Life's Great Expectations!

The responsibility for protecting Windows systems against ever-increasing threats is in new hands. Ben Fathi, a software engineer by trade, took over from Mike Nash as corporate vice president of Microsoft's Security Technology Unit on June 1 . Nash is on sabbatical. The change is part of a recent shakeup in Microsoft's executive ranks, which also put someone new in charge of Windows . Iranian-born Fathi is a tech geek who spent the last eight years in the shadows at Microsoft working on file systems. Now he's in the spotlight--in arguably the most thankless job in Redmond. Fathi is responsible for security features in Windows and other Microsoft products. Nash liked to be the public face of Microsoft security, hosting regular "Security360" Web casts , blogging and speaking in public. That's new territory for Fathi, who delivered the first speech in his new role on Monday at Microsoft's TechEd event in Boston. Fathi, an amateur photographer, is back...

Microsoft has formally named Steve Sinofsky as head of its Windows division, days after announcing a delay in delivering the Vista update to the operating system. The appointment on Thursday of Sinofsky, which was expected , is part of a large reorganization by the software giant. Microsoft is restructuring its Platforms & Services division to better align its Windows unit and its online MSN operations with its Live strategy. Steve Sinofsky The new structure will have eight groups, including the Windows and Windows Live Group, headed by Sinofsky. Three of the eight groups are new: the Windows Live Platform Group, the Online Business Group, and the Market Expansion Group. Jim Allchin, Microsoft's longtime Windows development chief, announced plans in September to retire at the end of 2006 from his post as co-president of the Platforms & Services division. The company now says Allchin will retire next year. His retirement, however, is also dependent upon Microsoft making...

Nokia was a paper manufacturing company back in 1856 when it started. In 1991 Nokia made agreements to supply GSM phones in 9 countries.... by 1997 the number of countries being supplied increased to 31.

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university lecturer. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the lecturer went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic, glass, some plain looking and some expensive and exquisite, telling them to help themselves to hot coffee. When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the lecturer said: "If you noticed, all the nice looking, expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the better cups and are eyeing each other's cups." "Now, if Life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and c...

Productions of Mr Brown, Singapore infamous blogger: Listen the lighter side of things analagous to the recent election.

Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) ?? Check this out here ! Almost 20% Of Windows Fail To Validate WGA !

Read first before looking at the picture.. The wife was very unhappy with her car and complained a lot to her husband: Buy me a surprise for my birthday!', she said. 'Something that accelerates from 0 to 100 in 4 seconds! And I would prefer a blue one!' "Of course Darling", said her husband. Happy and excited she was counting down the days for her birthday. And finally she got the beautiful present her husband thoughtfully bought. Apparently he is still recovering in hospital...

The smallest, lightest animal with a backbone has been described for the first time, by scientists in the US. The minuscule fish, called a stout infantfish, is only about 7mm (just over a quarter of an inch) long. It lives around Australia's Great Barrier Reef and has snatched the "world's smallest vertebrate" title from the 1cm-long dwarf goby fish. The infantfish, which is no longer than the width of a pencil, is described in the Records of the Australian Museum. The stout infantfish lives exclusively in Australia's Great Barrier Reef and the nearby Coral Sea Big females The first specimen of the tiny creature ( Schindleria brevipinguis ) was collected way back in 1979, by the Australian Museum's Jeff Leis, during fieldwork in the Lizard Island region of the Great Barrier Reef. Anytime a scientist ident...

Staging a Khoo Eight years after scaling Mount Everest, Khoo Swee Chiow still faces controversy over his adventures By Lee Sze Yong monday interview KHOO Swee Chiow knows about obsessions. After all, he is obsessed with embarking on adventures. He is obsessed with breaking records. He is obsessed with attaching superlatives to his name - and namecard. But he is no mere daydreamer. In 1998, he scaled the peak of Mount Everest. In 2002, he became the first Asian to complete Adventure Grand Slam by climbing the highest peaks on the seven continents and trekking to the North and South Poles. In 2003, he cycled from Singapore to China. In 2004, he swam across the 40km Malacca Strait in 22 hours. And on Dec 25 last year, he spent 220 hours inside a tank filled with mineral water on a field in Tampines Central, breaking a Guinness World Record. Ask him if he suffers from some obsessive compulsive need for an adrenaline rush and the 41-year-old admits that, yes, he does. 'If I go to a psyc...

THIS IS A PICTURE NASA TOOK WITH THE HUBBLE TELESCOPE.. CALLED "THE EYE OF GOD". TOO AWESOME TO DELETE. It is WORTH SHARING. This kind of event occurs once in 3000 years.

By Craig Goldwyn Craig Goldwyn is a Chicago based writer and artist, and the article below originally ran in the Chicago Tribune in 1979. He invites you to visit his website at http://craiggoldwyn.com . Samuel Johnson wrote "Claret is the drink for boys, port for men, but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy." By that definition Swedish Julglögg, will make us superhuman. Glögg, pronounced gloog, is a high octane, hot mulled wine made with a potpourri of spices and all three of the above: Claret (red wine), port, and brandy. It is the perfect cold weather drink, warming the body and soul from the inside out. Swedish Glögg Makes about 1 gallon 1.5 litre bottle of inexpensive dry red wine 1.5 litre bottle of inexpensive American port 1 bottle of inexpensive brandy or aquavit 10 inches of stick cinnamon 1 Tablespoon cardamom seeds 2 dozen whole cloves Peel of one orange 1/2 cup raisins 1 cup blanched almonds 2 cups sugar Garnish with the peel of another orang...

By MARK JOHNSON Associated Press Writer December 18, 2005, 9:32 AM EST ALBANY, N.Y. -- "Phishing" is a computer scam that can quickly drain entire bank accounts of unsuspecting consumers, but it victimizes bigger players, too. Now, two New York lawmakers want to give legitimate companies whose systems and identities were illegally commandeered to perpetrate such scams the chance to strike back. A bill introduced by state Sen. Charles Fuschillo and Assemblyman Richard Brodsky would allow private companies, nonprofit groups and the state attorney general to bring civil actions against phishing scam artists. The legislation is being supported by Microsoft Corp., AARP and the New York State Telecommunications Association, among others. Phishing refers to e-mails that appear to come from banks or other trusted businesses and are used to induce recipients to verify their accounts by typing personal details, such as credit card or bank account information, into a Web site disguised...

Personal Data for Law Enforcement, Security Professionals Exposed By Brian Krebs washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Monday, December 19, 2005; 5:33 PM Guidance Software -- the leading provider of software used to diagnose hacker break-ins -- has itself been hacked, resulting in the exposure of financial and personal data connected to thousands of law enforcement officials and network-security professionals. Guidance alerted customers to the incident in a letter sent last week, saying it discovered on Dec. 7 that hackers had broken into a company database and made off with approximately 3,800 customer credit card numbers. The Pasadena, Calif.-based company said the incident occurred sometime in November and that it is working with the U.S. Secret Service on a more detailed investigation. Michael G. Kessler, president of New York City-based computer-forensics investigative firm Kessler International, received a letter notifying him that the company's American Express card was...

Microsoft's forthcoming Internet Explorer 7 browser will adopt Firefox's RSS feed icon Rachel Rosmarin, Forbes.com 19 Dec 2005 BURLINGAME, CALIF. - It's just one minor battle in a war it likely won't win, but Mozilla's Firefox has tasted victory--and it is little and orange. Microsoft's (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) forthcoming Internet Explorer 7 browser will adopt Firefox's RSS feed icon , the company announced on a blog--effectively making the orange square with white radio waves the industry standard. RSS, which stands for both Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication, is a system for generating automated feeds of Web site updates--such as blog postings or news--and sending them to an e-mail address or an RSS reader. Some 31% of Web users have used RSS to get information according to market research firm Ipsos Insight. Representatives of giant Microsoft's Redmond, Wash.-based IE7 team even took a trip down to tiny Mozilla's Mou...

Microsoft bids Internet Explorer for Mac farewell Mac browser becomes part of history Tom Sanders in California, vnunet.com 19 Dec 2005 Microsoft plans to discontinue support for its Internet Explorer browser on Mac OS X at the end of this year. The software developer mothballed the browser, which is currently on version 5.2, in June 2003 after Apple released Safari. Development ever since has been limited to the release of security patches. Microsoft's website as recent as last November touted Internet Explorer as an "award winning" browser that "makes it easy to view and find information on the internet." That webpage was changed last week and is now informing visitors that: "In accordance with published support lifecycle policies , Microsoft will end support for Internet Explorer for Mac on December 31st, 2005, and will provide no further security or performance updates." Microsoft plans to pull the download from its website on 31 January...

Bill, Melinda and Bono get the big Time gongs Ken Young, vnunet.com 19 Dec 2005 Bill Gates has been named as one of the Persons of the Year by Time magazine Time magazine has named Bill and Melinda Gates, and rock star Bono , as its 'Persons of the Year' citing their charitable work and activism aimed at reducing global poverty and improving world health. The reason for the award is hard to miss. The Microsoft chairman and his wife have built the world's largest charity, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation . It has a $29bn endowment and has been giving away money faster than any other charity in history. The Foundation is credited with saving at least 700,000 people by investing in vaccination programmes, and has donated computers and internet access to 11,000 libraries. It has also sponsored the biggest scholarship fund in history. Jim Kelly, managing editor at Time, said: "Natural disasters are terrible things, but there is a different kind of...

$1bn for five per cent for global ads tie-in Ken Young, vnunet.com 19 Dec 2005 Google is planning to pay $1bn to take a five per cent stake in AOL as part of a wide-ranging advertising deal, according to the Financial Times . The AOL sales team will get access to the Google network, and Google will give Time Warner's media properties preferential treatment. The move is seen as a snub to Microsoft which was known to be considering buying the stake to further its online ambitions. Google and AOL already work closely following a deal in 2001. AOL currently gets 80 per cent of the revenues from search-related advertising displayed on AOL websites but cannot sell the search ads and has to negotiate deals direct with Google. As a result of the new deal AOL will be able to sell the ads as well, and will sell display ads on AOL and Google properties. The deal also includes promotion of AOL content through Google's paid search. Yahoo was at some point also repor...