IT Masala

The Department of Defense project to test Internet routing in space (IRIS) will be managed by Intelsat General, and the payload will convert to commercial use once testing has been completed. The IRIS project is one of seven projects — out of hundreds of applicants — funded and announced in fiscal 2007 as a Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) by the Department of Defense.

Intelsat is the first commercial satellite company to be awarded a JCTD Program. The IRIS JCTD is a three-year program that allows the DoD to collaborate with Intelsat General and its industry team to demonstrate and assess the utility of the IRIS capability.

Cisco, the global networking leader based in San Jose, CA, will provide commercial IP networking software for the on-board router. In addition, SEAKR Engineering Inc. of Denver, CO, will manufacture the space-hardened router and integrate it into the IRIS payload.

via [ playfuls ] 

The Russian security company Kaspersky Lab claims to have created the world's first "proof of concept" iPod virus. They provide exceptionally few details about the "virus" itself, but what they do provide tells us that the virus that they created doesn't really exploit that much. They named the virus "Podloso," which is—again—a proof-of-concept program and "does not pose a real threat," writes the company.

Security vendor Kaspersky Labs announced it has detected the first virus designed to infect iPod portable media players. Photo by Kaspersky Labs

Condition to be Affected :

Kaspersky says the iPod must have Linux installed. The company says that the user must put the virus' file onto the iPod's disk first . ( this is too much limitation..who the hell would do that..)

Virus Activity :

Once there, the virus installs itself into a folder that contains program demos on the iPod. It then allegedly scans the disk of the iPod in order to infect all .elf files, and if the user tries to launch any of these files, a mocking message will be displayed on the iPod's screen: "You are infected with Oslo the first iPodLinux Virus."

"Podloso has no malicious payload, and does not present a real threat; it simply demonstrates that it is, theoretically possible to create malicious programs for such devices," writes the company.

Note : But still Ipod users are not away from the threat of being affected severely by malicious programmers . So be careful when you install any third party softwares or any hacks to your little music player .

via [ novinite ] 

eShare lets you do 24/7 non-stop sharing while freeing up your computer for other purposes. You can utilize the latest P2P technology “Bit-Torrent” to download and share your favourite multimedia files.

Why waste your computer resource when a dedicated box can do the work for you. Use this Procare e|Share ES-8068, a dedicated BitTorrent client that you can be set up using a Web browser. Without using your PC at all, it will connect directly to the Internet using Ethernet, storing files in a USB 2.0 hard drive. isn't this a cool feature..

Very light, this box can be bought for $85 plus shipping.

Note : Its Patent Pending.

Product page [Procare via PC Watch]

No link of where to buy. But interested people could contact them at their office here. 

It would be good if it had some features like , a small lcd screen, and bad thing is it supports only fat 32 file system. 

On March 13, Dell announced that all Dell and Alienware customers who purchase select gaming desktops will now be able to increase their storage space by adding the world’s first one terabyte hard drive from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

Dell is the first computer system supplier to ship 1 terabyte (1,000 gigabytes) hard drives targeted at users needing to store large amounts of digital media.

The first Dell PCs to use the drives will be its own Alienware-branded gaming PCs. 

According to Neil Hand, vice president, worldwide consumer marketing consumer product group, “Digital content use is exploding in the consumer market – with this 1TB hard drive, a lifetime of memories, music and other information can be made, stored and shared with others. This type of capability used to be available only to the largest corporations. With the spectacular advancement in hard drives and the engineering in our systems, we’re now able to bring it to consumers.”

How different is it ?

Dell will use Hitachi GST's 1TB Deskstar 7K1000 drive spinning at 7,200rpm with a 3GBit/s serial ATA interface. The drive uses perpendicular recording, has five platters, a read access time of 8.5msecs and a write time of 9.2msecs. It has a cache of 32MB and an 8.7ms average seek time.

Pricing : Dell's 1TB drive is priced at $540.

Extras : 

Users can upload videos to Video Time Capsule Service  (www.studiodell.com) where Dell will store them, initially on the 1TB drives, for a claimed 50 years.

via [ StudioDell Website ]

Here’s what a $1,490 keyboard looks like.Well, it's been years in development but Art Lebedev has finally finished development work on the 114-key color OLED (organic LED) Optimus Maximus keyboard. 

Press shots have been released at CeBIT .No keyboard prototypes are present at CeBIT, just the photos.

Each display is 32×32 pixels full-color OLED (organic LED). Each key is user-replaceable. Each key incorporates a display. Change your keyboard layout at will.

I wonder if the keyboard is really worth $1,490. I still love my $12 Logitech keyboard.

Well, what do you think? Is it worth $1,490? time will tell….

[ For more screenshots ] and for more details :[ Optimus keyboard ] 

"Within three years it will just be Blu-ray," Frank Simonis, the Blu-ray Disc Association's European chairman, said at the CeBIT technology trade show.

So,Whats so special about Blu-ray ? - Blu-ray offers five times more storage capacity than DVDs for storing high definition films and other content.

Blu-ray is already well ahead of HD DVD because Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) video games console comes with a built-in Blu-ray player.

Facts :

- Five out of eight major Hollywood studios support only Blu-ray. One studio, Universal, supports only HD DVD.

- Toshiba and Microsoft, are the two main backers of HD DVD, support film studios and production houses to bring out their films on HD DVD .

But the war between HD DVD and Blu-ray—also supported by companies like Samsung, Philips, Matsushita, Apple, and Dell—has curbed adoption.

For Details about : [ Blu-ray Disc ] 

External hard drives aren't as fast as internal models, but they are great for backups and are easy to install.I love external harddrives. No problem of attaching the hardrive inside the box… Just plug-in to the usb port and you are done.  All of the present external hardrives are equipped with a usb connector which makes it very very easy for anybody to use it. So lets see at some of the best external harddrives at present.

1. Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition

Cost per Gigabyte: $1.11
Drive size (GB): 160
Interface: USB 2.0
Speed (RPM): 7200
Buffer Size (MB): 8
Price : $179

Bottom Line: This inexpensive, slick-looking drive comes with a programmable backup button and preloaded backup and security software.

2. Seagate Seagate Portable External Hard Drive ( i have used this and its excellent)
Cost per Gigabyte: $0.89
Drive size (GB): 160
Interface: USB 2.0
Speed (RPM): 7200
Buffer Size (MB): 8
Price : $143

Bottom Line: Perfect choice for home or office use.Portable drive scores well across performance, design, and feature categories and comes with good backup software. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Samsung on March 7 shipped what it called the "world's first hybrid hard drive" to the commercial marketplace, but it will get an argument from Dynamic Network Factory, which started shipping its own hybrid storage hard drive on Feb. 1.

"These drives use a lot less energy than other drives. Energy costs are becoming a big concern in many data centers today—these data centers are looking to stem the rising tide of electrical costs. These disks use less power—and that is great news," Dianne McAdam, director of enterprise information assurance said. 

So , what is a hybrid disk ? - Hybrid hard disks combine a standard disk drive with solid state—usually NAND flash-based—random-access memory in a design that is energy efficient.

Samsung Hybrid disk features : Samsung's MH80 Series hybrid hard drive is offered in 80GB, 120GB and 160GB capacities, said a spokesperson for the company, which is based in Seoul, Korea.

Compatible with : Optimized to work in Windows Vista-capable notebook PCs, Samsung's MH80 is a 2.5-inch hybrid hard drive with 128 or 256MB of flash memory.

Plus points : 

- It combines a hard disk drive with a OneNAND Flash cache and Microsoft's ReadyDrive software, offering faster boot and resume times,

- Increased battery life and greater reliability compared to traditional magnetic media technology(the drive consumes 70-90 percent less power than a traditional hard drive, which extends the battery life by 30 minutes before a recharge is needed)

- Lowers power consumption

- Offers higher reliability

- Faster read/write access than traditional hard drives

via [ eWeek ] 

A major hurdle to the widespread adoption of GNU/Linux on the desktop (and, at times, at the server-level) is the lack of drivers for specific hardware.

Now comes an offer from senior Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman - kernel developers will develop free drivers for manufacturers who provide the necessary technical details. "All that is needed is some kind of specification that describes how your device works, or the email address of an engineer that is willing to answer questions every once in a while.

A few sample devices might be good to have so that debugging doesn't have to be done by email, but if necessary, that can be done," Kroah-Hartman wrote in his blog.

The manufacturer is then assured of having a working driver in the main Linux kernel source tree; the driver will be updated through any changes in application programming interfaces and will also work with all the architectures on which Linux runs.

Kroah-Hartman's pledge goes further - the driver will be included in all GNU/Linux distributions, including those which are focused on the business sector. With regard to the hurdle of IP, he writes that if the manufacturer in question is worried about non-disclosure issues, then all needed requirements can be arranged through the Linux Foundation, a recent creation from the merger of the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group.

One has to assume that Kroah-Hartman has discussed the issue with at least some of the 1500-odd kernel developers before going out on this limb. He has even offered support: "As for support, the driver will be supported through email by the original developers, when they can help out, and by the "enterprise" Linux distributors as part of their service agreements with their customers."

People and are always confused about the file extensions such as these . . Here's how to use these files.

*.bin
*.cue
*.iso

These file extensions are commonly used to show that a file is an image of a CD or DVD.

The most simple way to access these files is to use your CD or DVD Burner to burn them to a disk. Nero is a common program that is used to burn bin/cue files to hard media(cd or dvd).

One really nice thing to do is to treat these files as a virtual CD or DVD without ever burning them. Daemon Tools is one program that is often used to do this. Microsoft now has a free program that does it all.But now they have discontinued it support.Its called Virtual CD-ROM.

Here's the download link:
winxpvirtualcdcontrolpanel

The other place that *.bin files are frequently used are in emulation software. Gaming roms are often stored in compressed files full of bin files. If you have a zip file full of *.bin files, try Mame or some similiar emulator.

Related : WinISO