As we approach Vista's second birthday and distance ourselves from the launch of XP further, you might assume that Microsoft would have had enough time to make Vista attractive for people to prefer it over XP. DirectX 10 (See Glossary on this Page) exclusivity, restricting vendors from selling XP, marketing campaigns and so much more, all towards Microsoft's end of making Vista de facto apparently aren't working as fast as they'd hope.

According to some recent estimates, by the end of this year Vista will have been deployed in 9% of businesses and still won't reach 1/3 of the market by 2010. On top of that, factoring in downgrade licenses it seems that Windows XP is still outselling Vista. That must hurt Microsoft, especially when very large vendors have mentioned they simply will not deploy Vista, waiting instead for Windows 7.

Patches for the DNS (Domain Name System) vulnerability that has generated so much buzz have led to performance problems for servers running BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) software. BIND is the most popular DNS software. Administrators shouldn't roll back the patch released July 8, said Paul Vixie, head of the Internet Systems Consortium, which oversees BIND. "The vulnerability is of more concern than a slow server," he said. An updated patch is in the offing. Meanwhile, hackers are actively exploiting the DNS vulnerability.

2. Apple finally patches dangerous DNS flaw and Opinion: Apple's unforgivable DNS delay: Apple issued a patch ñ finally - for its implementation of the BIND server software in various Mac OS releases. The delay in the patch release has caused considerable consternation among Mac fans.

Yahoo, Intel and HP form cloud-computing labs

IBM is investing US$360 million in a cloud-computing data center that it says will be the most sophisticated ever. The center will be housed in an existing building IBM will renovate in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The company also plans a new center in Tokyo where customers will be able to develop their own cloud infrastructures and applications. In other cloud-computing news this week, Yahoo, Intel and Hewlett-Packard announced they will work together on research and education in that area.

Theft of online credentials

Welcome to the funhouse: Among other things, researchers at Black Hat next week will demonstrate software they've developed that can circumvent security and take over accounts on popular sites such as Facebook, Google and eBay. The malicious software looks like image files to Web servers. The researchers will leave out details of how the attack works so that it won't be immediately used.

Worm attacks expected

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned that spam e-mails making the rounds on the Internet are spreading the dreaded Storm worm. Watch out for e-mail containing the phrase "F.B.I. vs. Facebook" and don't click on links in unsolicited e-mail, especially when you don't know the sender.

Preview of JavaFX SDK

Sun got into the hot rich Internet application market, releasing a preview software developer kit for JavaFX. Support for some features is missing from the preview SDK, but will be rolled out in later releases.

IOC Internet censorship

The International Olympic Committee cut a deal with the Chinese government to allow censorship of Internet sites during the Olympics. The censorship was noticed by journalists working in the Olympics newsroom, who immediately cried foul. -IDG News Service

Cloud Computing

It means Internet-based development and use of computer technology. It is a style of computing where IT-related capabilities are provided as a service, allowing users to access technology-enabled services without expertise, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them. Cloud computing is often confused with Grid Computing. The majority of cloud computing infrastructure currently consists of reliable services delivered through next-generation data centers that are built on computer and storage virtualization technologies.

Grid Computing

It's a form of distributed computing whereby a Super and Virtual Computer is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely-coupled computers, acting in concert to perform very large tasks.

DirectX

Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially games.

Augmented Reality

LAS VEGAS: With thousands of hackers milling around the Black Hat convention here, and widespread snooping on the public WiFi network, one place was supposed to be off limits: the press room.

But in a case of reporters spying on other reporters, three journalists working for the French publication Global Security Magazine were booted from the hackers conference after they were allegedly caught hacking into the private computer network set up for the media.

The French journalists captured what they claimed were usernames and passwords of reporters from at least two media outlets - eWeek and CNET News.

Black Hat attendees were warned that the conference's public wireless network was being monitored by hackers. People who send sensitive personal data over it are cautioned they might have that information posted on the Wall of Sheep, a forum to embarrass security professionals who don't follow proper security procedures themselves.

The separate, wired Internet connections set up for reporters are supposed to be off-limits to hacking and the Wall of Sheep. Even so the reporters who didn't take the extra step and log onto the Internet through an additional secure connection like a virtual private network, risked having their data exposed to colleagues sitting just feet away.

The network was working properly, but it wasn't set up to shield each journalist's computer from one another. The French journalists - identified by organizers as Dominique Jouniot, Marc Brami, Mauro Israel - apparently set up their own server to siphon off traffic passing through the media room's central router.

Brami said in an interview with The Associated Press that Israel was responsible for the hack and that he and Jouniot didn't know about it. The magazine has been one of Black Hat's sponsors. Organizers said that because of this incident, that partnership is over. "The design of the network was to isolate it from the rest of the public network - it's not designed to isolate it from one computer in the press room to another computer in the press room," said Dominique Brezinski, Black Hat's technical director. "They took advantage of that." -AP

Mobile phones turned into translation tools

LAS VEGAS: Internet voice telephony firm JAJAH has launched the first-of-its-kind free service that lets English and Mandarin (Standard Chinese) speakers use mobile telephones to translate conversations.

JAJAH Babel is being released in time for the Olympics in Beijing in order to help English-speaking tourists better communicate with people in China.

JAJAH worked with researchers at US technology giant IBM to create a service that lets mobile telephones act as automated translators between Mandarin and English speakers.

Emotiv's elegant, lightweight EPOC headset is a piece of cutting-edge technology that grants Yoda-like telepathic powers, allowing players of computer games to move items on screen with merely their thoughts. Due for release by year's end, the $299 device will come bundled with an adventure game in which players complete tasks for an Asian sensei.

The EPOC is at once intuitive and complex: Slap the sleek white or black helmet on, fit the 16 brain-wave sensors in place, and you're ready to program the device. Software automatically logs in a baseline for a range of emotions (relaxed, tense) and expressions (from winks to grimaces). Then users are asked to imagine 11 cognitive actions - lift, push, pull - for a few seconds each.

Even the player's emotional state is under surveillance; EPOC is capable of ratcheting up the difficulty level if it detects the brain-wave equivalent of boredom.

A test run reveals EPOC can be difficult to learn but mesmerizing once mastered. The technology has its roots in decades of scientific research on brain waves. Skull caps with countless sensors intercept brain activity in a process known as electroencephalography, or EEG. Emotiv's scientists have spent five years distilling that technology into a commercial product.

Emotiv execs acknowledge that medical use of their handiwork is a long way off. "Anything like that would require approval from the Food and Drug Administration, which takes years," says Steve Sapiro, Emotiv's vice president of engineering. -USA TODAY

Asus officially unveils Eee Stick motion-sensing controller

Asus briefly showed its motion-sensing controllers at the Computex 2008, but it wasn't until today that the company officially unveiled the device ñ peculiarly calling it a first-of-its-kind wireless controller. Dubbed Eee Stick, this Plug and Play wireless controller allows users to control PC video games with physical hand movements much in the way the Wii's Remote and Nunchuck does.

The controller comprises of an Activation stick, a Navigation stick and a 2.4 GHz RF dongle. RF dongle is a device that can read/write contactless RF card.

Asus says the motion sensors built into the Eee Stick offer three modes of operation: 3D motion, pointing and tilt. In 3D motion the controllers respond to movements along all axes, which the company says is ideal for playing action games. Pointing is designed for shooting games and tilting mode is for racing or flying titles.

LearnIT

There are numerous contemporary terms that are really confusing to a common computer user. Ask a dealer about a PC and he may tell you that the best PC has a multi-core processor equipped with L2 Cache having very high clock speed with an excellent motherboard that facilitates an extraordinary FSB (Front Side Bus). Well, it may appear Greek to some of you. Don't get disappointed; it's not that difficult to understand this technology, provided your concepts are clear. In this brief article I am trying to explain at least these four terms as given above.

Clock Speed

The simplest way to understand clock speed is to imagine a stopwatch measuring laps. Question is; where is the stopwatch? At an Olympic pool, a racetrack or your child's sports day?

Just like a stopwatch, a clock speed measures how fast a processor performs an activity. But which activity? That's up to you. How do you plan to use your computer? Will you video your child with your new HD camera? Then find a benchmark test that tells the clock speed of the processor running a media-intensive program. Do you love re-touching photos? Then look up how a processor was benchmarked running the photo software you like to use. A benchmark is a standard test or measurement used to compare the performance of similar components or systems.

Let me make it simpler. The common clocks at our homes and offices normally tick once in a second. Let's call it one cycle per second. If it ticks twice per second it will naturally be termed as 2 cycles per second. Similarly if in a second it ticks 1000 times; it's a Kilocycle per second. Therefore, 1 Megahertz is 1 million ticks in a second. So, what about 3 GHz? Naturally it's 3 billion cycles or ticks per second. Here we conclude that for 3 GHz processor certain circuits trigger 3 billion times in a second. See how simple is it to understand. But numbers don't tell the story. How you use your processor is what you want to find out.

Front Side Bus

Imagine the RAM of your computer as one city, and the CPU as another. Between them is a wide road (the Front Side Bus). So, it's the main highway for data in a PC. Actually it's the physical bi-directional data connection that carries all electronic signal information between the CPU and other devices within the system. When you're making calculations, developing graphics - anything you and your software demands - the Front Side Bus transfers data quickly to meet that demand.

Note: whatever system you choose, make sure the components work together. For example, if you're building a media computer, having a 1333 MHz front side bus that can handle HD video is wonderful - but make sure the CPU is adequate for the challenge. That means; a corresponding high-speed processor is also required in this case.

Number of Cores

Extend your hand and place four marbles on your palm. That's the gist of quad-core. It's that simple. Quad-core technology is a single processor chip (your hand), including four processor cores (the four marbles) or rather four simultaneously hard working brains. And just like those marbles, each core can work either separately, or together on one large task.

Software developers chop up their code (known as threading) and run each piece concurrently through whatever processor core happens to be most available. Increasingly, software developers rely on quad-core and dual-core technology so their multithreaded program can do more things simultaneously producing faster, more efficient results for you.

Note: for exceptional multitasking, look for dual-core processors. If you're a mega-multitasker, gaming elitist, or multimedia maven, look for quad-core processors.

L2 Cache

Imagine arriving at your local shop and having all your favourite food fly off the shelves and fill the shopping trolley in minutes. That's L2 cache. It remembers the information you access most frequently in your computer so you can easily get to it without those annoying lags. (Just don't expect it to remember documents you didn't save.)

Built-in wireless capabilities are becoming almost standard equipment on most laptop and home computers these days for a couple of reasons. One of the primary reasons is cost. Adding wireless capacity is so inexpensive that it would be silly for the manufacturers not to add it. The perceived value of any machine with wireless capacity far exceeds the cost to add it. Wireless is the wave of the future, so if the manufacturers want to stay ahead of the technology curve they need to add it to all but there most basic models.

However, if you're like most people you probably can't even check how much memory your computer has, let-alone if your computer is wireless enabled. Throw in the fact that you may not even know what wireless networking is and it's easy to ignore even trying to determine if your computer has that capacity. As a result, having ever taken the time to set it up is clearly out of the question.

However, since you bought your computer you've probably heard more and more about going wireless because it's becoming the hip thing to do. If that's the case with you or I've simply peaked your imagination then read a bit more because I've outlined a few things you can to do to check if your computer has wireless capabilities.

Laptops

Intel Centrino Mobile Technology Computer manufacturers do less than a perfect job at explaining what this means but if your laptop came with this built-in then that's good news for you. In a nutshell, it means that your laptop has wireless networking built right in and you don't have to do a thing. Intel Centrino Mobile Technology is a marketing name for a combination of the Intel Pentium M processor and Intel Pro Wireless card.

If you have Intel Centrino Mobile Technology then your computer should have a Centrino sticker on it somewhere. If you can't find a sticker but you suspect you had one at one time then simply do the following.

Right click on your My Computer icon. It's probably on your desktop but if not then go to your Start Menu, find My Computer, right-click and select Properties. When the menu opens look at what it says after or under the word Computer.

On a side note, Intel Centrino Mobile Technology also increases battery life and allows manufacturers to build computers smaller. If you can't find anything referring to Intel Centrino Mobile Technology under the word Computer ñ don't worry because as long as your laptop has a free card slot, installing wireless is a piece of cake.

Desktops

If you're not sure whether or not your desktop computer has a wireless connection, the easiest thing to do is to simply turn it around and look for a small aerial sticking out of the back towards the bottom. If it's there then you are wireless enabled. On the other hand, if there's nothing then it's still possible that you have a wireless device in the computer, especially if you purchased anytime in 2005 or beyond. However, because it's not the best idea (unless you've done it before) to try and open up your computer to check something I'll show you a way to check, if you are wireless enabled.

Using Windows to Check: Rather than messing with your computers hardware to verify what you've got installed, you can just as easily check using your Windows' Device Manager. To use it, right click My Computer, Choose Manage, and then click Device Manager. After you click Device Manager a list of everything you can install will appear on the right half of the screen. Take a look under Network adapters and ignore anything that says 10/100 or Ethernet because they are simply normal network connections - not wireless ones. If there's anything else there, it could be a wireless device.

If you think you have a wireless device, but it has a yellow warning sign alongside its name in the Device Manager, you should take a look at it to see what's wrong by double clicking on it. Windows should then tell you why the device is not working at the moment and may even suggest that you go through its troubleshooter program. Do that before you do anything else.

If it turns out to be a driver problem, you should insert the driver CD that came with your computer. If you can't find the driver CD that came with your computer ñ don't worry because you should be able to find and then download the appropriate driver online. The first step would be to go to website of your computers manufacturer and do a search for the name of the wireless device that showed up in your Device Manager. Once you find the correct driver simply download it and follow the instructions.