There’d be no reason for the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, if Yahoo! wasn’t afraid that it will soon be outmaneuvered by the Redmond software giant. The golden parachute plan revolves around the particular eventuality of a change-in-control severance, and it has two standing points.

Employees and executives being laid off in the first two years after
the eventual takeover will be given four months to two years’ pay, depending on the position they had when fired. To prevent any attempt to minimalize costs on Microsoft’s behalf, such as, say, demoting everybody so that the severance pay is littler, there was a clause inserted that includes employees leaving for good reasons and the above is a damned good one.

It doesn’t mean that Microsoft will actually do it, it would be a faux pas without precedent and the turning point of the public’s opinion of the company, and you have got to admit that the Redmond giant isn’t exactly looked at with love wherever it turns.

Health and dental coverage for the length of the employees’ severance awards is included, "as well as reimbursement of outplacement services up to two years, or a maximum of $15,000, depending on job title," news.com reports. The packages are set up to accomplish several things: "help retain the employees, help maintain a stable work environment and provide certain economic benefits to the employees in the event their employment is terminated (under certain circumstances)," as Yahoo wrote in the filing.

Fun fact: the golden parachute also covers Yahoo!’s Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang, and should he leave under the explained circumstances, he too would be eligible for the severance packages. However, I couldn’t say that his leaving and getting two years’ worth of pay would bleed Microsoft dry, as his annual salary is only $1.


Source: news.softpedia.com

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Just the other day I had to send a very important personal message to apologize for something I had done and after taking my time (about an hour) to make it sound really humble and actually confer the feeling of how sorry I was, I clicked my mouse on the "Send" button and, conscience lighter, I went about my other businesses. Only to find out the second day, when I managed to conjure up the guts to attempt a phone call, that the message hadn’t reached its destination. After checking and double-checking the address, I concluded that it wasn’t my fault. Not that it’d change the situation I was in, but still.

I chanced upon a Yahoo! Mail Blog as soon as it was posted, and all was clear. There has been a very frustrating delay in delivering messages via email clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail and so on. Apparently, there’s a surge in traffic through the POP / SMTP servers that’s causing the time difference between the moment a message is sent and when it is received.

The Yahoo! team in charge came up with two solutions, out of which one was bad. They thought they had covered the delay with a clever tweak, but they didn’t (and caused my trouble) and as a result of their failure a hardware upgrade was made. Some work has been put into the bandwidth allocation mode of the new servers, so any possible future situations don’t happen in the first place.

… a statement to be taken with a grain of salt. I tested it after changing my settings as the picture on the left shows (the official fix) and out of 10 messages I sent to myself, only 6 of them were delivered instantly, with three others arriving between 45 and 50 minutes late and another being 9 minutes overdue. Not like the initial day and a half of delay I encountered, but I can’t say I’m very pleased with it.


Source: news.softpedia.com

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Yahoo! put an end to all the speculations around Microsoft’s unsolicited bid on Monday. The answer was a big no, thank you, and the motivation was that the Sunnyvale-based company’s board considered that the offer greatly undervalued Yahoo! The proposal of $44.6 billion, or $31 per share, was forwarded to the Internet giant on the first of February.

The rejection couldn’t go unanswered, so Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO issued a statement saying, among others, that "A Microsoft-Yahoo! combination will create a more effective company that would provide greater value and service to our customers. Furthermore,
the combination will create a more competitive marketplace by establishing a compelling number two competitor for Internet search and online advertising. The Yahoo! response does not change our belief in the strategic and financial merits of our proposal. As we have said previously, Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!’s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal."

The last phrase gave birth to a lot of controversy regarding what all of those "necessary steps" might be, a hostile takeover being what everybody instantly thought about. Nobody dared compete with Microsoft head on regarding the Yahoo! deal, but several companies reportedly had some talks with the Internet company about eventual alliances that would save Jerry Yang’s firm from being forced to sell. Google was the first, but its interest won after realizing that regulators would not allow it to happen and AOL came second, but that was mostly the rumor mill working its magic. The most serious of all was News Corp, and messages being sent back and forward between Murdoch and Yang were reported in the press.

Tuesday, the Redmond-based company officially confirmed that Windows 7 and Office 14 would not be confined to desktops only. Eyeing the tremendous growth of its online counterparts from Google in particular and some other companies, Microsoft decided to implement its own branded strategy with Software plus Services.

"On the consumer side, though, our work will be anchored in a few core things. Windows and Office need to embrace the Internet and go live, and we’ve got good efforts underway and in market for both Windows Live and Office Live," CEO Steve Ballmer said after, the previous day, Chairman Bill Gates had underlined the importance of blending the desktop-based Office System with services in the clouds.

The peer to peer copyrighted file sharing scandal that has been roaming the Internets (© George W. Bush) for the past month or so, with renewed vigor, convinced Microsoft to conduct a survey among students between the seventh and tenth grade, and its results found that most of them were not aware of the laws in state. Wednesday was educational day for the Redmond-based company, so it launched an interactive web site, http://www.mybytes.com for the young to develop their own intellectual property and assign usage rights, by mixing music online to create a custom riff for downloading as a ringtone, according to Press Pass.

49 percent of the respondents said that they were not familiar with the laws and the penalties for such crimes, while only 11 percent admitted to knowing "very well" what the regulations were. The rest answered that they were aware that illegal downloading wasn’t a good thing and said that some rules were clear, but rather in a big haze.

"Widespread access to the Internet has amplified the issue of intellectual property rights among children and teens," said Sherri Erickson, global manager, Genuine Software Initiative for Microsoft for Press Pass. "This survey provides more insight into the disparity between IP awareness and young people today and highlights the opportunity for schools to help prepare their students to be good online citizens."

Valentine’s Day didn’t deliver on the love, but it compensated with the best known surrogate: promotion. Not one, but fourteen, and all at the top. It was the 14th after all, so they kind of had to go with that number.

These came to reflect the company’s commitment to maintain and furthermore built a strong and dynamic management team across its unique portfolio of businesses. "Along with attracting world-class talent from outside the company, one of my top priorities is growing Microsoft’s existing leadership team. […] Each of these executives will play a critical role in leading Microsoft into the future. Today’s promotions are a result of their ability to think strategically on a global scale, the respect they’ve earned from their peers, customers and partners, and their significant contributions to the company," said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft.

The seven executives that were promoted to senior vice president are Chris Capossela, Kurt DelBene, Antoine Leblond, Andy Lees, Satya Nadella, S. Somasegar and Bill Veghte, and the seven executives promoted to corporate vice president are Walid Abu-Habda, Brad Brooks, Larry Cohen, Steve Guggenheimer, Scott Guthrie, Roz Ho and Brian Tobey. Best of luck to them all!

On Friday, news came out about long time security giants Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro being bested by Microsoft’s alternative, the lesser known Forefront, in terms of performance. It was widely less resources consuming, using 60 percent of what Symantec threw at it, the AntiVirus Corporate Edition 10.2. Compared to the same product, Microsoft Forefront proved to be able to deliver 13 times faster boot times and more than twice greater speed at quick scans.

This study was conducted to test Forefront Client Security’s system performance compared
to the three leading competitive products. Testing was carried out during April and May 2007. The study shows that Microsoft Forefront Client Security’s results were favorable, compared to those of two of the leading competitors. It uses few system resources on servers and is comparable to the leading competitor in scanning times on both older and newer machines, and also when scanning .cab files. West Coast Labs also found that when malware was discovered, Microsoft’s bandwidth usage on clients was the lowest of all the four products," revealed a member of Microsoft Switzerland.


Source: news.softpedia.com

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Yahoo Inc.'s board plans to reject Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited $44.6 billion offer to acquire the Web giant, a person familiar with the situation says.

After a series of meetings over the past week, Yahoo's board determined that the $31 per share offer "massively undervalues" Yahoo, the person said. It also doesn't account for the risks Yahoo would be taking by entering into an agreement that might be overturned by regulators. The board plans to send a letter to Microsoft Monday, spelling out its position.

Yahoo's board believes that Microsoft's is trying to take advantage of the recent weakness in the company's share price to "steal" the company. The decision to reject the offer signals that Yahoo's board is digging in its heels for what could be a long takeover battle. The company is unlikely to consider any offer below $40 per share, the person said.

It's unclear whether Microsoft would be willing to pay such a premium, which would increase the value of its original cash and stock bid by more than $12 billion. The rejection comes as Yahoo's board has been considering various other scenarios, including a search advertising partnership Google Inc. Yahoo's directors are still considering that and other options that would safeguard the company's independence, people close the company say.

Yahoo's board appears to be betting that Microsoft doesn't want to "go hostile" and try to acquire the company against the wishes of management and the board. Such a course could cause deep resentment among the rank-and-file engineers whose cooperation is crucial to the company's success. A hostile takeover could also make it more difficult to get the deal past regulators if Yahoo management tries to convince authorities that the deal is anticompetitive.

Yahoo has taken "poison pill" provisions to prevent an unwanted takeover. Microsoft would likely have to oust the board in order to overturn them.

Source:
http://rajamonyet.blogspot.com
online.wsj.com

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The whole week was pretty slow when it came to what everybody expected to come true, Yahoo! accepting the offer that Microsoft put on its table, so everything else kind of remained in this deal’s shade. Nevertheless, the Redmond-based company managed to keep its employees focused on their tasks at hand, so Monday, Windows Vista Service Pack 1, the apple of so many engineers’ eye, was released to manufacturing alongside Windows Server 2008.

The date for the release of SP 1 was not pinned, but it is said to come somewhere in March, while Windows Server 2008 will be available to new clients as of March the first, and Microsoft Volume Licensing customers that have an active Microsoft Software Assurance coverage, or an Enterprise Agreement, will be able to download it earlier. There will be an event to mark it, part of the joint Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 "Heroes Happen Here" launch.

The Windows Vista Service Pack 1 was expected for over one year, ever since
the official launch of the Operating System. What was broadcasted at the time as the best Windows to come so far turned out to be a bitter disappointment to some, who saw numerous vulnerabilities shipped along with the OS. Patches and updates that came afterwards managed to smooth the transition from XP to Vista in reliability and performance, but they were never enough. The wave of complaints will finally come to en end in March… hopefully.

Meanwhile, on the Yahoo! front, Google’s David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, jumped at Microsoft’s throat, claiming that the unsolicited bid would "extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet."

Tuesday was the first day of the Microsoft Office Visio conference 2008, where delegates got to take a peak at the features that are to come with the next release of Visio. Add to that a keynote addressing the company’s future vision for the product, delivered by Jeff Raikes, the President of the Microsoft Business Division, and you can see why 250 seats weren’t enough.

"The fundamental premise behind Visio is that a picture is worth a thousand words. The ability to represent data in a visually-rich way really brings information to the surface in a way you just don’t get from raw data. Visio allows users to zero in on the relevant information to get the clarity they need to drive timely, informed decision-making. This is a capability that’s becoming more and more valued by organizations amid the ever-increasing volume of data they face, and we’re certainly seeing Visio’s problem-solving capabilities pretty squarely aligned with some of the biggest growth opportunities for organizations today," Richard Wolf, General Manager told Press Pass.

Apparently, the next Visio release will attend to what users have been asking for a long time, such as a new ‘fluent’ user interface, which is very important because it allows more of the product’s functionality to be exposed. It will also smoothen the learning curve for new Visio users by being able to use the ribbon (another way Wolf called the fluent user interface) just in the same manner as they would any of the Office tools.

News that Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, called CEO Jerry Yang in order to offer his company’s help surfaced, and Microsoft suddenly started having chills running down its spine.

The middle of the week brought the best news for small businesses and their owners, as Microsoft decided to give the world a version of Microsoft Outlook 2007, complemented with Business Contact Manager on Wednesday. "Small-business owners need effective solutions for managing their customer base. […] Currently, many small and home-based businesses keep their contacts in several different places — some in Rolodexes, some in spreadsheets. We understand the importance of good customer management and are providing simple and affordable solutions to help small businesses centralize their customer information so that keeping track of customers is more effective and less time-consuming," said Takeshi Numoto, general manager of Microsoft Office 2007 at Microsoft.

The new standalone product offers all the functionality of MS Office Outlook 2007, and thus making it easy for small businesses to track their sales and market activities ‘under one roof’. It was released due to the success that the 2007 edition had, that noted nearly 2 million registered users, taking advantage of the 28 languages the product comes in.

Google decided to stop Microsoft’s attempt to take over Yahoo! by all means, so it started lobbying at Capitol Hill, figuring that it’s payback time for the time MS told on its acquisition of DoubleClick. Important people from the Mountain View-based company have highlighted just why the deal shouldn’t go through in front of the lawmakers, leaving Microsoft’s lobbying somewhere in the shade.

Privacy and security first and foremost, cried Microsoft Corp, Google, Yahoo! and IBM on Thursday, as they all joined the OpenId Foundation. They sat at the round table and each brought forth what it had to offer, namely expertise in Internet and security technology.

The point of the Foundation is to empower users with portable Internet identities, or OpenIDs, that would let people have control over the way their personal information is to be used online, not to mention that it would simplify the management of digital identities. "With this support from these new company board members, the OpenID Foundation will be able to continue to promote and protect the technology and its community moving forward. […] The community has expanded quickly since the inception of the foundation, and these companies will help bring OpenID into the mainstream markets," said Bill Washburn, executive director of the OpenID Foundation.

Yahoo decided to level the playing field in the small businesses area, and although it did not roll out a competitor to Microsoft’s Outlook 2007 doubled with the Business Contact Manager, the Sunnyvale-based company announced that they have leveled all the fees they charged for hosting the services and for the traffic they had. To top that already marvelous piece of news, an "unlimited storage" sticker was glued on its cover and it was ready to ship and skyrocket Yahoo!’s customer base.

Jerry Yang addressed a second mail to all his employees, letting them know that no decision had been taken.

Friday, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, addressed Yahoo! indirectly and let the world know that the Sunnyvale-based company’s brand will remain untouched, should they decide to accept the unsolicited bid. Many casualties are to come, due to the similarities of services both Microsoft and Yahoo! offer. Count Live Search and Windows Live Messenger are casualties of the great takeover war, because if the Yahoo! brand is prominent, there’s no way they could live together. United, under one name, and that will have Yahoo! up front.

Kevin Johnson, President, Platform & Services Division, said that "A key synergy we’ve identified in this combination is really about expanded R&D capability. It doesn’t make sense to have thousands of engineers at Yahoo working on a search index, thousands of engineers at Microsoft working on the same search index. By combining, we can have one team of people across the two companies working on the search index, and then have others continue to focus on areas where we’ve defined differentiation in search. New search verticals and expanded user experience for search."

As midday approached, a new problem emerged for Microsoft: Yahoo!’s rising shares and its own declining ones made the bid look weak, compared to the possibilities of stock holders to sell on the open market. How that turns out will be an interesting story to follow.


Source: news.softpedia.com

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The first Beta version of Mandriva Linux 2008.1 was released a few days ago and includes some major new features, like XML-based package meta information system, multimedia key support and much more. Let's take a more detailed look at them:

New XML-based package meta-information system
Just as before, the basic information necessary for installing packages is present in a synthesis hdlist file. The trick is that rather being a single full hdlist file for each repository containing further information, the information has been split across several XML-formatted files for each repository. If a new repository is added, the synthesis hdlist will always be retrieved.

Multimedia key support
Nowadays, many keyboards have multimedia keys, that's why this pre-release will provide out-of-the box support for these keys. Simple functions like changing the sound volume work in an instant now.

Perl 5.10
Since the release of Alpha 2, Perl has been updated to version 5.10, which brings a major change required for rebuilding several hundred packages.

Revert previous replacement of teTeX with TeX Live
The teTeX system was replaced with TeX Live in Alpha 2, but due to some problems and necessary features that were unimplemented in TeX Live, Mandriva 2008.1 Beta 1 will use again teTeX as default TeX system.

Latest NVIDIA and ATI proprietary drivers
This release comes equipped with the latest proprietary drivers from NVIDIA and ATI, 169.09 and 8.45.2, respectively.

KDE 4.0.0 Available
The final release of KDE 4.0.0 is available in the Cooker /contrib repository along with this pre-release.

Major Nautilus / GVFS changes
The latest version of Nautilus, the GNOME file and desktop manager, is included in this pre-release. It is now based on the new GVFS VFS system, which replaces the old gnome-vfs system.

Kernel 2.6.24 RC8 with ALSA 1.0.16 RC1
The latest available release candidate of kernel version 2.6.24 made its way into Beta 1, and provides the widest possible hardware compatibility.

Source: news.softpedia.com

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KDE 4 is finally out, as you probably already know, and it comes with a lot of innovations for the Linux desktop. KDE 4 is the next generation of the popular K Desktop Environment, which seeks to fulfill the need for a powerful yet easy-to-use desktop, for both personal and enterprise computing. KDE project's goal for the 4.0 release is to put the foundations in place for future innovations on the FREE desktop. But today, we will talk about the future versions of KDE 4 and what features they'll bring.

Let's have a look first at the main goals for KDE 4.1, which will be released somewhere in July:

· Windows port (Frameworks and Applications)
· Mac port (Frameworks and Applications)
· OpenSolaris port
· Plasma with widgets on canvas, makes things like layouting much easier, and generally integrating widgets into Plasmoids
· Webkit in Plasma
· GStreamer, Quicktime, DirectShow9 Phonon backends
· Apple dashboard widgets support in Plasma
· Decibel VOIP and real-time communication framework
· Done! Dragon Player multimedia player
· Done! Lokalize (formerly Kaider) computer-aided translation system
· More polished Kopete
· KDevelop and KDevplatform modules
· KDE-PIM module, with some Akonadi functionality
· KBlogger for KDE-PIM
· Move Akonadi library into the kdepimlibs module
· GetHotNewStuff2 / DXS
· Plasmagik plasma packages and add-on creator
· Lots of smaller features

Now, let's take a look at the release schedule for future KDE 4 versions:

· January - KDE 4.0.1
· February - KDE 4.0.2
· March - KDE 4.0.3
· April - KDE 4.0.4
· May - KDE 4.0.5
· June - KDE 4.0.6
· July - KDE 4.1.0
· August - KDE 4.1.1

...and a closer one to the KDE 4.1 release schedule:

· March 31st, 2008: Soft Feature Freeze
· April 22nd, 2008: Hard Feature Freeze
· April 22nd, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1 Alpha 1
· April 29th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1 Alpha 1
· May 20th, 2008: Message Freeze.
· May 20th, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1 Beta 1
· May 27th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1 Beta 1
· June 17th, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1 Beta 2
· June 24th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1 Beta 2
· July 8th, 2008: Artwork Freeze
· July 8th, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1 RC 1
· July 15th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1 RC 1
· July 22nd, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1.0
· July 29th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1

If you want to install KDE 4.0 on your Ubuntu PC and don't know how to do it, we wrote for you a step-by-step tutorial about this. Get it here!

Source: news.softpedia.com

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It's here and it is the hottest Linux kernel ever! Why? Because it includes CPU "group scheduling", tickless support for x86-64/PPC and other architectures, memory fragmentation avoidance, new wireless drivers and a new wireless configuration interface, SPI/SDIO MMC support, USB authorization, per-device dirty memory thresholds, support for PID and network namespaces, support for static probe markers, read-only bind mounts, SELinux performance improvements, CIFS ACLs support, SATA link power management and port multiplier support, Large Receive Offload in network devices, memory hot-remove support, a new framework for controlling the idle processor power management, many new drivers and many other features, improvements and bugfixes.

"The release is out there (both git trees and as tarballs/patches), and for the next week many kernel developers will be at (or flying into/out of) LCA in Melbourne, so let's hope it's
a good one. Nothing earth-shattering happened since -rc8, although the new set of ACPI blacklist entries and some network driver updates makes the diffstat show that there was more than the random sprinkling of one-liners all over the tree," said Linus Torvalds.

Let's have a look now at the most important technologies introduced in this release:

• CFS improvements
• Tickless support for x86-64, PPC, UML, ARM, MIPS
• New wireless drivers and configuration interface
• Anti-fragmentation patches
• SPI/SDIO support in the MMC layer
• USB authorization
• Per-device dirty memory thresholds
• PID and network namespaces
• Large Receive Offload (LRO) support for TCP traffic
• Task Control Groups
• Linux Kernel Markers
• Read-only bind mounts
• x86-32/64 arch reunification

Among the new drivers introduced in this release we can mention:

Bluetooth drivers
• Added generic driver for Bluetooth SDIO and USB devices
• Added UART driver for Texas Instruments' BRF63xx chips

Sound drivers
• Added driver for the AT73C213 DAC using Atmel SSC
• Added ASoC CS4270 codec device driver
• Added driver for Gallant SC-6000 card and clones: Audio Excel DSP 16 and Zoltrix AV302

Hwmon drivers
• Added driver for FSC chips
• Added driver for Fintek F71882FG and F71883FG Super-I/O chips
• Added driver for Analog Devices ADT7470 chips
• Added driver for Fintek F75375S/SP and F75373 chips
• IBM power meter driver
• Added driver for the SMSC SCH3112, SCH3114, and SCH3116 Super-I/O chips
• New driver to read FB-DIMM temperature sensors on systems with the Intel 5000 series chipsets
• Added Davinci I2C controller support

Network drivers
• Added ixgbe driver for Intel(R) 82598 PCI-Express 10GbE adapters (v4)
• Added new E1000E pci-express e1000 driver (currently for ICH9 devices only)
• Added Sun Neptune ethernet driver
• Added fast ethernet controller driver for mpc52xx
• Added driver for IP1000A GBit cards
• Added Tehuti network driver
• Added AR7 ethernet driver
• Added device tree-aware EMAC driver
• Virtual ethernet device driver
• Added IrDA driver for Kingsun Dazzle IrDA USB
• Added IrDA driver for Kingsun KS-959 IrDA USB

USB drivers
• Added atmel_usba_udc driver
• Added driver for CH341 USB-serial adaptor
• Eagle IV chipset support

SATA/IDE drivers
• Added driver for bf548 on chip ATAPI controller
• Added AVR32 PATA driver
• Added platform IDE driver, used mostly for Memory Mapped IDE devices, like Compact Flashes running in True IDE mode
• Added driver pata_cs5536 ATA driver for Geode companion chip
• Added driver for Freescale 3.0Gbps SATA Controllers

I2C drivers
• Added Davinci I2C controller support

Graphics drivers
• Added the uvesafb driver; uvesafb is an enhanced version of vesafb. It uses a userspace helper (v86d) to execute calls to the x86 Video BIOS functions. The driver is not limited to any specific arch and whether it works on a given arch or not depends on that arch being supported by the userspace daemon.
• Added a framebuffer driver for Blackfin BF54x framebuffer device driver

MTD drivers
• Added map driver for NOR flash on the Intel Vermilion Range chipset
• Added blackfin on-chip NAND Flash Controller driver
• Added NAND Driver for Olympus MAUSB-10 and Fujifilm DPC-R1 card readers

V4L/DVB
• Added ivtv-fb framebuffer driver for cx23415 devices
• Added a driver for Toshiba TCM825x VGA camera sensor
• Added driver for the internal MPX of the Panasonic VP27s tuner
• Added driver for the silicon baseband tuner MT2266 from Microtune
• Added driver for the silicon baseband tuner MT2131 from Microtune tuner
• Added driver for the Samsung S5h1409 demodulator, also known as the Conexant CX24227 demodulator
• Added driver for the silicon baseband tuner DIBB0070 from DIBcom
• Added CX23885/CX23887 PCIe bridge driver

For a full change-log with all the new features, drivers and improvements, please click here.

The Linux Kernel is the essential part of all Linux Distributions, responsible for resource allocation, low-level hardware interfaces, security, simple communications, and basic file system management.

Linux is a clone of the Unix operating system, initially written from scratch by Linus Torvalds, assisted by a loosely-knit team of hackers across the Net. It aims to achieve POSIX and Single UNIX Specification compliance.

Source: akupunyasitus.blogspot.com

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Linux has a rich history. It is essential to understand Linux's history in order to understand the philosophy behind Linux's programming. This guide hopes to cover what Linux is really about, show you its history, why it was formed, and a brief description of its capabilities and how it operates.

What is Linux?

Linux is a freely distributed operating system that behaves like the Unix operating system. Linux was designed specifically for the PC platform and takes advantage of its design to give users comparable performance to high-end UNIX workstations. Many big-name companies have joined the Linux bandwagon such as IBM and Compaq, offering systems pre-installed with Linux. Also, many companies have started Linux packages, such as Red Hat, Corel, and Samba. However, they can only charge for services and documentation packaged with the Linux software. More and more businesses are using Linux as an efficient and more economical way to run their networks.

Linux is a complete multitasking, multi-user operating system that behaves like UNIX in terms of kernel behavior and peripheral support. Linux has all the features of UNIX and boasts of its open source code and mainly free utilities.

The Linux kernel was originally developed for the Intel 80386, which was developed with multitasking as one of its features. The kernel is the lowest-level core factor of the operating system. The kernel is the code that controls the interface between user programs and hardware devices, the scheduling of processes to achieve multitasking, and many other aspects of the system. The Linux kernel is a monolithic kernel; all the device drivers are part of the kernel proper. Despite the fact that most of Intel's CPUs are used with single-tasking MS-DOS, Linux makes good use of the advanced multitasking features built into the CPU's instruction set. Linux supports demand paging, which means that only the sections of a program that are necessary are read into RAM. Linux also offers support for copy-on-write, a process that if more than one copy of a particular application is loaded, all tasks can share the same memory. When large memory requirements are needed and only small amounts of physical RAM are available, Linux has another feature called swap space. Swap space allows pages of memory to be written to a reserved area of a disk and treated as an extension of physical memory. By moving pages between the swap space and RAM, Linux can, in effect, act as if it had much more physical RAM than it does, with the cost of some speed due to the hard drive's slower access. Linux also supports diverse file systems, as well as those compatible with DOS and OS/2. Linux's file system, ext2fs, is intended for best possible use of the disk.

The History of Linux

Linux is a freely distributable version of UNIX. UNIX is one of the most popular operating systems for networking worldwide because of its large support base and distribution. Linus Torvalds, who was then a student at the University of Helsinki in Finland, developed Linux in 1991. It was released for free on the Internet and generated the largest software-development phenomena of all time. Because of GNU software (GNU being an acronym for Gnu's Not UNIX) created by the Free Software Foundation, Linux has many utilities to offer. The Free Software Foundation offers royalty-free software to programmers and developers. From the very beginning, Linux has been entwined with GNU software. From 1991, Linux quickly developed on hackers' web pages as the alternative to Windows and the more expensive UNIX systems. When Red Hat released its commercial version of Linux packaged with tech support and documentation, the floodgates broke and the majority of the public became aware of Linux and its capabilities. Now more and more new users are willing to try Linux on their personal PCs and business users are willing to use Linux to run their networks. Linux has become the latest phenomenon to hit the PC software market.

Linux is a unique operating system in that it is an active participant in the Open Source Software movement. Linux is legally covered by the GNU General Public License, also known as GPL. Open Source software is free but is not in the public domain. It is not shareware either. GPL allows people to take free software and distribute their own versions of the software. However, the vendors who sell free software cannot restrict the rights of users who purchase the software. In other words, users who buy GPL software can make copies of it and distribute it free of charge or for a fee. Also, distributors of GPL software must make it clear that the software is covered by the GPL and must provide the complete source code for the software at no cost. Linux embodies the Open Source model. Open source applies to software for which the source code is freely available for anyone to download, alter, and redistribute. Linux is the perfect operating system for hackers because they can freely download newer versions of the Linux kernel or other Linux utilities of the Internet and instantly change its source code to fix any software bugs found. That way, bugs can be fixed in a matter of hours as opposed to days and weeks. Beta testers and code debuggers are unorganized and spread throughout the world, but surprisingly, they have managed to quickly debug Linux software efficiently and cooperate online through the use of the Internet.


Source: http://akupunyasitus.blogspot.com

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Yahoo Messenger 9 is expected to bring a totally new chating experience to all its fans out there and the Sunnyvale company really struggles to reach this goal.
Following the recent implementation of several new functions (embeddable clips displayed straight into the YM window, new contact list and others), the folks at Yahoo rolled out a brand new security function of the Yahoo Messenger users: automatic file scanning for consumers of Norton Antivirus 2007/2008 and Norton Internet Security 2007/2008, all of them for the Windows operating system.

The interoperability means that every time a user who installed one of the mentioned Symantec software solutions receives a file on Yahoo Messenger, it is automatically scanned in the background and, in case there's something dangerous, the access/execution is blocked. With a continuously growing number of computer infections attempting to spread themselves on instant messengers, this function should be expanded to other security vendors in order to protect a wider segment of users.

Please note that this auto-scanning functions only works with Norton Antivirus 2007/2008 or Norton Internet Security 2007/2008 and Yahoo Messenger 9.0.0.222 Beta or above.

"Chat is a great way to spontaneously get photos or other files from friends and family. It’s also an easy way to inadvertently get a virus or spyware onto your computer. Yahoo engineered Yahoo IM 9.0 with special antivirus integration capabilities. Symantec responded immediately by partnering with Yahoo to deliver a new, tighter level of integration between Yahoo IM 9.0 and Norton Internet Security 2007/2008 and Norton AntiVirus 2007/2008. Norton is the first and only antivirus software to take advantage of this new feature of Yahoo IM," the official page of the Symantec/Yahoo Messenger deal reads.

Source: news.softpedia.com

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Long have I complained about the fact that the Yahoo! Messenger team did nothing whatsoever to improve their products and instead preferred to bring up front the older features that they thought people weren’t using. And up until today they've never failed with the disappointment, they were like clockwork.

The refresh that the Instant Messenger service got for its Vista version came as a gentle breeze to remind us that once in a blue moon things can be done. It’s been attended carefully and several things have been added or fixed, as follows.

Visually, they’ve cleaned up and enhanced some menus (image picker included), offline messages are shown in a
conversation window and have been added a timestamp and a new "While you were out" tag. Performance and stability have also been dealt with, the new version of the client (2008.01.11.428) is sensibly more stable and it responds a lot faster to typing or switching between tabs and windows, as the Yahoo! Messenger blog reads. Some work has been put into the sidebar that the IM came with, so those who wanted to use it, but were annoyed by the bugs, can now rest assured and start it up with confidence.

And talking about bugs, many of them have been squashed with the refresh: the sign in problems that some encountered were fixed and what managed to piss off everybody I know who uses it, the scrolling of the window has been reconsidered. It was fairly annoying to have to manually scroll down in order to see every single message received.

Hopefully, they’ll keep up the good work and not stop at this, there’s still room for more improvement both for the Vista version and the XP one. Off the top of my head, I could think of the sounds that have been changed with the latest versions, so now a BUZZ!! is more like a distorted excuse for a doorbell and receiving messages isn’t so prominent any more. Of course, you can manually change those, but it would have been nicer to have the option to switch to and from them at your free will.

Source: news.softpedia.com

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In its race to become the runner-up on the search engine and online advertising markets, Microsoft is about to give Google a little something to chew on. The Redmond company is looking to buy Yahoo for no less the $44.6 billion. Microsoft has just announced the proposed acquisition of Yahoo for $31 per share. According to current estimates, the transaction is valued at no less than $44.6 billion and Microsoft is to offer both cash and stock. Yahoo
has been increasingly losing its position on the search engine market, as well as its audience eroded by social networks.

The latest financial results posted by the Sunnyvale Internet giant feature a consistent loss, with profit dropping to $660 million for 2007, down from $751 million in 2006. Yahoo was even preparing to lay off a reported 1,000 workers of its 14,300 workforce, after the poor financial results of the past year. Microsoft's proposed acquisition offers shareholders a 62% premium to current trading price for Yahoo! The Redmond company has presented its proposition to Yahoo's Board of Directors.

"We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market," said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft. "We believe our combination will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders and better choice and innovation to our customers and industry partners."

"Our lives, our businesses, and even our society have been progressively transformed by the Web, and Yahoo! has played a pioneering role by building compelling, high-scale services and infrastructure," said Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft. "The combination of these two great teams would enable us to jointly deliver a broad range of new experiences to our customers that neither of us would have achieved on our own."

Yahoo has failed to officially respond or comment on the acquisition proposal from Microsoft. Still, it is clear that the Redmond company will not hesitate in the least to cough up no less than $44.6 billion for Yahoo. The aims is of course the online advertising market, which is estimated to double in the next couple of years, from $40 billion in 2007 to nearly $80 billion by 2010. Microsoft revealed that the move to buy Yahoo was made as a measure to counter Google and its increasing dominance over the online advertising market.

"The combined assets and strong services focus of these two companies will enable us to achieve scale economics while reaching R&D critical mass to deliver innovation breakthroughs," said Kevin Johnson, president of the Platforms & Services Division of Microsoft. "The industry will be well served by having more than one strong player, offering more value and real choice to advertisers, publishers and consumers."

Source: news.softpedia.com

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Although it is on the verge of releasing the first service pack for Windows Vista, Microsoft has not stopped hammering away at the operating system via Windows Update. The Redmond company is currently in a transition process, subtle as it might be. A migration from a strategy focused on delivering major updates for its software products to one centered on an incremental evolution. Although the service pack strategy has become a tradition for Microsoft, the future points to a shift toward Windows Update.

Concomitantly with the advent of Windows Vista, the Redmond company started
downplaying the relevance of service pack releases and pointing to Windows Update. Of course that the main reason for trying to shift consumer attention away from Vista SP1 was the need to ship its latest Windows operating system, ahead of its first major refresh. This is why increased emphasis was placed on the continuous evolution of the service pack ahead of Vista SP1.

Throughout 2007, Microsoft has served bits and pieces of Service Pack 1 to Windows Vista users via Windows Update. This move was made as an illustrative example that the inherent benefits associated with Vista SP1 could be enjoyed in advance of the service pack. Updates boosting functionality, performance, reliability, compatibility and stability dropped via WU long before Vista SP1. In fact, the service pack will be merely a repetition of the updates already shipped. This is of course valid only for a portion of all the contents that Vista SP1 will bring to the table.

Additionally, Microsoft is already in the final stages of development with the service pack for Vista and, at a certain point, the company will stop integrating updates released via WU into SP1. Indications are that, at this point in time, the Redmond company has already stopped including updates into Vista SP1, as the service pack approaches RTM.

On January 21st, Microsoft made available a range of Vista updates designed to "improve the graphics performance for multiple Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) scenarios on a system running Windows Vista - KB945149; resolve an issue where delays are experienced while accessing a WebDAV share for the first time on a system running Windows Vista – KB945435; resolve an issue where a user is prompted for Windows Live Passport credentials every time a document is accessed on a WebDAV site from a new workspace – KB945145; resolve a performance issue on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)-based programs on a system running Windows Vista – KB938660; and to resolve an issue in administrative MMC snap-ins where icons display incorrectly on a Windows Vista-based computer with Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools Pack installed – KB944652."

- Update for Windows Vista (KB945149)
- Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB945149)

- Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB945435)
- Update for Windows Vista (KB945435)

- Update for Windows Vista (KB945145)
- Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB945145)

- Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB938660)
- Update for Windows Vista (KB938660)

- Update for Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition (KB932762)
- Update for Windows XP x64 Edition (KB932762)
- Update for Windows Server 2003 for Itanium-based Systems (KB932762)
- Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB932762)

- Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB944652)
- Update for Windows Vista (KB944652)

- Update for Windows XP (KB934428)

Source: news.softpedia.com

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They’ve kept a low profile so far, but when they came up with it, it was well worth it. The Google Lat Long Blog comes with a post from Wei Luo, a senior GIS Specialist detailing all of the changes and updates that have happened. In decreasing order, based on the level of how exciting the additions are, here they come:

First, they’ve made tremendous work with the roads
in 26 countries, adding and updating to have everything up to date in Russia, Malaysia, Thailand, Aruba, Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, St. Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Bodies of water will be labeled in whatever language you have the Google Earth software set to, and places names in Taiwan, Russia, Australia, New Zealand Brazil and Turkey will be labeled in their local language. Not very cool, but definitely useful for non-English speakers that want to use Google Earth.

National Geographic, one of their more popular layers, has been expanded to three new continents, Europe, Asia and South America. I don’t know if you understand the magnitude of that, but as an example, they have included everything, "from China's fearsome Taklimakan Desert, where Marco Polo traveled, to the hyacinth macaws of Brazil." I think it’s too much to ask for a complete Discovery History layer, right?

And last but by no means least, a team of USGS scientists have put some work into re-engineering the Earthquake layer to provide better and more accurate information. If you want to, you could even zoom out further enough and observe that quakes most often happen where tectonic plates meet / collide and, by following the line of such natural catastrophes, you easily see the boundaries of the plates. Now, I'd look at it, and I will, especially because every site is linked to information about the magnitude, depth and date of the earthquake.

Source: news.softpedia.com

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Google reported that the problem which some of the AdSense users had been encountering, that of not being able to login to their accounts, was found a reason and a workaround until further action is to be taken, but more about this a bit further down the page.

The error, "Welcome! You're signed in to Google
Accounts under the email [your email address] and your Google Account password, but this is not a valid AdSense login," is caused by the same password being used for both the Gmail account and the AdSense one. That is said to be the reason in 99.9 percent of the cases, so if you encountered it, you’d better go and change your password for one of the two.

Arlene Lee, with the AdSense Publisher support, has provided the first method of doing so, "first ensure that you're logged out of Google Accounts for any other products you use, such as Gmail or AdWords. Then, change your AdSense password at https://www.google.com/adsense/assistlogin. You’ll be asked to submit your login email address to us, and we’ll then send a reset link to that address. When changing your AdSense password, please be sure to select a unique password that you’re not using with any other Google product. After you've changed your AdSense password, please try logging in again at www.google.com/adsense."

What I said I’d get back to is the fact that the workaround is not actually a solution in the traditional way. That comes to be because the Google plan to create global profiles has not been set in motion yet. Once that happens, there will be just one account and one password for all of the services used, courtesy of the Mountain View-based company. Until then, just be sure you don't make the mistake above, even if it's easier to remember just one password.

source : news.softpedia.com

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