Science and technology news blog

Hi

You can download Firefox 3 from the following link:

http://rapidshare.com/files/123304491/Firefox_Setup_3.0.exe

This is a sponsored post.

For all you gamblers, I just found the best online casino site – ICasinoReviews. It is basically a casino directory that prides itself for containing only the “trusted” casino sites in the world. They have a strict criteria for rating casinos based on payout percentages, customer support, realistic games, bonuses, and reputation.

The top 5 list is a definite must-look for any person interested in online gambling. The casinos are reviewed thoroughly and a review is posted with no unnecessary information that might confuse the visitors. The reviews are important as there are a lot of unscrupulous websites out there that are looking to entice the naïve users and then try to rip them off. So to have someplace that can have a review of a site is always a good starting point and I think this is where Icasinoreviews.com scores.

The site has a Review Guidelines page that tells you how each casino is reviewed. The process is fairly intensive and atleast there is someplace that has this information rather than a user doing all the research themselves.

The “How to choose an Online Casino” is also an excellent guide to selecting the casino that would suit you. I suggest following that guide as well. Overall, this is definitely a good good place to go to if you are interested in online gambling.

Over the last few days millions of internet users were affected by a Skype outage. The VOIP leader had an unexpected breakdown when millions of computers were restarted at the same time due to the installation of Microsoft updates. Since Skype depends on peer-to-peer technology, such a large number of users logging off at around the same time caused a lack of resources. An article from PC-World discusses what exactly happened:

“The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users’ computers across the globe within a very short timeframe” Skype says. But careful read of Skype’s explaination today shows that that led to two seperate meltdown-inducing problems.

“Outages and quality problems with VoIP service providers are sadly still too common – most service providers have glitches that can last from a few minutes to a few hours,” Main said. “That Skype has gone so long without a prolonged problem is quite an achievement.”

Popular video sharing website Veoh.com is in a legal tussle with UMG over copyright infringement. Veoh claims that it does not promote its users to share illegal videos and that its protected under the DMCA. So, instead of UMG suing Veoh, the website has already filed a petition to seek protection from any lawsuits that Vivendi’s UMG may harbor against it. Veoh claims that they actively remove files that infringe on copyrights and they take extra steps like suspending member accounts permanently.

Just a little off-topic. If you are ever bored of visiting the same old websites or have got nothing to do and want to pass your time, then visit Sexycoolwink for loads of funny and sexy videos. And to top it off, you can also play thousands of free flash games. So all you need is an internet connection and a web browser, no need for expensive hardware, just your computer and some free time. In the videos section you can see videos of models tripping over their feet on the catwalk, soccer teams scoring the most hilarious goals, videos of pets getting up to the strangest things. This is enough to make you laugh. After you have had your share of entertainment, rate everything and even leave a comment! How much fun is that? Get a little serious and watch a few funny Paris Hilton videos. There is just so much to see and get involved with.

Just give this a try, and rest assured that you will be laughing long after you have logged off. This will even break a miserable man free of his clutches. Once you have finished with the videos, and if you are still standing, try checking out a few pictures. There are sexy pictures taken of girls and a few getting a sneak peek of sexy girls in public. The hilarious stuff comes in when a little boy is trying to fight with a few police officers; a civilian is talking to a statue, an old man is tanning in the sun wearing a white bikini and a little girl is sitting between two boys and pecks them each on the cheek.

What more could one want to laugh? This is a sure guarantee that your stomach muscles will still be aching two hours and fifty-nine minutes later!

This is really funny and amusing. It seems that phone companies in Kazakhstan are charging in excess of 3000 USD per month for internet access. I saw this article on Arstechnica and here is a small excerpt:

An unlimited dial-up plan costs about €82 ($111) in a country where the average monthly wage is €292 ($399). As for DSL, an unlimited 1.5Mbps connection costs €2,458 ($3,355) a month, and doesn’t even included the required ADSL modem. Want a 6Mbps cable connection? It’ll cost you, to the tune of €16,144 ($22,032) a month.

I got up in the morning and started my computer. Lo and behold, Firefox had another update. This time its 2.0.0.5 the version number. Mozilla foundation provides a full list of current vulnerabilities here. The main patches that were fixed are as follows:

1. XPCNativeWrapper pollution


2. Unauthorized access to wyciwyg:// documents


3. Remote code execution by launching Firefox from Internet Explorer


4. File type confusion due to %00 in name


5. Privilege escalation using an event handler attached to an element not in the document


6. Frame spoofing while window is loading


7. XSS using addEventListener and setTimeout


8. Crashes with evidence of memory corruption

Indian tech giants, Reliance and Rediff have both started their own social networking websites, bigadda.com and ishare.com respectively. After playing with both of these sites, I was pleasantly surprised with the user interface and ease of accessibility. Since both are in beta version, a lot of features need to be modified. One really bad thing about iShare.com is that I need to download a piece of software and install it on my computer in order to upload my videos and photos. This is a little bit annoying as every other website allows you to upload directly from the site. However, not all things are bad, one good thing is that I can upload upto 5 files at one time, which is more than can be said about all the other video hosting and sharing sites.

As is typical of Indian censorship laws, nothing explicit or vulgar can be hosted. I tested hosting a photo on bigadda.com and was given a tight rap on my hands that very day. Plus there was a warning that my account would be deactivated in case there is a repeat of this offence. Yeah, I know it sounds pretty hypocritical, as if you watch any Indian cable TV channel, you will be stunned with the amount of flesh being shown. However, I think this is not really a bad move, as these sites are for anybody and any age group.

Reliance’s Bigadda.com has a lot more functionality including blogging, although that needs to be worked on as I can’t add images or manipulate the text. Also I would love to have a way of importing all my feeds from my current blog and add it to Bigadda.com’s blog.

Microsoft’s Live.com service has started to offer a Photo Gallery and online file storage to Windows Vista and XP SP2 users. The Photo Gallery is supposed to be an extension of Windows Vista’s built-in photo gallery. Named Windows Live Photo Gallery, the service provides sharing, editing, organizing and printing of your photos.

Windows Live Folders, another file hosting service, provides users with a measly 500MB of space as compared to other services. Although this is free of charge, but compared to AOL’s 5GB of free storage, it really is pathetic. Still for most people it may be more than enough. Personally, I would like this to have been atleast 2GB of space, and being a beta service, it should not take too long for Microsoft to increase the storage size.

The introduction of these services gives ample proof that Microsoft’s strategy is moving more to online services. Looks like in the Google vs Microsoft war, its perhaps Google’s turn to start getting worried with Microsoft now beginning to encroach upon their territory.

Indians have created a virtual web based windows operating system that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Nivio, as its called, has been in beta testing in the UK. According to Sachin Duggal, Founder & CEO, Nivio, “Desktop stresses have always been a concern for all computer users. Loss of data, spam & virus attacks have taken peace out of our lives. I have always believed that the world would change if computing would be simple. Originally named myremoteworkstation, I dreamed of a desktop that was anywhere and nowhere; that was stress-free and fault-less. And Nivio was born.”

Nivio’s owners plan to raise $5 million to fuel expansion. And they are targeting 100,000 users by end of this year. The first month is free and monthly subscription costs Rs 399. They have also priced it at Rs 199 per month for students. You can visit the following website for more information – Nivio.com

Here is the catch. This is not Google. This is not Youtube. This isnt even Metacafe or Dailymotion. This is Uvouch.com and here I can collect videos from all the above mentioned video hosting sites and more. I can create my own playlists and video rolls and embed them onto my websites or blogs. Have a look at the top of the page to see what I am talking about.

I had a small chat with the owner of the website, Parveen Panwar, and he said that they are constantly improving the functionality based on user feedback. New features are being rolled at a faster pace than Mach 10. Not to mention that I just love the fact that all videos can now be viewed from one place and I can organize these using my own categories or tags.

Although the site does not have the backing of any investors, yet, but I strongly believe that this is one dot com to watch out for.

Opera’s vice-president Tatsuki Tomita has mentioned that the company is developing a Flash plug-in replacement for mobile browsers. The problem with Flash for mobiles is that it uses a lot of CPU and memory. Here is an excerpt from Ars Technica:

Opera Software vice president Tatsuki Tomita has confirmed that his company is developing a replacement for the Adobe Flash plug-in, for use with future versions of the Opera Mini mobile web browser.

Tomita explained that the reason for this move is that the traditional Flash plug-in uses a large amount of CPU and memory resources, limiting speed and battery life on mobile platforms. The problem is exacerbated when the Flash plug-in is not well optimized for the platform it is running on—Macintosh users can attest to this first-hand. “You cannot execute and provide a good user experience,” Tomita told InfoWorld, referring to running the Flash plug-in on mobile devices.

And we have another browser dreaming to make it big on Windows. But after trying Safari for about 30 minutes I uninstalled it. There was no new features to really talk about and the interface was completely crap. Yeah, I know that a lot of Apple fans would be baying for my blood, but the truth is that Safari does not stand a chance against Firefox or IE. Even Opera packs in quite a punch as compared to Apple’s Safari.

The biggest concern is the interface. Instead of changing to interface to look more like Internet Explorer or Firefox, Apple chose to go the iTunes way. Not that iTunes is bad, but if Apple wants to convert IE and Firefox users to Safari, then they have bet wrongly on the GUI. Exactly the same reason why there are more Windows desktops than Apple’s. In my opinion, its better to wait for the full version to release. Although if you are like me who want to try out the latest and the self-proclaimed greatest browser, then download it from here: http://www.apple.com/safari

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has rejected a controversial proposal to create a new .xxx domain suffix for adult Web sites.

ICANN on Friday voted 9-5 to deny an application from ICM Registry, which for the past several years has sought to be the registry for adult-content Web sites.

ICANN, which oversees domain names and Internet addresses, decided that ICM’s proposal raised too many public-policy concerns and ultimately could change the role of the nonprofit organization.

“ICM’s response does not address (the ICANN Government Advisory Committee’s) concern for offensive content and similarly avoids the GAC’s concern for the protection of vulnerable members of the community,” ICANN stated in the meeting. “The board does not believe these public-policy concerns can be credibly resolved with the mechanisms proposed by the applicant.”

ICANN also noted that ICM’s proposal could raise significant compliance issues with law enforcement agencies around the globe, many of which have different laws governing pornography.

“There are credible scenarios that lead to circumstances in which ICANN would be forced to assume an ongoing management and oversight role regarding Internet content, which is inconsistent with its technical mandate,” ICANN stated in the meeting.

Click here for full article

Internet site Wikipedia has been hit by controversy after the disclosure that a prominent editor had assumed a false identity complete with fake PhD.

The editor, known as Essjay, had described himself as a professor of religion at a private university.

But he was in fact Ryan Jordan, 24, a college student from Kentucky who used texts such as Catholicism for Dummies. He has now retired from the site.

Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia open to all, written by volunteers worldwide.

Under the name Essjay, Mr Jordan edited articles and also had the authority to arbitrate disputes between authors and remove site vandalism.

In his user profile, he said he taught both undergraduate and graduate theology, and in an interview with the New Yorker in July 2006, was described as a “tenured professor of religion”.

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