MICROSOFT WINDOWS 7

What if a new version of Windows didn't try to dazzle you? What if, instead, it tried to disappear except when you needed it? Such an operating system would dispense with glitzy effects in favor of low-key, useful new features. Rather than pelting you with alerts, warnings, and requests, it would try to stay out of your face. And if any bundled applications weren't essential, it would dump 'em.

It's not a what-if scenario. Windows 7, set to arrive on new PCs and as a shrinkwrapped upgrade on October 22, has a minimalist feel and attempts to fix annoyances old and new. In contrast, Windows Vista offered a flashy new interface, but its poor performance, compatibility gotchas, and lack of compelling features made some folks regret upgrading and others refuse to leave Windows XP.

Windows 7 is hardly flawless. Some features feel unfinished; others won't realize their potential without heavy lifting by third parties. And some long-standing annoyances remain intact. But overall, the final shipping version I test-drove appears to be the worthy successor to Windows XP that Vista never was.

Microsoft's release of Windows 7 also roughly coincides with Apple's release of its new Snow Leopard; for a visual comparison of the two operating systems, see our slideshow "Snow Leopard Versus Windows 7" Read on here for an in-depth look at how Microsoft has changed its OS -mostly for the better - in Windows 7.

Interface: The New Taskmaster

The Windows experience occurs mainly in its Taskbar — especially in the Start menu and System Tray. Vista gave the Start menu a welcome redesign; in Windows 7, the Taskbar and the System Tray get a thorough makeover.

The new Taskbar replaces the old small icons and text labels for running apps with larger, unlabeled icons. If you can keep the icons straight, the new design painlessly reduces Taskbar clutter. If you don't like it, you can shrink the icons and/or bring the labels back.

In the past, you could get one-click access to programs by dragging their icons to the Quick Launch toolbar. Windows 7 eliminates Quick Launch and folds its capabilities into the Taskbar. Drag an app's icon from the Start menu or desktop to the Taskbar, and Windows will pin it there, so you can launch the program without rummaging around in the Start menu. You can also organize icons in the Taskbar by moving them to new positions.

To indicate that a particular application on the Taskbar is running, Windows draws a subtle box around its icon — so subtle, in fact, that figuring out whether the app is running can take a moment, especially if its icon sits between two icons for running apps.

In Windows Vista, hovering the mouse pointer over an application's Taskbar icon produces a thumbnail window view known as a Live Preview. But when you have multiple windows open, you see only one preview at a time. Windows 7's version of this feature is slicker and more efficient: Hover the pointer on an icon, and thumbnails of the app's windows glide into position above the Taskbar, so you can quickly find the one you're looking for. (The process would be even simpler if the thumbnails were larger and easier to decipher.)

Also new in Windows 7's Taskbar is a feature called Jump Lists. These menus resemble the context-sensitive ones you get when you right-click within various Windows applications, except that you don't have to be inside an app to use them. Internet Explorer 8's Jump List, for example, lets you open the browser and load a fresh tab, initiate an InPrivate stealth browsing session, or go directly to any of eight frequently visited Web pages. Non-Microsoft apps can offer Jump Lists, too, if their developers follow the guidelines for creating them.

Other Windows 7 interface adjustments are minor, yet so sensible that you may wonder why Windows didn't include them all along. Shove a window into the left or right edge of the screen and it'll expand to fill half of your desktop. Nudge another into the opposite edge of the screen, and it'll expand to occupy the other half. That makes comparing two windows' contents easy. If you nudge a window into the top of the screen, it will maximize to occupy all of the display's real estate.

The extreme right edge of the Taskbar now sports a sort of nub; hover over it, and open windows become transparent, revealing the desktop below. (Microsoft calls this feature Aero Peek.) Click the nub, and the windows scoot out of the way, giving you access to documents or apps that reside on the desktop and duplicating the Show Desktop feature that Quick Launch used to offer.

Getting at your desktop may soon be — come even more important than it was in the past. That's because Windows 7 does away with the Sidebar, the portion of screen space that Windows Vista reserved for Gadgets such as a photo viewer and a weather applet. Instead of occupying the Sidebar, Gadgets now sit directly on the desktop, where they don't compete with other apps for precious screen real estate.

Old Tray, New Tricks: Windows 7's Taskbar and window management tweaks are nice. But its changes to the System Tray — aka the Notification Area — have a huge positive effect.

In the past, no feature of Windows packed more frustration per square inch than the System Tray. It quickly grew dense with applets that users did not want in the first place, and many of the uninvited guests employed word balloons and other intrusive methods to alert users to uninteresting facts at inopportune moments. At their worst, System Tray applets behaved like belligerent squatters, and Windows did little to put users back in charge.

In Windows 7, applets can't pester you unbidden because software installers can't dump them into the System Tray. Instead, applets land in a holding pen that appears only when you click it, a much-improved version of the overflow area used in previous incarnations of the Tray. Applets in the pen can't float word balloons at you unless you permit them to do so. It's a cinch to drag them into the System Tray or out of it again, so you enjoy complete control over which applets reside there.

More good news: Windows 7 largely dispenses with the onslaught of word-balloon warnings from the OS about troubleshooting issues, potential security problems, and the like. A new area called Action Center — a revamped version of Vista's Security Center — queues up such alerts so you can deal with them at your convenience. Action Center does issue notifications of its own from the System Tray, but you can shut these off if you don't want them pestering you.

All of this helps make Windows 7 the least distracting, least intrusive Microsoft OS in a very long time. It's a giant step forward from the days when Windows thought nothing of interrupting your work to inform you that it had de­­tected unused icons on your desktop.

Who Kathy Gloddy?

KATHY GLODDY PHOTO

Kathy Lynn Gloddy was the 13-year-old girl who was beaten, raped and hit over the head. She was murdered on November 1971 after been ran over by car several times. 20/20 magazine is trying to bring nations eyes on this unsolved case. Her family is not hopeless and they are determined that the accused shall be bring to justice.
Janet Gloddy Young, one of Kathy’s three sisters said:

" We are excited that 20/20 has chosen to take on Kathy’s case. We are hoping through continued media exposure and through the creation of the Kathy Lynn Gloddy Reward Fund we will be able to find some answers and peace for our family."

Retired Massachusetts Police Chief and Detective Thomas Shamshak are helping her family for the justice and they also creates fund for this unsolved case.
The case has many twists. Florida resident Ernest Dukette went into a police department and expressed that he believed that he was with the girl when she was murdered but not sure whether she was raped. Later police said that he was ill by taking excessive medicines. Senior Assistant State Attorney Will Delker said the case is reopened and it is believed that there may be more then one rappers involved in the murder.
Ann Ring, sister of Kathy said she believed two more men were involved in the murder one of them is currently residing in New Hampshire. She also said “We can’t give up hope.” She described Kathy Lynn as a “loving little girl”.

Woman Kisses Charlize For US$140,000

No, it’s not that Charlize Theron has fallen on hard times. She sold the kiss for a greater good – charity of course.

Thirty four-year-old Charlize took part in a live auction during a gala for the charity OneXOne in San Francisco on 22 Oct. And while she was initially selling a 2010 trip to South Africa that included World Cup tickets, a safari and a meet-and-greet with Nelson Mandela, she raised the stakes when bidding stalled at US$37,000, far below the $280,000 Entourage actor Jeremy Piven had just raised. "For f*** sake! You can do better," she told the audience. "There is no way I am leaving here with Jeremy Piven getting a higher bid. I've got t**** for God's sake."

To sweeten the pot, she offered up a seven-second kiss for US$130,000 to a male bidder. "Swine flu is going around. This is high risk kissing!" she told him. After one man bid US$135,000, a woman upped the stakes to US$140,000 – getting up on stage for a 20-second smooch as the audience counted down. Charlize, who is in a long-term relationship with actor Stuart Townsend, 36 joked, "My boyfriend is not here tonight," drawing laughter from the crowd.

Whether sold to a man or a woman, cheers to Charlize for her effort.

Lily Allen Quits Twitter For Lover

Quitting your Twitter account seems to be the in thing with celebs these days. First Miley, then Courtney Love and now it seems British singer Lily Allen has also given up on the social networking site.

You see, Lily was addicted to Twitter and MySpace so much so that her boyfriend, Sam Cooper, felt neglected.

She once admitted, My boyfriend gets really angry. He's like: 'I want to spend some time with you, do we have to have one and a half million people in the room with us?' I'm like, 'Yes, shut up!'"

But now Sam has made her choose and Lily chose Sam. A source told Daily Mirror, "We thought she was joking, but it's been a month since she last Twittered."

Lily also gave up her computer and BlackBerry to appease Sam.

Quitting your Twitter account seems to be the in thing with celebs these days. First Miley, then Courtney Love and now it seems British singer Lily Allen has also given up on the social networking site.

You see, Lily was addicted to Twitter and MySpace so much so that her boyfriend, Sam Cooper, felt neglected.

She once admitted, My boyfriend gets really angry. He's like: 'I want to spend some time with you, do we have to have one and a half million people in the room with us?' I'm like, 'Yes, shut up!'"

But now Sam has made her choose and Lily chose Sam. A source told Daily Mirror, "We thought she was joking, but it's been a month since she last Twittered."

Lily also gave up her computer and BlackBerry to appease Sam.

Hardware hacking a cat and mouse game

TOOLS OF THE TRADE: Grand showing some
of the tools hardware hackers use, which are available at affordable
prices. He was one of the speakers at this year's Hack in The Box
Security Conference.


IF YOU ask Joe Grand, president of Grand Idea Studio — an R&D and product design company, he’ll tell you that no piece of hardware can ever be safe enough from hackers.

“If something has electronics running inside, it can easily be tampered with, and many such products are susceptible to being compromised by even simple attacks,” he said.

According to him, hardware hacking has recently reappeared on hackers’ radars because of the plethora of easily available tips and tools available on the Internet.

He said the tools of the trade are very affordable and for a paltry sum experienced hardware hackers can have a die made of the circuit board they wish to hack.

This form of outsourcing is something new in the hardware hacking world, Grand said in his keynote address at the recent Hack in The Box Security Conference (HITBSecConf) here.

“Things that used to be difficult to do for hardware engineers and hackers have become so easy that there really isn’t any excuse now for hackers not to hack into hardware,” he said.

A mix of new and old methods can also help with the process of hacking hardware.

Citing an incident where he hacked into parking meters in San Francisco, Grand applied social engineering techniques to learn how the meters worked. “and the officials were only too happy to tell me everything.”

With that information and some software tools, he managed to confound the system running the parking meters into granting him US$999.99 (about RM3,600) worth of parking time.

“I didn’t use it, of course. I informed the city council about it and they are currently doing something to fix (the loophole in the) system,” he said.

Another trend that is making the job of a hardware hacker even easier is product enthusiasts disassembling a product and then posting detailed pictures of its components on the Internet.

“This shows hardware hackers what kind of components are used to build the product, which can clue them in to its vulnerabilities,” he said.

Good and bad

Just like with any other hacking activity, hardware hacking can lead to detrimental consequences, such as service theft or having your product cloned by unscrupulous parties.

But there is a silver lining, Grand said. If product developers make an effort to understand the skills of hardware hacking, they will be able to build a more secure product.

He said hardware designers usually leave a lot of clues on how to hack into a product because they are always in a hurry to put the devices on the market and place little emphasis on security.

Grand said hacked hardware is probably a more costly problem to solve than hacked software.

“In the software world all it takes is an inexpensive patch but it’s not that simple when it comes to hardware. A lot of times, it requires the companies to issue a new version of the hardware which can be a costly fix,” he said.

Having said that, Grand believes that it is impossible to devise a totally secure hardware product, no matter how much a company chooses to spend on this. The trick is for the company to keep staying ahead of the hackers.

“It’s a cat and mouse game. Hardware developers will try to make their products secure but there’ll always be an unplugged hole somewhere,” he said. This keeps everyone on their toes.

Kidman: Hollywood probably contributes to violence

Nicole Kidman tesified before a U.S. congressional panel on violence against women, conceding that Hollywood probably has contributed to the problem by portraying women as weak sex objects.

However, the Academy Award-winning actress said she is not interested those kinds of demeaning roles, adding that the movie industry also has made an effort to contribute to solutions for ending the violence.

Kidman testified Wednesday before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that is considering legislation to deal with violence against women overseas through humanitarian relief efforts and grants to local organizations working on the problem.

Asked by Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher whether the movie industry has "played a bad role," Kidman said "probably" but quickly added that she herself does not.

"I can't be responsible for all of Hollywood, but I can certainly be responsible for my own career," she said.

Kidman appeared before the committee in her role as a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. Development Fund for Women, known as UNIFEM, to promote the International Violence Against Women Act.

"In the real world, the laws go unenforced and impunity is the norm," she said.

The legislation has stalled in the past, but a sponsor, Democratic Rep. Bill Delahunt, said he and others plan to reintroduce it soon.

The Australian star told Congress that the U.N. women's fund needs more resources. "We need the money," she said. Before the hearing began, a crowd of people lined the hall and around the corner to hear her speak.

Microsoft hopes for a fresh start with Windows 7

REDMOND (Washington): Microsoft Corp.’s newest version of Windows has arrived. Windows 7 is available on new computers, and as an upgrade for some older PCs.

Microsoft hopes people like Windows 7 more than its predecessor, Vista, which tended to be slow and didn’t work well with existing programs and devices. Windows 7 promises to boot up faster and cut down on the clicks needed to get common tasks done.

Microsoft has also updated the look of Windows and added features to help people keep track of open programs or folders.

Thursday’s launch of Windows 7 comes as computer makers and retailers such as Best Buy Inc. are cutting prices for PCs to try to goose holiday-quarter sales.

Apple's New Magic Mouse is One Clever Rodent

Apple's low-key product rollout on Tuesday included updated iMacs and a new $999 MacBook, but one of its more innovative new offerings deserves a closer look: the Magic Mouse. Featuring multitouch features borrowed from the iPhone, iPod Touch, and MacBook Pro, Apple's latest pointing device is a clever melding of the traditional desktop mouse with the swiping and swirling gestures of today's touchscreens.

The Magic Mouse comes with the new iMacs, and sells separately for $69. It's a sleek, low-slung wireless pointer with a smooth top shell. There are no buttons or scroll wheels.

No buttons? Well, not exactly. The top shell is actually one giant button. It's a multitouch sensor that allows you to click anywhere.



The device tracks like a conventional mouse. To right-click or activate a shortcut menu, you click the top-right corner of the mouse. Lefties can configure Magic Mouse to do the same thing with a top-left click.

Magic Mouse brings iPhone-like scrolling to the desktop. To scroll through a Web page or document, you run your finger vertically up and down the mouse's top shell.

Apple's New Magic Mouse is One Clever Rodent

To scroll side to side, move your finger horizontally (left or right). And you can scroll a full 360 degrees by moving your finger in a circular motion--handy for viewing and editing large photos.

Apple's New Magic Mouse is One Clever Rodent

To magnify your desktop, hold down the control key on the keyboard, and then run a finger upwards on the mouse. To zoom out, run your finger back down.

Apple's New Magic Mouse is One Clever Rodent

Tired of all the scrolling and swiping? You can turn off the multi-touch features and use Magic Mouse as a conventional point-and-click device too.

Magic Mouse is certainly clever, but questions remain as to how well it'll work in day-to-day usage. Will the multi-touch features enhance the desktop experience, or will they annoy users and get in the way?

Paris Hilton Wants Lobsters For Her Cameo?

It’s no secret that celebs have riders but the latest request from Paris Hilton as part of her contract has left some people very surprised.

According to the New York Post, Paris has landed a cameo in The Other Guys, a movie starring Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Samuel L. Jackson and Eva Mendes currently filming in New York and her three-page list of demands included live lobsters to be prepared fresh when she’s ready to eat and a bottle of Grey Goose vodka.

Mind you, she’s only on the set for just one day. That’s a bit excessive, isn’t it?

Of course the rep for Paris denies there’s any truth to this story, dismissing it as “totally ridiculous and untrue.” Yeah, why would she admit it if it is true?

Britney Spears, photographer settle suit

Court records show Britney Spears and a photographer whose foot she ran over have settled a lawsuit.

Ricardo Mendoza sued the pop singer in May, accusing her of assault, battery and negligently driving her car when she ran over his foot in Beverly Hills in October 2007.

Court records filed in Los Angeles show a settlement notice was filed on Monday. The records do not disclose the terms of the agreement.

TMZ, who employed Mendoza at the time, auctioned his tire-stained sock and donated the proceeds to charity.

The incident happened during a turbulent period for Spears, who hours earlier had lost custody of her two sons. She now has the No. 1 song on Billboard's charts with her single "3" and has since regained visitation rights.