Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) today announced final licensing and pricing information for its soon-to-be-released Windows OneCare Live, the all-in-one, automatic and self-updating PC care service aimed at helping consumers more easily protect
and maintain their PCs to keep them running well. Now available free to new beta testers in the United States, at http://ideas.live.com, Microsoft Windows OneCare Live will be available in June from retailers and via the Web for an annual subscription of $49.95 MSRP for up to three personal computers. To thank its valuable beta customers and offer an easy transition to the paid service, Microsoft also announced today a promotional deal offering the first year of Windows OneCare Live service for $19.95 to beta customers who become subscribers between April 1 and April 30, 2006.

Thousands of Web sites in Denmark and Europe have been hacked and defaced in apparent retaliation for the publication of cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad.

According to Zone-H.org, an outfit that tracks server intrusions worldwide, more than 600 attacks against Web servers in Denmark have been recorded. Servers in Israel and Europe have also been breached with pro-Islam messages denouncing the cartoons.

Internet security vendor F-Secure has published screenshots of the defacements, which carry a strong anti-Danish tone and support for the angry demonstrations that have erupted around the world.

One group calling itself the “Internet Islamic Brigade” posted an image of the London bombings on a popular Danish Web forum, threatening a similar attack “very soon.”

Source: eweek

Novell has released new software that could boost Linux’s glitz and glamour at a time when eye candy is a major feature of rival operating systems.

The software, called Xgl, uses a computer’s graphics chip to give a boost to desktop display features such as transparent objects, 3D effects and zooming windows. But the software could also improve more practical parts of the Linux user interface, such as text display speeds, said Nat Friedman, Novell’s vice president of collaboration and desktop engineering.

Friedman acknowledges that some new features made possible with Xgl have been pioneered elsewhere. But he believes the open-source nature of Linux means things will be different this time.

Source: techrepublic

NASA has delayed two programs to search for planets capable of supporting life as the space agency instead focuses on developing a new manned spacecraft to return to the moon in the next decade.

President Bush’s budget proposal released Monday seeks to give the National Aeronautics and Space Administration $16.8 billion for fiscal year 2007, a 3 percent increase from the year before. Of that, about $5.3 billion in funding will go toward the space agency’s science missions.

NASA is trying to fulfill Bush’s space exploration vision to build the new Crew Exploration Vehicle that would replace the aging space shuttle fleet and enable a return to the moon by 2018. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told a news conference that the budget reflects that priority.

Source: AP

The Mozilla team has set February 10th as the release date of the next major Firefox version. Some of the more notable features to be included in Firefox 2 are in-line spell checking, some sort of anti-phishing functionality, and improvements to tabbed browsing.

Source: OSNews

Lockheed Martin’s secretive Skunk Works unit–which previously developed U-2 spy plane, the SR-71 supersonic spy plane and the radar-evading F-117 stealth fighter–has big plans for its latest project: drones.

Among the concepts under development, according to the Wall Street Journal: ‘One drone would be launched from, and retrieved by, submarines; another would fly at nine times the speed of sound. A third, which is off the drawing board but not quite airborne, has wings designed to fold in flight so that it could rapidly turn from slow-speed spy plane to quick-strike bomber.’

Source: Slashdot

Microsoft is preparing a new Windows Live Feature: Windows Live Expo.

Expo is an online social marketplace where you can exchange goods, ideas or information with anyone you choose, anywhere you want.

With Expo you’ll get:

• Free ads that are easy to post
• Browse through a wide range of categories ranging from merchandise, events, personals and services
• Keep your dealings within a trusted network like your MSN Messenger Buddies, friends or co-workers; or open them up to anyone
• Find listings just in your area, nationwide or anywhere in between
• Add your listings to your MSN Space with one easy click
• Get detailed maps and directions for things like garage sales, homes for sale or concerts
• Communicate with people via MSN Messenger right from Expo’s site.

Unlike other classifieds service like Googlebase and Craigslist, Expo taps into the power of social networks. Expo builds trust into your experience because it lets you control who will see your ads. You can keep it strictly among your Messenger contacts, your co-workers, or your school friends. Or you can throw it open to the world at large. The choice is yours. And unlike most other classified services, Expo allows you to search listings in your neighborhood or nationally, whichever you choose.

Then there are the maps: Expo lets you use Windows Live Local, a new map and search service, to see the location of that house on sale, or the best route to the garage sale.

Learn more here

Media company CNET Networks Inc. on Monday said it was selling its monthly Computer Shopper magazine to SX2 Media Labs.

CNET said the transaction was effective immediately and did not disclose financial terms.

Source: Reuters

At least 35,000 attempts to access internet child pornography are blocked each day in Britain, and the total number could be much higher, according to BT figures released today.

The company, which provides access for one-third of British home internet users, said the number of attempts to bypass its screening technology had tripled in the last 18 months.

BT’s Cleanfeed programme prevents its 3 million domestic internet users from accessing child pornography content blacklisted by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) in compliance with the 1978 Child Protection Act.

The technology registered 10,000 daily attempts to access the material when it was introduced in June 2004, but that has risen to 35,000. There were 4m access attempts in the last four months, a BT spokesman Les King said.

The BT numbers do not include attempts by users registered with other internet service providers, who cover the remaining two-thirds of the market.

Source: guardian.co.uk

The tool, known as Krugle, is designed to deliver easy access to source code and other highly relevant technical information in a single, convenient, clean, easy-to-use interface, according to the company.

Krugle works by crawling, parsing, and indexing code found in open-source repositories and code that exists in archives, mailing lists, blogs and Web pages.

It’s based on a combination of open-source and proprietary technology, according to the company.

On the open-source side, it’s based on the Apache Software Foundation’s Nutch and Lucene Web search projects, as well as on the Antlr (ANother Tool for Language Recognition) parser generator.

Krugle is scheduled to go-live on March 8th at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, San Diego, but you can sign up for a beta test for free.

Krugle is not the only source code search engine, there are several more such as Koders and codase which already index thousands of source code lines. How Krugle compares with those, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Apple Computer on Tuesday unveiled a couple changes to its iPod lineup, introducing a 1GB iPod nano while lowering the price of its iPod Shuffle to less than $100.

The new 1GB iPod Nano will be priced at $149 and offer the same features as the 2GB and 4GB iPod Nano models, such as a high-resolution color screen, a 30-pin dock connector and the ability to display album art while playing music.

Apple’s 1GB iPod Nano, which comes in black or white, can hold up to 240 songs or 15,000 photos. The device is designed to connect to Macs equipped with a USB 2.0 port and Mac OS X 10.3.4 or later versions, along with iTunes version 4.9 or later.

Windows users will need a similar USB port, with their system running on Windows 2000, XP Home or Professional and a similar version of iTunes.

In addition to the new 1GB iPod Nano, Apple is lowering the price on its iPod Shuffle to $69 for a 512MB device and $99 for the 1GB model.

Source: News.com

Bucking a trend in the chip industry, IBM Corp. said Tuesday its upcoming Power6 microprocessor for servers will run at unprecedented speeds while keeping a lid on power requirements and heat.

For years, chip makers have improved computer performance by shrinking the size of transistors, squeezing more of them into smaller spaces and ratcheting up the speed at which they process instructions. But recently the benefits have diminished as the chips’ power requirements and temperatures have risen.

To get around the problem, the industry has resorted to building two or more computing engines known as “cores” on a single chip and throttling back the clock speed to prevent a silicon meltdown. As a result, performance does increase - but it does not double, even with two computing cores.

IBM’s upcoming Power6, which is multicore and designed for higher-end servers running the Unix operating system, was crafted from the ground up to run fast without major losses in power efficiency, said Bernard Meyerson, chief technologist of IBM’s Systems and Technology Group.

“In Power6, we basically combined everything we could (throw) at it in terms of fundamental atoms and molecules all the way out to what we knew would be the software that would run on top of that system,” he said.

Power6 is expected to run between 4 and 5 gigahertz. Intel Corp.’s Itanium 2 server processor today tops out at 1.66 gigahertz. The Pentium 4 for desktops currently reaches speeds of 3.8 gigahertz.

“Despite the speeds, it will have a lower power density than in some chips found in today’s desktops,” Meyerson said.

Source: AP