I read this article on the wired today about a blind teenage cracker who is specializes in phone phreaking and did a lot of damage.. I think the kid should have remained hacker and stayed away from the dark side. It's acceptable to speak to the pope but wasting government money is something else.

Anyways, in case you hackers happen to read this, you got my respect.. and feel free to inform me about any vulnerabilities in my site.. thank.

Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 officially RTM'd on Feb 4, 2008 . The RTM build was nothing but RC Refresh 2 code ; so some of them testers already had the RTM before they knew it. The testing part was really fun - I kinda liked it even. But then came the RTM gold bits , wasn't as pleasant as expected ; partly because us techies got the binary standalone installer for RTM not the Windows Update way. My system was a fully loaded Vista Ultimate with loads of installed software and loads more of tweaks - it was running on minimal services, which i suspect to be a partial cause of my 48 hour installation ordeal. The installation went on for a solid 36 hours (on an infinite cycle) before it failed and I reinstalled vista and i'm in the process of getting all the software back on.

Normal users have nothing to worry, your final two updates required to make the jump have been delivered in the previous patch Tuesday. You should expect SP1 to be delivered via Windows Update sometime in March/April.

Vista SP1 brings with it many tweaks including fixes for the infamous file transfer issues. And of course Ultimate users continue to get dust.

Update: Seems like I wasnt the only one having SP1 RTM install issues, and Microsoft has fixed them.  And here is more info on post SP performance.

This is a funny one, super awesome funny.. i suggest you watch this

Life At Microsoft - The Truth Revealed

Requires Silverlight : a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows. -says microsoft.

Jake from 8bitjoystick has broken the news on 360's latest revision codenamed 'Opus' and 'Valhalla'. In short, Xenon age cases are going green with Opus internals and Valhalla will unify the CPU and GPU into a single chip thus further reducing cost and hence lower prices! hurray!
The 360 is currently on Falcon, Jasper is expected in Fall 2008 [price drop this holiday season??]; Opus is not expected hit retail shelves, and will most likely serve as replacements to the RROD's we send in. Valhalla is expected to be last of 360's iterations before the 360 becomes last generation and a new XBOX takes over.

And now on to Major Nelson; new updates to xbox.com - you can now modify profile information from within the site :)

In rather unrelated and disheartening news, January 2008 NPD numbers show the 360 at third position (which is usually reserved for the PS3). This drop in sales could be attributed to supply chain issues Microsoft is facing and well Blu-Ray gains in the format wars. But the overall numbers (cumulative) still point to a strong second for the 360 and a rather laid back bottom-of-the-pile for the PS3.

Thats all the 360 news for now folks.

Walt Mossberg's got an early preview of Lenovo's latest , the X300! It's also slim, not super-slim; but fits in a manila envelope. The X300 has a higher price point and starts at a full 1000$ over the MBA. No options on Hard drive configuration here- only a 64gb SSD ; comes with 3USB ports, WiFi, built in optical drive and options for GPS all packed in a 3.12 pound package that runs on removable batteries. Apple could take a few cues from this development and so can Lenovo (on the design aspects).

Update: More details have emerged about the X300 , and it has been spotted in the wild!

Update Again: Watch the X-300 taken apart. You'll notice the level of user serviceable components. Thats a big plus!

My desktop floats on an average Intel C2D E6550@2.33Ghz,Gigabyte 965P-S3,2gigs DDR2@667Mhz, NVidia GeForce 8500GT-512MB; all running at clock speed and with CIA2(CPU Intelligent Accelerator) Disabled. On top of this I run vista x64. My usual Northbridge temperature (as measured using external device) is about 50*C (112* F) - this is while doing normal work and development. But the strange thing happens when i start playing Crysis - while my processor tends to get worked out (and the temperature rises), i notice that the Northbridge temperature drops to 40*C(104F).Initially i dismissed this as an error, but after trying out Crysis 4 times, I can confirm that this is happening. I'd like to know if this has happened to anyone else?

Update: Tested the theory on Quake 4 as well, the results are surprisingly similar.

 BUSINESS DONE - HOW

 

Father: I want you to marry a girl of my choice.

Son: “I will choose my own bride!”

Father: “But the girl is Bill Gates’s daughter.”

Son: “Well, in that case…OK”

Next Day

Father approaches Bill Gates.

Father: “I have a husband for your daughter.”

Bill Gates: “But my daughter is too young to marry!”

Father: “But this young man is a vice-president of the World Bank.”

Bill Gates: “Ah, in that case… OK”

Finally Father goes to see the president of the World Bank.

Father: “I have a young man to be recommended as a vice-president. ”

President: “But I already have more vice- presidents than I need!”

Father: “But this young man is Bill Gates’s son-in-law.”

President: “Ah, in that case… OK”

This is how business is done!!

Credits to http://www.louisraj.com/?p=227 

Update 1: Okay, i use Google Analytics -its a web statistics software. According to Analytics loads of people are visiting this page after searching for "Bill Gates Daughter" and its variants . Shame on you!! Bill Gates has three kids and his eldest daughter is 11 years old - so dont even think about it.

Update 2: Thought i should disclose the "search statistics" for this particular page! take a look. This blog of mine usually gets between 0-5 hits a day , but ever since google picked up this page, traffic has sky rocketed (in relative terms) to about 60 in the past 2 days . Thank you all for visiting and googling about Bill Gates' daughter - too bad he's billionaire and his daughter is not old enough to date, even if she were - it will definitely not be with me or you! Now, move along folks lets gossip about Britney Spears or Angelina Jolie.

This year started with something in the air; but for investors, it didnt smell good enough. While the latest size bumps to the iPhone & iPod Touch line has been long rumored and probably in the making for some time now, Apple finally let this one to the wild. With this update to the iPod line-up, you can get one at just about any size. This size bump seems to have also pushed up AAPL share prices.

• Shuffle - 1GB
• Nano - 4GB, 8GB
• Touch - 8GB, 16 GB, 32GB
• Classic - 80GB, 160 GB

And then we had take 2 on Apple TV, and Apple totally took this one off from Microsoft's XBOX 360- the ability to Download Content (Movies, in HD) directly to the device, without a PC. So hey whose got their photocopiers running?