference in Japan, Wales said the project being run by Wikia Inc. could snag as much as 5 percent of the search market.
Wales said that although the project is still in its preliminary phase, it has already started attracting attention from a community of engineers, programmers and developers.
"We are getting a lot of interest from second-tier search players who are really interested in some of the alternatives that might be available," he told Macworld.com.
The Wiki-founder went on to criticize Google and Yahoo! for keeping their search technologies under wraps and said that the technology used by Google should not necessarily be given the market edge it is receiving.
"The idea that Google has some edge because they've got super duper rocket scientists may be a little antiquated now," he said at the conference.
However, he acknowledged that publishing a search algorithm, which usually determines how a particular site is ranked, would make it too easy for spammers to "game the system...and my whole idea won't work," he told the Macworld.com.
Still Wales hopes that the search engine would ride on the success of the collaborative search technology currently enjoyed by his reader-edited Website Wikipedia and could transform the development of future search engines.

Insat-4B launched successfully

2007-03-12T12:57:00.001+08:00

site: http://www.indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2k7/mar/mar126.php#top
(by. Lily)
(12 March 2007 9:00 am)
Ariane 5, carrying Insat-4B and its co-passenger Skynet-5A, lifts off from the Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. MUMBAI: Isro's latest satellite, Insat-4B, was successfully launched early this morning by the European Ariane-5 ECA launch vehicle from Kourou in French Guiana.
The 3,025 kg Insat-4B is the second satellite in the Insat-4 series. An identical satellite, Insat-4A, was launched by Ariane-5 on 22 December, 2005.
The lift-off was earlier scheduled for the early hours of Sunday but due to a technical hitch, the launch was aborted just seven minutes before blast-off. There were no such problems today though and the mission went off with text book precision. With 12 high power Ku-band transponders and 12 C-band transponders, Insat-4B will further augment the Insat capacity for Direct-To-Home (DTH) television services and other communication and TV services.
The 31st flight in Ariane-5 series, carrying Isro's Insat-4B and its co-passenger, Skynet-5A of EADS Astrium, lifted off at 03:33 am Indian Standard Time (IST) from Kourou. About 30 minutes after lift-off, Insat-4B was placed in the Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) in 3-axis stabilised mode. Isro chairman G Madhavan Nair (at right) joins with Astrium CEO François Auque in the Spaceport's Jupiter control room to congratulate Arianespace CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall (left) on Ariane 5's successful launch. Insat-4B is now orbiting the earth with a perigee (nearest point to earth) of 243 km and an apogee (farthest point to earth) of 35,876 km and an inclination of 4.52 deg with respect to the equator. The orbital period is about 10 hours 34 minutes.
The Master Control Facility (MCF) at Hassan in Karnataka acquired the first signals from Insat-4B at 4:02 am IST. The initial checks on the satellite have indicated normal health of the satellite. MCF subsequently issued commands to the satellite to make the earth viewing face to orient towards earth. The calibration of the gyros on board the satellite was also carried out.
Insat-4B is being tracked, monitored and controlled from MCF. During the initial phase operations, MCF also utilises Inmarsat Organisation's Telemetry, Tracking and Command (TTC) ground stations at Beijing (China), Fucino (Italy) and Lake Cowichan (Canada) besides the Isro Telemetry, Tracking and Command (Istrac) Network station at Biak in Indonesia. The satellite's orbit is being precisely determined by continuous ranging from the participating ground stations.
In the coming days, Insat-4B will be manoeuvred to its final geostationary orbit, which is about 36,000 km above the equator, by firing its 440 Newton Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM). When the satellite reaches near geosynchronous orbit, deployment of its solar panels and the two antennas will be carried out and the satellite put in its final 3-axis stabilised mode. This will be followed by trim manoeuvres to take the satellite to its designated orbital slot at 93.5 degree East longitude where it will be co-located with Insat-3A. The payloads will be checked out before the commissioning of the satellite.
Insat-4B carries the following payloads:
* 12 Ku- band 36 MHz and 27 MHz usable bandwidth Transponders (9 and 3 numbers respectively) employing 140 W TWTAs to provide an EIRP of 52 dBW over the footprint covering Indian main land.
* 12 C-band 36 MHz bandwidth transponders employing 63 W TWTA to provide an EIRP 39 dBW with expanded coverage encompassing Indian geographical boundary, area beyond India in southeast and northwest regions.
The satellite has two deployable antennas for various transmit and receive functions.

Duplicate bug fixed by Paul Lee

2007-03-12T12:55:00.000+08:00

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click Static lIndex As Long Dim aFields
If m_sSelectedCorrectDefinition <> m_sCorrectDefinition Then MsgBox("not") Exit Sub End If If lIndex > UBound(m_aAllRecordsArray) Then lIndex = 0
End If

aFields = Split(GetRecord(lIndex), "") lIndex = lIndex + 1
Place: If UBound(aFields) > 0 Then lblDef1.Text = aFields(0) m_sCorrectDefinition = aFields(1)
RadioButton1.Text = GetNewRandomDefinition() RadioButton2.Text = GetNewRandomDefinition() RadioButton3.Text = GetNewRandomDefinition() RadioButton4.Text = GetNewRandomDefinition() RadioButton5.Text = GetNewRandomDefinition()
WriteCorrectDefToRandomRadioButton()
RadioButton1.Checked = False RadioButton2.Checked = False RadioButton3.Checked = False RadioButton4.Checked = False RadioButton5.Checked = False
End If
If RadioButton1.Text = RadioButton2.Text Or RadioButton1.Text = RadioButton3.Text Or RadioButton1.Text = RadioButton4.Text Or RadioButton1.Text = RadioButton5.Text Or RadioButton2.Text = RadioButton3.Text or RadioButton2.Text = RadioButton4.Text or RadioButton2.Text = RadioButton5.Text or RadioButton3.Text = RadioButton4.Text or RadioButton3.Text = RadioButton5.Text or RadioButton4.Text = RadioButton5.Text Then
GoTo Place
End If
End Sub