AMD Releases the Dragon Desktop Platform
Dragon platform technology is capable of delivering HD gaming and video processing performance that rivals "extreme" PC platforms.
Microsoft Vista 7 public beta available now for MSDN/Technet
In a keynote address at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer announced the beta availability of the Windows 7 operating system.
Samsung and Yahoo! bring web to TV
Select models in Samsung's 2009 flat-panel HDTV line-up will be powered by the Yahoo! Widget Engine, an applications platform that enables TV watchers to interact with a rich set of "TV Widgets."
SanDisk launches Button Backup USB Flash Drive
With capacities up to 64 gigabytes (GB), the SanDisk Ultra Backup USB flash drive is designed to protect computer users' photos, music, videos, personal and business documents, and other types of digital files, with the touch of a button.
SolarWinds acquires assets from Kiwi Enterprises
Acquisition of New Zealand-based network monitoring company enables SolarWinds to enhance its network monitoring tools and expand its free tool offerings.
The True Cost in Gaza? Warning: the image in the linked story is quite provoking and may disturb!
This is literally one of the saddest things I have ever seen: Dead Palestinian Girl in the Rubble. Really makes the Israeli methods seem worth it (note: I'm not disputing the provocation, just their methods).
The newspaper that this comes from was so outraged and repulsed by the photo that they broke their own publishing standards to ensure the world gets to see it. The article is in Norwegian and here's the translation (from Reddit)...
This picture of the dead child in the ruins of her home which until Tuesday was her home is repulsive, and will provoke a lot of readers. It is a conscious provocation - and we have two reasons for it: Israel keep all western journalists away from the war in Gaza. The country's government claim 'the wellbeing of the journalists' as the reason, but this is an obvious lie. In modern wars, the 'strong side' does everything in its power to stop the press from documenting abuse of the civilian population, because this can weaken the support of the war.
BUT THERE ARE cameras in the war zone, and there are local photographers who are willing to go past everything that might stop them to get photos of a war in a tightly populated city out to the outside world. Pictures like this one.
There is no such thing as a 'surgical strike' in one of the most heavily populated areas in the world. This little girl died along with at least 11 other members of the Daya family when their 4-story house was bombed by Israeli planes yesterday morning. This - not the camo-painted israeli soldier, or the covered Hamas warrior, is the true face of the war.
Today we show the picture 'The Others' see, so as to better understand how they feel, Sven Egil Omdal (multimedia and cultural editor) writes.
THE MOST IMPORTANT reason for us to show this face, is that the Arab world sees pictures like these from Gaza every day. Not a single still, but hours and hours of TV-images of hospital floors full of small, dead bodies
Four year olds, two year olds, seven year olds, newly borns - THese pictures represent the war in Gaza for millions of muslims - and we wonder why the hatred against Israel and the west grows?
This code will give you a 10% discount voucher and free retake if needed to.
Note this is valid for exams taken in New Zealand only by 31st May 2009, and valid for Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS), Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) and Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD) exams.
What are you waiting for?
Thanks to the Microsoft MVP Program for arranging this so I could distribue to you folks...
My Year in Review (2008)
Its been a interesting year to say the least for both myself and my family
CHILDREN
At the start of the year, we discovered that my wife was pregnant with our second child but unfortunately, she lost the pregnancy making this our second early-term miscarriage. Oddly enough, it didnt affect us as badly this time and we were able to bounce back quite quickly. We put this down to the pregnancy being so unexpected and the fact we hadnt had time to get used to the idea yet. As we did the last time, we bought a plant and a pot, and buried what there was this way we have a living reminder.
A few months later, we got pregnant again (albeit a bit more planned). This time, we successfully passed the first trimester and relevant tests, and were now expecting a healthy baby boy around the end of March.
In other child news, 2008 was year number two for our little girl Isla and she took to it with a vengeance. Shes running around with nearly a full set of teeth and a good vocabulary (including some unfortunate additions overheard from parents). In a couple of weeks, she enters the terrible twos were already getting advance previews and are expecting drama, action, and hopefully some comedy. Itll certainly be interesting to see her reaction to a little brother.
HOUSE
With the increase in family, we needed to get a bigger house as we were already bursting at the seams in our 90 sq.m three-bedroom. The plan was to get our house on the market, get a sale with a reasonable settlement period, and then look for a new house. This way, we would know our exact budget.
However, dreams dont always match reality. We sold relatively quickly and had a four-week settlement period, but were unable to find a place that fit our requirements. This meant we moved out of our house and shifted in with my in-laws. As they lived about 50km in another town, I ended up referring to this as my homeless exile this ended up being seven weeks.
We did end up finding a new house, after some extensive searching, and we are very happy. We have 150sq.m to play with plus a large double garage and a basement workshop.
FAMILY
It seems that, out of my family, my brother had the most full-on year (although that may just be by comparison).
He spent about seven months as part of the NZ Army reconstruction deployment in Afghanistan, fortunately in a relatively safe region. He sent us regular newsletter updates and painted a picture of a very different culture and a country which had suffered a lot under the Taliban. It was interesting to see how the reconstruction efforts were progressing and how lives were gradually improving over there (e.g. can you imagine the impact of the training of midwives on a village?). In the end, it was a mostly uneventful tour and we were glad to see his safe return.
Not long after his return, we were surprised and somewhat shocked to find that he had severely constricted arteries and required a quadruple bypass (this is a 46 year old here). Thankfully, he was able to be processed quickly and he is now home recovering slowly. As a bonus, his return to fitness plan seems to somehow involve my participation (oh joy!).
PERSONALLY
I has a bit of a technology boom during the year (which is likely not to be repeated until Haleys Comet returns), which resulted in my becoming the oh-so-happy owner of a PS3, PSP, iPhone, and LCD HD iDTV. Of these, the iPhone was become a fairly permanent fixture and it is rare to see me without it in my hand.
2008 is also the year in which I discovered social networking, which I embraced wholeheartedly. Ive participated in site betas, tested others to see if they met my requirements, and generally had a good play. As the year drew to a close, I think I established a solid toolset but will always keep an eye out to discover others. As a side, Ive found Twitter to be highly addictive (you evil buggers!).
Over the last couple of years, I went from buying books to borrowing from the library (due to costs). In 2008, I felt that Id exhausted my interests in the written fiction sections and started borrowing the comic trade paperbacks. I hadnt read comics for a number of years, and my interest was quickly renewed. I have caught up on some old favourites and discovered some great new works. To this end, graphic fiction has now become my primary reading material and I eagerly await each release day to see how my stories will unfold.
Due to my iPhone purchase and the lengthy commutes I endured, my interest in music was also reawakened. I have not only dug through my iTunes archives to rediscover old classics, but have been introduced to new genres which have rapidly become solid favourites (post-rock for the win!). This has been helped by last.fm and the excellent ways to discover new music through it.
In closing, my family and I have certainly had some significant highs and lows, some of which do make your pause to take stock of ones life. We look forward to this year and can only hope that the good continues to outweigh the bad.
This is important because it affects New Zealanders travelling to the U.S. under the visa waiver program - I guess a lot of the people involved in technology here do so.
The system combines heat, UV and built-in filter in a specially designed container to clean contaminated water by filtrating macro-organisms which cause diseases.
At first reading, it seems reasonable enough: it won't be as easy as before to hide behind others if you're caught by the police. From now on, police will be able to identify anyone, through fingerprinting, even if they're not arrested for a crime.
In other words, the law change is there to protect the innocent. It should make it harder to impersonate someone else, and let that person take the rap for your dirty deeds.
As Lance pointed out on Twitter though, being fingerprinted for minor offences without being arrested isn't exactly peanuts. Next time you're caught going too fast, you might be fingerprinted. In fact, any time a cop looks at you askance, you could have your prints taken.
What will happen to the prints? Presumably, they'll be digitised and entered into a database somewhere or otherwise there wouldn't be any point in taking them. What will the database be used for? Did we ask our MPs to do this?
Was it even necessary to introduce such a law change? No, not according to the article. The people impersonating others have all been caught and been punished. Auckland University law professor Scott Optican says it's a "pretty self-defeating position" to give out false names because you're very likely to be caught and it's not worth the risk.
Police itself don't seem to think the problem is out of control, and the Justice Department doesn't even record instances of how many people were convicted using false identities.
So why do it then? Perhaps the real reason isn't so much to protect the innocent as the article suggests, but to establish a nationwide fingerprint database on the sly instead. That seems to be the real story.
25 open source projects for software development
When the times get tough and everyone scrambles to lower costs wherever they can then it is time to consider what open source can do for you and your development efforts. Palamida has written up a list of 25 good open source projects, which could be ... (more in the full post)
Pipe Networks signs PPC-1 MoU: Sydney-Guam cable to go ahead
The always vigilant Commsday reports that Pipe Networks has rescued the PPC-1 cable between Sydney and Guam by signing a deal with cable layers Tyco Telecoms and an unknown key customer. Pipe Networks says in an announcement to the Aussie stock exchange that while most of the terms in the Memorandum of Understanding signed are confidential for now, a number of supplier payments to align with customer payments along with a number of customer payments being brought forward to more closely align with with the timing of supplier payments.
That, I think, is the most longwinded way ever of saying "there's money coming in for the PPC-1 cable to pay for everyone".
Good on Pipe for stitching that deal, especially in the current market where credit's tighter than a gnat's proverbial. So who is the "key customer" then? As the PPC-2 cable mooted between NZ and Australia depends on PPC-1, I'm wondering if there might not be government involvment there.
This update is coming out of the band (meaning it's not part of the second Tuesday of the month cycle of update) because it's an important update - there are reports of malicious activities already using the vulnerability covered by this update.
In my experience Windows Server 2008 64 bit do not require a restart. All other versions will require a reboot.
What will happen to telecommunications in New Zealand next year?
There was plenty of pork-barrelling over broadband during the election, with National outdoing Labour in promising $1.5 billion to build a high-speed network that will reach most of us (the exact percentage of the population covered is still being debated). Although the funding promises from both parties arrived very late - let's face it, we should've started this four to five years ago - it was good to see money finally being made available for that crucial infrastructure upgrade.
Then, the global financial crisis came along and now everyone's wondering if there will be any money in the kitty to build the promised broadband network. National hasn't said otherwise yet, so presumably it's still a goer, but who knows? Investors like Dr Paul Winton of Temple Investments are trying to figure out what'll happen with the broadband investment, and it was interesting reading his five scenarios in the Herald.
In scenario one, National holds back the $1.5 billion and Telecom carries on with business as usual - moderate cabinetisation of the network, keeping copper as the last-mile access method with DSL over it - could happen, if the government rolls back some of the current regulation.
The second scenario, in which the government keeps the money and Telecom spits the dummy over regulatory requirements like operational separation and pulls up stumps doesn't seem very likely. It would force the government to intervene and hold Telecom to existing agreements.
Speedier cabinetisation as in scenario three, with the government funding some of it, is a pragmatic solution that would retain existing investment by Telecom and competitors in DSL technology. It would also offer limited last-mile competition, since apparently the cabinets have room for gear from four providers plus Telecom. If power requirements are sorted out, VDSL2 connections will become commonplace.
The FTTP scenarios, four and five, would stun everyone if they happened. Scenario four would kill existing investment under the current regulation in DSL, possibly leading to providers going to court to stop the FTTP rollout. Scenario five would kill Telecom's retail and wholesale broadband business and I can't see that happening.
Things That Bemuse
There are many things in life that bemuse me greatly. Here's a quick few...
1. People (unfortunately, mostly American) who equate Starbucks with great coffee. Sorry to burst your bubble, it's not.
2. Young folk who struggle to achieve personal individuality and express it by dressing like all their peers.
3. People who think their iPods/iPhones produce such wonderful sounds, yet are still using the bassless stock Apple earphones.
4. Young folk who think they're really cool smoking, but don't know they're just making jackasses of themselves cause they're not even smoking properly (inhale people!).
5. People who will stand for a pregnant woman on public transport, but not for the same woman after she's had her kid.
6. George Dubya ('nuff said!).
Can you think of any more?
Telecom and Frogprints offerings prints from Flickr Pro Some time ago I posted a blog entry with my thoughts on how ISPs should add value by differentiating its services. Telecom New Zealand started it by offering some security software to all their broadband users - a move now other ISPs are following too.
Telecom also differentiate itself by offering Flickr Pro accounts to its dial-up and broadband users.
Geekzone: IT, mobility, wireless and handheld news
