Anti Privacy Advocate Joe Bidden Vice Presidential Nominee For Obama

Bad news for all people who are using peer to peer data transfer services; Senator Joe Bidden has been nominated by the Democrats as Vice President for Barrack Obama in the US 2008 Presidential Race.


Senator Joe Bidden has a long history of Anti-piracy Legislation tries.
He tabled bill in 2002 for declaring Fedral Felony to trick certain types of devices into playing unauthorized music or executing unapproved computer programs which got subdued due to efforts of Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Verizon, Ebay lobbying. He also wrote a letter to the Justice Department urgin it to prosecute individuals who intentionally allow mass copying from their computer over peer-to-peer networks.
Last year, Biden sponsored an RIAA-backed bill called the Perform Act aimed at restricting Americans' ability to record and play back individual songs from satellite and Internet radio services.
We just hope that he comes to the knowlegde that peer to peer sharing is an undeniable right of every individual.

Electonic Arts Signs Confidentiality Agreement With Take 2

Gaming Industry giant Electronic Arts Inc have signed confidentiality agreements with another Game maker Take Two Interactive Software Inc.They did so after agreeing on holding private talks for a potential stake transaction.

EA, publishers of the popular "Madden" and "Need for Speed" games, dropped its hostile pursuit last week of Take-Two, the maker of the hot "Grand Theft Auto" games, after Take-Two agreed to spell out its three-year product plans, but only in private.

"As a result, EA does not intend to make any further announcements regarding the status of any discussions or negotiations with Take-Two unless and until discussions between EA and Take-Two have been terminated or such parties have entered into a transaction," EA said in a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

EA offered to buy Take-Two for $25.74 a share, or about $2 billion, in April. The bid was promptly rejected as too low.

Shortly after EA dropped its bid, U.S. antitrust regulators said they would approve a combination of the two companies.

Adobe To Release Updated Photoshop in October

Adobe Systems has updated its Photoshop Elements suite of video and photo editing software.
They have also updated the online sharing and transferring through mobile phone features also.The software is expected to release for selling as early as October.


Photoshop Premiere Elements 7 adds significant features to video editing, while Photoshop Elements 7 incorporates major enhancements to the photo-editing program. Mobile features cover only a limited number of phones.

To compete with online sites such as Yahoo's Flickr, Adobe announced an enhanced online service for Photoshop Elements customers called Photoshop.com. A basic subscription with 5GB of storage is available free for storing and sharing photos and videos. The plus package ups the ante to 20GB for $49.95. Both provide online backups of stored files. Plus members also receive additions to the software, such as new themes, tutorials, movie trailers, and special effects.

With Elements 7 cell-phone users can upload pictures directly to Photoshop.com from their phones. The application runs in the background, and Adobe promises it uploads photos while you talk, instant message, or use other phone options. The Palm Treo, Samsung Blackjacks, and Motorola Qs are supported now. The company Web site promises support for the Apple iPhone, BlackBerry Pearl, Motorola Razr, Nokia 5310, and Nokia 6301 in September.

Pervez Musharraf Calls it a Day; Resigns with Dignity Intact

Pakistan's President, General(retd) Pervez Musharraf resigned on Monday the 18th of August.Thus ends his rule which he started after seizing the reign of power in a military coup against Nawaz Sharif on 12th of October 1999.
He took this decesion after a series of political steps taken by the coalition government of PPPP and PML(N) made it clear that they would impeach him and also try him for breaking the constitution along with number of other charges.
It was also evident to him that the army, his long drawn source of power would not support him if he dismissed the government under the articled 58(2)B of the constitution. The US government had also distanced itself from their former War on Terror Ally. Also his political allies were most certain to ditch him when the real impeachment proceedings started in the parliament.
Since the start of the impeachment drive two weeks earlier, the President had consulted his lawyers and well wishers, which included politicians, civilians of note, retired army men, important diplomats(including the US ambassador to Pakistan Anne W Patterson).
Recently Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Muqrin visited Pakistan to try to convince him for resigning and securing a safe passage out the country which he had ruled unhindered for approximately eight and a half years.
Evidently the charges that were to be leveled against the one time powerful dictator were either constitutionally ratified(17th Amendment of the 1973 Constitution ) or had a legal cover (action taken by him on 3rd of of November 2007 were legalized by the Supreme Court ).
Other charges were of killing innocent people in Lal Masjid Operation. This action was taken by he Army and could have had serious implications if Army as an institution was implicated and was drawn in the court. So it can be ruled that it would have not been upheld by any court in Pakistan if a trial on that account was conducted.
In the end of his speech he said that Pakistan Ka Allah Hafiz which means Allah Will Guard Pakistan, and can be translated into the extreme emotional situation he was facing after serving the Pakistani people in numerous fields selflessly and then being labeled as a corrupt and unworthy of a leader.
Altough he dismissed the Chief Justice Choudry Iftikhar and those who didn’t take the PCO oath which cannot be justified any way, but we should not forget that CJ Ifthikar also took PCO oath after 12th October 1999 coup when fellow justices did not take oath under PCO.
For what he has done to the country to take it to a place of prestige among developing countries and also social, economical, political and educational betterment, atleast I as a sane fellow citizen of Pakistan would place him the greatest leader after Founder of Pakistan M.A. Jinnah and Khan Liaqat Ali Khan.
Atleast he knows how to address the nation and talk with international leaders unlike or current Prime Minister.
We all know the politics of PPPP and PML(N) which has gone round and round in circles but achieved nothing substantial for the country up till now except 2nd Rank in the Most Corrupt Country Of the World (Transparency International) in mid and late 90s.

Coraid comes up with 24-drive network storage appliance

Coraid on Wednesday introduced the EtherDrive SR2421 Storage Appliance. The rack-mountable storage system contains a hardware RAID controller and space for 24 Serial ATA (SATA) disks and costs $4,995 (without storage).
The two dozen slots for drives can each accommodate a 1 terabyte (TB) drive mechanism, for a combined storage capacity of 24TB. It supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5 and 10, and can also be used as a JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks). The shelf is equipped with a universal power supply, and it's shipped on standard cabinet-mount slide-out rails. It's designed to fit in equipment cabinets with a depth of 28 to 33 inches.

The SR2421 is designed to be a self-contained network attached storage device. It includes Coraid firmware running on an embedded Plan9 OS. Operating system support includes Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and Windows.

Intel to launch Remote Wake capable Motherbards for PCs

Intel is coming up with a new technological advancement which would enable their PCs to wake up from sleep when called to over the internet.
This would be a big leap in energy conservation, given the fact that loads of energy is wasted as todays computers can receive calls when they are only fully awake.

The new component Intel is announcing Thursday will let computers automatically return to a normal, full-powered state when a call comes in. The computer can activate its microphone and loudspeaker to alert the user, then connect the call.

"This certainly helps the PC become a much better center of communications in the home," said Trevor Healy, chief executive of Jajah, which will be the first Internet telephone company to utilize the feature.

The first Intel motherboards with the Remote Wake capability will be shipping in the next month, said Joe Van De Water, director of consumer product marketing for Intel.

These components, which are at the heart of every computer, will most likely be used by smaller computer manufacturers. Bigger names like Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. use their own motherboard solutions, but Intel is working to supply them with the technology as well.

The four initial Remote Wake motherboards will be for desktop computers and will need an Internet connection via Ethernet cable, as Wi-Fi doesn't work in sleep mode.

Wikiasearch to End Google-Yahoo Search Domination-Jimmy Wales

Google has been threatened to be taken over in searching, but by whom????

Search any prominent name, event, organization, etc on Google and the top search results yields are from Wikipedia.

Yes you've guessed it right. Google has been warned by Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales that Wikiasearch would takeover Google in the most widely used Internet search engine in near future.

Making an issue out of internet cartel like scenario because of only Two or Three Search engines he says that time has arrived for a creation of broader market for the users to get the maximum benefit.
Google and fellow titans Yahoo and Microsoft dominate the Internet search engine market which Wales said was already causing some worry among web users.

"Right now in the US in particular we have a really strong concentration of the industry," Wales said Thursday at the Global Brand Forum in Singapore.

Industry statistics showed over 90 percent of Internet searches in the United States are done through the three firms, he said.
Wales said Wikia Search will run on an open platform, similar to the principles behind Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia in which entries can be made and edited by anyone with an Internet connection.

NBC observes new viewing Habits with Olympic Audience

Along with new sensational records and technology applications, the Beijing Olympics 2008 has come up with another new, use of more mobile TV from viewers.
Viewers are increasingly watching the coverage on their mobile sets.
Half of viewers of NBC's mobile set streams, one of the leading channels of the sporting event, are watching the coverage on their mobile sets for the first time, survey says.
Primarily because of easy access to the down loadable sports clips.
Since the opening ceremony last Friday, the company has made content available online, through video on demand and via cell phones along with traditional TV.

The number of people requesting Olympic content over their phones is still relatively small — 494,506 on Sunday and 476,062 on Monday — but NBC executives say they're stunned at how many of those never used the phones for this purpose before.

By far, however, television is still the preferred format. Of the estimated 107 million people to experience at least a few minutes of the Olympics on Sunday, 95 percent watched it on TV, NBC said.

Given the choice between a high-definition TV placed before a couch or a small, grainy picture on a computer screen, it's still a pretty obvious call, Wurtzel said.

NBC's prime-time ratings are running well ahead of the Athens games in 2004. Through five days, the average prime-time viewership for NBC is 31.3 million, the network said. Interest in Athens started slowly but heated up with gymnastics, while the Beijing games have been a draw from the start.

It has become a communal event that the country has enjoyed sharing a rarity in the day of media fractionalization.
Americans downloaded some 1.7 million video streams of Monday's stunning swimming relay where the American team came from behind to beat France and keep Michael Phelps' gold medal streak alive. An estimated 1.5 million video streams were e-mailed from one person to another.

Dell Becomes Carbon Free

Dell facilities world over are now carbon free.
The company told that they have achieved their goal; that was to achieve carbon free environment friendly facilities by 2008.
Dane Parker, its director for environment, health and safety, said Dell buys renewable energy — including wind, solar and methane gas — directly from utilities to fulfill one-fifth of its energy needs.

There is not enough green energy available for all of Dell's requirements, so for the other 80 percent, Dell buys regular "brown" power, Parker said, plus enough renewable energy credits to offset that power's carbon emissions. Those credits subsidize purchases of renewable energy by other organizations, in places where more green power is available.

The company also said it has cut its energy use with more efficient lighting, modern climate control systems and software that shuts off idle office computers after hours, for a savings of $3 million a year, or about 5 percent of its annual energy bill.

Dell isn't the first company to declare its operations carbon neutral, but it's the first global high-tech player to do so, said Stephen Stokes, a climate change and business analyst for AMR Research. "They do deserve some congratulations," Stokes said, noting that the company took steps beyond just buying energy credits.

"Even if you were the worst carbon emitter in the world, if you wrote a huge check ... you could claim to be carbon neutral," he said.

Dell, the world's second-largest computer company, also is ahead of No. 1 PC maker Hewlett-Packard Co. on this matter.

Edison:The Free Power Saving Software

Verdiem on Wednesday, released "Edison" a software that helps people design their own schedule of power saving modes for home or work use.
Verdiem's CEO, Kevin Klustner, is scheduled to highlight Edison and PC energy consumption during a conference call with Microsoft's chief environmental strategist, Robert Benard, and Intel's Lorie Wigle, president of the Climate Savers computing industry consortium.

Researchers have found that a computer can take up as much as 100watts to 250watts even when in screen saver mode.
Power saving softwares aren't new.There are loads of them whith loads of improvement needed.
So how does Edison kick in?
The Edison software doesn't completely shut a computer off but rather moves it to a "suspend" state, which uses less energy. Users can also schedule to shut down the screen and hard drive before going into suspend mode.

The tool lets users have work and home settings. It has a read-out of how much electricity you are saving, also translated into reductions in carbon dioxide emissions and dollar savings.

Estimates will vary widely, depending on electricity rates and type of computer, but Verdiem says the average savings is 410 kilowatt hours a year, or $36.50.

At Least Nine Climbers Die On K-2 Avalnche

At least nine mountaineers have perished on K-2, the world's second highest peak, in Pakistan.
On Sunday, the expedition organizers predicted that the toll could rise .
Those confirmed dead included three South Koreans, two Nepalese, along with Serbian, Norwegian, Dutch and French climbers. Unconfirmed reports said one Pakistani had died and several foreign and local climbers were unaccounted for. Catastrophe struck on Friday, when a chunk of ice broke off from a serac, a pillar or cuboid of ice, and tore away fixed lines from a perilous steep gully known as the Bottleneck, above 8,200 metres (26,902 ft). Several expeditions were on the mountain, including a Korean team that was making its descent after summiting the 8,611 metre peak. The Korean team lost five members, including the two Nepalese in the ice fall. Three more fatalities were confirmed by Brigadier Mohammad Akram, vice president of Pakistan's Adventure Foundation. “We don't have names of dead climbers but it has been confirmed that one Dutch, one Norwegian and one French are in the tally of dead,” Akram said. A Serbian climber, identified as Dren Mandic on various mountaineering websites, fell to his death earlier on Friday during the ascent and a Pakistani sherpa was also believed to have died.. “According to the rumours from the various expeditions at the base camp, there should be nine people dead and four still missing,” the head of Italian group, Agostino Da Polenza, who is in Italy, told SkyItalia television. Around a dozen climbers were stranded at Bottleneck, at an altitude known as the “Death Zone” because bodies begin degenerating because of lack of oxygen. A few were either seen or reported to have made their way back to camps, still high on the mountain. The seven surviving members of the Korean team had descended to camps lower down. “We were told that some climbers are still returning to the camps,” Major Farooq Firoz, an army spokesman, said. A Dutch expedition said on its website that three of its team were descending from Camp Three, at 7,350 metres. Two of them were suffering from frostbite. But it said there was no information about a French climber Hugues d'Aubarede, Irish climber Gerard McDonnell, and a third climber identified as Karim. “We're still discussing the possibilities of an operation because the altitude where the accident occured is very high,” army spokesman Major Farooq Firoz said. “We can take a helicopter up there to drop medicines and supplies but carrying out any operation is very difficult,” he said.
Dubbed the "Savage Mountain", K-2 is arguably the hardest climb in the world. The routes to the summit are steeper and more difficult than those to the top of Everest. The weather is also significantly colder and less predictable. Thus, reaching the top of K-2 is the equivalent of winning the Olympic gold in mountaineering. In terms of the number of accidents that had happened on the descent, it is the most deadly mountain in the world.