Selasa, 03 Mei 2011

100 Best Guitar Solos

100 Greatest Guitar Solos
Featuring a list of the top 100 guitar solos ever

Every guitarist has opinions on what some of the greatest recorded guitar solos are. While there are many that are commonly regarded as "great", there are lots of others that don't get as much attention. Not too long ago, the editors of Guitar World magazine put together a reader's poll, to find out what their readers considered to be the best guitar solos of all time. The results surely reflect the magazine's demographic (no jazz guitar solos, for example), but no one can argue the following 100 selections boast some great guitar work.

What follows is the list of all 100 songs selected, listed with the guitarist who played the solo, the band who released the album, and the album name. Read http://guitar.about.com/library/bl100greatest.htm


Top 10 - Best rated guitar effect in the world (American Music Supply)

1. Line 6 POD X3 Live Modeling Guitar Effects Processor
The Line 6 POD X3 Live represents the true evolution of the classic POD XT Live. The POD X3 Live features an expanded arsenal of 78 guitar amps, from high-wattage heavyweights to boutique beauties along with 24 guitar cabs, 98 stompbox and studio effects, 28 bass amps, 22 bass cabs and 6 vocal preamps. With the sonic firepower of a top-tier studio in a portable pedal board, the POD X3 live is an incredible value. More Line 6 Effects

2. Boss GT10 Guitar Multi-Effects Pedal
The Boss GT10 is a floorboard powerhouse that offers natural and musical response as well as a marked improvement in sound quality from previous generations. Loaded with tones of effects and an innovative user interface, the GT10 includes EZ Tone that allows guitarists to obtain the exact sound they desire in an extremely intuitive way. More Boss Effects

3. Digidesign Eleven Rack Guitar Effects and Amp Modeling Interface
A must have for any guitarist, the Eleven Rack combines the highest quality guitar effects with a pristine Pro Tools interface. Eleven Rack can be used as a standalone effects processor on stage or a Pro Tools interface with exquisite amp modes for the studio. The built-in amp models deliver the full depth, dimension, and response of a mic�d up rig giving you the experience of playing through the most coveted and best guitar amps in the world. More Digidesign Effects

4. Boss ME70 Guitar Multi Effects Pedal
The Boss ME70 is a multi-effects unit that is stompbox easy. The friendly, knob-laden design makes tone creation a snap, but with a powerful COSM amp section derived from the GT10, the ME70 takes the EZ effects concept to new heights. More Boss Effects

5. TC Electronic G System Limited Guitar Multi-Effects Pedal
G System is the first floor-based unit ever to offer both studio-quality guitar effects and advanced loop/routing facilities for external pedals and preamps. With a unique combination of 2 DSP sections, analog loops, amp switching, and 9VDC power outputs for external pedals, G-System is aimed at the experienced guitar player looking to complete his setup with the ultimate in quality, integration and flexibility. More TC Electronic Effects

6.DigiTech RP1000 Guitar Multi-Effects Pedal
The control of your sound is imperative. The RP1000 gives you added control to express yourself the way you want. No longer will the lack of control stand in the way of your expression. The RP1000 features great sounding amp and cabinet models, internal and external effects switching system, built-in phrase looper, USB connection and much more. More DigiTech Effects

7.Boss RC20XL Loop Station Pedal
The Boss RC20XL allows musicians to create multi-layered performances in real time. Loops and riffs can be stacked repeatedly until the 16 minutes of ample recording space is full. Never before has it been so easy to create a massive one-person band sound in real time. More Boss Effects

8. Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler Pedal and Loop Sampler
The DL4 Delay is a programmable stomp box full of classic guitar effects, with the power and versatility of Line 6's incredible digital modeling technology. The DL4 Delay Modeler has 3 programmable presets, a Tap Tempo switch and includes a Loop Sampler; Tube, Tape, Sweep, Multi-Head and Analog Echoes; Low Res, Rhythmic, Stereo, Ping Pong, Reverse, and Auto-Volume Delays. More Line 6 Effects

9. Fulltone OCD Obsessive Compulsive Drive Pedal
It's always been somewhat of a compromise using Overdrive pedals until now. The OCD is designed to replicate the dynamics and harmonic structure of an overdriven tube amp. The OCD pedal uses a unique multi-stage distortion circuit, as opposed to the more common diodes-in-feedback-loop/diodes-to-ground configurations. The designers at Fulltone made this pedal for themselves, but they'll let you use it too. And you'll love it! More Fulltone Effects

10. Line 6 M9 Stompbox Modeler
The Line 6 M9 Stompbox Modeler is powerful, portable and bursting with immortal stompbox effects. Its wide variety of vintage and modern tones makes it perfect on its own or an unrivalled addition to you pedal board. Featuring over 100 distinctive distortions, tangy choruses, syrupy sweet reverbs, and many other kinds of expressive effects. They combine under your feet to form an instant collection of stunning stompbox tones. More Line 6 Effects


Ibanez New Products 2011

For the year 2011, Ibanez will release new products from new sets of guitars until effects and electronics. To look closer at these products visit http://www.ibanez.com/new


List of Best-Selling Music Artist (all time)

The world's best-selling music artists lists artists with claims of 50 million or more record sales in multiple third-party reliable sources. The sales figures within the provided sources include sales of albums, singles, compilation-albums, music videos as well as downloads of singles and full-length albums. Within record-sales brackets, artists are listed in alphabetical order, rather than by number of records sold. The tables the artists in which are listed with both their estimated sales figures and certified sales ranks the artist/band with most sales/certified sales at the top.

All artists included on this list are required to have their lowest available claimed figures supported by at least 15% certified sales. It is this reason why Cliff Richard, Alla Pugacheva, Bing Crosby, Nana Mouskouri and A. R. Rahman have not been included on this list. Newer artists such as Lady Gaga are expected to have their claimed figures supported by at least 50% certified sales.

Note: Although this list largely relies on claimed figures by highly reliable sources, some of the figures may need further examination to avoid inflated sales figures which is frequently practiced by record companies for promotional purposes.

For the information : Visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_music_artists


Marvel's New Movie - Thor

Sandwiched in the multiplex between his Avengers comrades Iron Man (2) and Captain America, the latest Marvel superhero to take to the big-screen is Thor.

Unlike some of his predecessors, in the hands of director Kenneth Branagh and star Chris Hemsworth, Stan Lee's most godly son is a welcome addition to the cinematic superhero pantheon.

Having brought war to the peaceful realm of Asgard, the cocky Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is banished to Midgard (otherwise known as Earth) by his furious father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins), despite the best calming efforts of his brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston). In banishing his son, Odin casts a spell upon Thor's hammer, Mjölnir, so that it will only impart its powers on a worthy bearer.

In other words, Thor has to go and think long and hard about what he's done.

There's plenty of time to do that on Earth, where he meets - i.e. is nearly run over by - Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), a scientist who has been investigating electrical storms in New Mexico. Soon enough the S.H.I.E.L.D suits (led by Clark Gregg as the perfectly smarmy Agent Coulson from both Iron Man installments) are on his case, too.

As if that wasn't enough for an off-duty Norse god to deal with, Loki assumes the throne in Asgard and creates havoc in both realms. He invites the Frost Giants, hungry for vengeance, across the Bifröst into Asgard, sends The Destroyer (seemingly the love child of a radiant heater and Gort from The Day The Earth Stood Still) to Earth, and Thor soon has his work cut out for him.

It's a tidy story arc, as these origin/reboot films tend to be, but Thor never feels underfed, thanks to an impressive cast, a snappy script and thoughtful direction from Kenneth Branagh.

When he was announced as director (after Matthew Vaughan dropped out), Shakespeare expert Branagh must have felt like an odd fit in many comic fans' eyes, but in fact he brings a reverence for the source material that is compelling.

After all, what are comic books if not epic mythic narratives? Superhero stories have more in common with the work of The Globe's finest than many would like to admit: tragedy, comedy, pathos. And Thor, blessed additionally with its grounding in the great Norse myths, perhaps has even more in common.

Hemsworth is wonderful as the hero, effortlessly traversing Thor's journey from magical jock douche to someone more worthy of Mjölnir's powers.

Much is made, by Odin and others, of Thor's being little more than a hot-headed "boy", and Hemsworth finds the perfect mix of youthful arrogance and childlike innocence.

Without infantilising him (which, let's face it, would be a fairly stupid actorly choice given his physical appearance), Hemsworth gives Thor a vulnerability that is appealing. When Loki appears at the S.H.I.E.L.D. base to inform his brother of the terms of his banishment, Thor's eyes well with tears and he asks only, "Can I come home?" It's simple and moving.

Hiddleston is terrific as Loki, a slimy, super-powered version of Shakespeare's Edmund. Like that (literal) bastard, Hiddleston's Loki is a curiously sympathetic antagonist, never falling into caricatured evil.

As Jane Foster (a nurse in the comics, updated here to an astrophysicist), Portman is sparky and appealing; her scenes with Stellan Skarsgård (as her colleague, Erik) and Kat Dennings (as the deadpanning intern, Darcy) have a breezy, natural rhythm.

The cast is so uniformly strong that it would take too much space to praise them all individually, but in particular, The Wire's Idris Elba is imposing as gatekeeper Heimdall, Anthony Hopkins underplays (uncharacteristically) as the alternately mournful and hot-blooded Odin, and there's a nifty pre-Avengers cameo for Jeremy Renner as an unnamed Clint Barton/Hawkeye.

Too often there seems to be a desire among filmmakers to look askance at comic book lore, as though they need to cram in as many winking gags as possible to say to the bro dudes in the audience, "Hey, don't worry dudes, we made this for you, not those Poindexters down the comic shop."

To his credit, Branagh avoids this, though not at the expense of fun; indeed, Thor is frequently hilarious, but the humour comes from a genuine affection for the occasionally silly tropes of the comic books, not misguided "irony".

(A sequence in which a parade of local rednecks use Thor's buried hammer as a strength-tester to the tune of Billy Swan's I Can Help is particularly fun.)

One of the few weaknesses of the film is the skipping back and forth between Earth and Asgard. Just as the action in either realm gets on a roll, it's back to the other.

At times, the Asgard sequences teeter on the brink of unwatchable, not because they are bad, but because there is so much to see that your eyes begin to short-circuit.

The Bifröst by itself? Fine! A shimmering ocean? Cool! Awesome castles? Why not! Throw them all together in 3D and the legendary realm is such a smorgasbord of visual riches it almost cancels itself out. It's a testament to Branagh and his creative team, however, that within that "almost" lie some of the most impressively realised vistas in recent memory.

(The 3D cinematography is used unobtrusively and serves to be more immersive than flashy.)

In many ways, and despite its awe-inspiring visuals, Thor feels like a film out of its time; it almost has more in common in with the rollicking adventures of the 1930s and '40s than the hip superhero reboots of the 21st century.

That mood is reflected in a variety of ways. The frost giants, led by Colm Feore as Laufey, are predominantly played (at least in close-up) by actual actors in makeup, which is a relief - there's something so much more satisfying about a villain who isn't just a computer construct.

Under Branagh's guiding hand, Thor and his band of friends - Sif and the Warriors Three - carry on like Errol Flynn-era heroes, clapping each other on the shoulder in greeting and over-emoting just enough to set them apart from us mere Earthlings. It's charming.

More broadly, though, Thor has a real emotional depth - it's unusually soulful for a superhero film. Yes, Christopher Nolan's Batman efforts had a similar sensitivity, though it came from a darker and, thus, ultimately less interesting place; Thor is more bittersweet. There's a hopefulness to the film, particularly its ending, that verges on elegiac.

The inevitable Avengers film (expected in 2012) has given the most recent individual origin films an episodic quality, but where Iron Man 2 suffered for that - and one suspects the upcoming Captain America will also - Thor avoids feeling like a placeholder. Instead of leaving the cinema irritated, unwilling to wait for his next adventure, you feel buoyed.


The Company Men - Movie Review

THE COMPANY MEN Movie Review – The Company Men is the story of a group of colleagues who are subjected to layoffs in their company and have to struggle to find their way back to normality. The movie stars Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, Rosemarie DeWitt, and is directed & written by John Wells.

There is a lot to like about The Company Men. Strong performances, intense dialogue, a realistic storyline and a perfectly a-propos topic in light of the deep economic woes faced by the country. Anyone who has ever been laid off can easily relate to the trials and tribulations of the principal characters who are faced with the terrifying prospect of finding a new job. Anyone can also easily turn around and point the finger at the evil corporate forces that are behind this untold tragedy.

While everything said previously is true, it is also true that there is a lot to dislike about the movie. The almost simplistic stereotype of the good worker unfairly fired after years of loyal service is fed to us as a matter fact. It is not questioned or debated in any way shape or form. Yes they were good workers but were their jobs necessary? Is it possible that although they were possibly the victims of corporate greed more interested in profits, they may also have really been victims of their times with a rampant global expansion and technological leaps that make entire industries and professions moot. It would have been nice if that had been addressed more forcefully in The Company Men.

Furthermore, there is a constant sense of tragedy surrounding the laid off employees brought on by clichés ranging from the awkward job interviews to the humbling moment when they realize that they might have to downsize and maybe take a paycut. Ok, getting fired has horrible consequences; we get it but how is that a surprise? People must always assume that job precarity is the norm and not the exception. With that assumption, you have to approach each job/opportunity as something that will NOT last. Would it have killed any of these characters to save some money for rainy days instead of taking out loans to go on ski trips? At least, I wish The Company Men had introduced one more character that would have broken the stereotypical mold by saying “Fine, I’ll take the severance. Job sucked anyways. Call of Duty here I come”. Anything to break the cliché would have been welcomed.

So with that said, is The Company Men a must watch? Maybe. Ultimately, it all depends whether you are in the mood for being depressed or cheered up. I can guarantee you that cheering up is not what this movie is made for. However, regardless of the mood, the great acting and strong dialogue might be enough for you to overcome the depressing topic and the boring clichés that pepper the movie.


Internet Download Manager

Internet Download Manager (IDM) is a tool to increase download speeds by up to 5 times, resume and schedule downloads. Comprehensive error recovery and resume capability will restart broken or interrupted downloads due to lost connections, network problems, computer shutdowns, or unexpected power outages. Simple graphic user interface makes IDM user friendly and easy to use.Internet Download Manager has a smart download logic accelerator that features intelligent dynamic file segmentation and safe multipart downloading technology to accelerate your downloads. Unlike other download managers and accelerators Internet Download Manager segments downloaded files dynamically during download process and reuses available connections without additional connect and login stages to achieve best acceleration performance.

Internet Download Manager supports proxy servers, ftp and http protocols, firewalls, redirects, cookies, authorization, MP3 audio and MPEG video content processing. IDM integrates seamlessly into Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, MSN Explorer, AOL, Opera, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Firebird, Avant Browser, MyIE2, and all other popular browsers to automatically handle your downloads. You can also drag and drop files, or use Internet Download Manager from command line. Internet Download Manager can dial your modem at the set time, download the files you want, then hang up or even shut down your computer when it's done.

Other features include multilingual support, zip preview, download categories, scheduler pro, sounds on different events, HTTPS support, queue processor, html help and tutorial, enhanced virus protection on download completion, progressive downloading with quotas (useful for connections that use some kind of fair access policy or FAP like Direcway, Direct PC, Hughes, etc.), built-in download accelerator, and many others.

Version 6.05 adds IDM download panel for web-players that can be used to download flash videos from sites like YouTube, MySpaceTV, and Google Videos. It also features complete Windows 7 and Vista support, YouTube grabber, redeveloped scheduler, and MMS protocol support. The new version also adds improved integration for IE and IE based browsers, redesigned and enhanced download engine, the unique advanced integration into all latest browsers, improved toolbar, and a wealth of other improvements and new features.


Adobe Creative Suite CS 5

E-books or EPUBs are gaining more and more popularity with every single day. According to Terry White, Worldwide Design Evangelist for Adobe Systems, EPUB market has reached about $1 bilion in 2010 and it’s going to grow even faster in the future. So it is very important for designers who are engaged in creation of EBUBs to have the most advanced tools for their workflow. And of course Adobe CS5.5 Design Premium is here to provide these tools. With Design Premium CS5.5 designers will be able to create catching electronic publications with less effort and almost no need for developers. Images included in EPUB will be able to resize automatically with regard to the size and vertical/horizontal position of the screen. Also there is a possibility to add video and audio for eBook reader applications that support HTML5 video and audio tags4.

With Adobe CS5.5 Design Premium designers will be able to take advantage of the new Digital Publishing Suitefrom Adobe. This solution enables creation and optimizing interactive digital publications for various tablet devices such as iPad, Motorola Xoom and the PlayBook. With new Overlay Creator publishers can add interactive objects such as interactive 3D animations or slideshows to their publications, and do right inside of InDesign CS5.5. Also Adobe is introducing a brand new Adobe Content Viewer, which allows to test how the publication will look on tablet devices without downloading the document on to a real device. After electronic publication is ready one can open it on their iPad with Adobe Viewer.

There are plenty of innovations for web designers in Adobe CS5.5 Design Premium. Today HTML5 and CSS3 have become a very important aspect of web design. And Adobe CS5.5 Design Premium provides the best-of-breed tools for web design work with HTML5 and CSS3 as a part of that. Thanks to extensive use of HTML5 and CSS3 it is much easier now to create compelling web pages and especially transform print designs into web pages. For example you can easily add transparency to your web page elements, create rounded borders and so on. With new Live View button in Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5 you can quickly render you newly created web page and see how it will look in a browser without need to open it in a real browser, this is possible thanks to the web kit rendering engine, the same one that is powering Safari and the Chrome browser.


15 - Music Concert in Indonesia (in Indonesian language)

1. Secondhand Serenade: 8 Januari 2011 (Sabuga, Bandung), 9 Januari 2011 (Gramedia Expo, Surabaya).
Mereka datang lagi ke Indonesia setelah konser di Jakarta pada 2009. Harga tiket di dua kota ditetapkan sama oleh Nada Promotama, promotornya. Yaitu, 250 ribu rupiah.

2. N.E.R.D: 10 Januari 2011 (Istora Senayan, Jakarta).
Konser N.E.R.D (No-one Ever Really Dies) yang diadakan oleh Blade Indonesia ini bisa jadi pilihan di awal tahun. RAN dan S.O.B dijadwalkan jadi pembuka konser dari kelompok yang terdiri dari Pharrell Williams, Chad Hugo, dan Shay Haley itu. Tiketnya dijual seharga 475 – 575 ribu rupiah (harga normal).

3. Four Year Strong dan Set Your Goals: 19 Januari 2011 (Tennis Indoor Senayan, Jakarta).
Konser dua band asal Amerika yang didatangkan oleh Java Musikindo ini. Tiket masuknya berkisar 350 – 400 ribu rupiah.

4. NE-YO: 22 Januari 2011 (Istora Senayan, Jakarta).
Maliq & D’Essentials, Ello, dan Soul Vibe akan menjadi pembuka konser penyanyi Amerika bernama asli Shaffer Chimere Smith Jr ini. Oleh SentraLive!, promotornya, tiketnya dijual mulai Rp 700.000,- hingga Rp 1.250.000,-

5. Rick Price: 7 Februari 2011 (Balai Sarbini, Jakarta)
Penyanyi asal Australia yang ngetop di Indonesia pada era 90an. Harga tiketnya yang mulai dari 500 ribu rupiah, mari bernostalgia dengan kedatangan Rick Price kali ini.

6. Deftones: 8 Februari 2011 (Tennis Indoor Senayan, Jakarta)
Band rock yang terbentuk pada 1988 didatangkan pihak promotor (Java Musikindo), harga tiketnya 450 – 500 ribu rupiah (harga normal).

7. Iron Maiden: 17 Februari 2011 (Stadion Utama Gelora Bung Karno, Jakarta), 20 Februari 2011 (Garuda Wisnu Kencana, Bali).
Iron Maiden akhirnya menggelar konser di Indonesia dalam rangkaian Frontier World Tour 2011. Bahkan di dua lokasi sekaligus, Jakarta dan Bali. Didatangkan oleh promotor Original Production, tiketnya dijual dengan harga bervariasi. Untuk konser di Jakarta, dimulai dari harga 250 ribu rupiah. Sedangkan yang di Bali, sebelum 1 Februari 2011, bisa dibeli seharga 350 – 550 ribu rupiah.

8. Bring Me The Horizon: 19 Februari 2011 (Tennis Indoor Senayan, Jakarta).
BMTH band musik metalcore asal Inggris. Tiketnya dihargai Rp 325.000,- (tribun) dan Rp 375.000,- (festival).

9. We The Kings, Never Shout Never, dan I See Stars: 22 Februari 2011; New Found Glory dan The Starting Line: 23 Februari 2011 (Tennis Indoor Senayan, Jakarta).
Jakarta Jam! ’11 yang digelar Java Musikindo selama dua hari ini, penonton bisa membeli tiketnya seharga 325 – 375 ribu rupiah per hari.

10. Santana, Fourplay, Corinne Bailey Rae, dan Acoustic Alchemy: 4 Maret 2011; Santana dan George Benson: 5 Maret 2011; George Benson, Fourplay, Kenny Loggins: 6 Maret 2011 (JIExpo Kemayoran, Jakarta).
Sejumlah artis musik kondang yang akan tampil di Jakarta International Java Jazz Festival 2011 yang akan berlangsung selama tiga hari, 4 – 6 Maret 2011. Masih ada puluhan nama lainnya, bahkan ratusan jika termasuk musisi dari Indonesia sendiri. Sempat ada kabar bahwa David Foster juga akan hadir di festival jazz tahunan bikinan Java Festival Production itu dengan mengajak Phillip Bailey, salah seorang anggota Earth, Wind & Fire.

11. Stone Temple Pilots: 13 Maret 2011 (Carnaval Beach Ancol, Jakarta).
Stone Temple Pilots didatangkan promotor Java Musikindo.Harga presale yang dipatok di bawah 500 ribu rupiah atau harus membelinya pada harga normal Rp 600.000,-

12. Jimmy Eat World: 3 April 2011 (Tennis Indoor Senayan, Jakarta).
Untuk tiket pertunjukan grup musik rock asal Arizona, Amerika ini, pihak promotor Java Musikindo menetapkan di kisaran 400 – 450 ribu (harga normal).

13. Justin Bieber: 23 April 2011 (Sentul International Convention Center, Bogor).
Justin Bieber akhirnya menggelar konser di Indonesia pada tahun 2011, promotor Marygops Studios mendatangkannya pada bulan April mendatang. Harga tiket belum diumumkan oleh pihak promotor.

14. Maroon 5: 27 April 2011 (Istora Senayan, Jakarta).
Konser musik mancanegara paling fenomenal di Indonesia untuk tahun 2011. Tiketnya dihargai 600 – 800 ribu rupiah sudah langsung habis terjual (sold out) dalam waktu 10 jam sejak loket penjualan tiketnya dibuka pada awal Desember 2010 lalu. Bagi mereka yang kehabisan tiket untuk menonton aksi Adam Levine dan rekannya, sepertinya hanya bisa berharap dari kuis berhadiah yang secara berkala diadakan pihak promotor Java Musikindo lewat akun Twitter mereka.

15. A Rocket to the Moon, Hey Monday, dan The Downtown Fiction: 14 Mei 2011 (Tennis Indoor Senayan, Jakarta).
Java Musikindo sebagai promotor belum memberi informasi soal harga tiketnya.


New Foo Fighter Album released

Going back to the garage hardly means that the Foo Fighters are slumming on their seventh studio album, "Wasting Light." Recorded in the garage of frontman Dave Grohl's home in Encino, Calif., the 11-song set is an explosive, high-octane burst of rock energy from a 16-year-old band that is tightly honed and righteously raw. Butch Vig-who worked with Grohl while producing Nirvana's landmark "Nevermind" (1991)-guides those two sensibilities into a potent attack. Some of the album's arch, twisting dynamics owe as much to Rush as they do to Led Zeppelin or the Sex Pistols. But the ebb-and-flow power-rock melodicism that's the Foos' stock in trade is in fine form on such tracks as "A Matter of Time," first single "Rope," "Arlandria," "Back & Forth" and "Bridge Burning," while guests Krist Novoselic ("I Should Have Known") and Bob Mould ("Dear Rosemary") add emotional and sonic depth to Grohl's soul-searching peeks into his past.


Selasa, 12 April 2011

Sony Vegas Pro 10 -

Vegas Pro 10 overview
The Vegas Pro 10 collection integrates two powerful applications that work seamlessly together to provide an efficient and intuitive environment for video and broadcast professionals. This comprehensive suite offers the most robust and progressive platform available for content creation and production. With broad format support, superior effects processing, unparalleled audio support, and a full complement of editorial tools, the Vegas Pro 10 collection streamlines your workflow. From acquisition to delivery, from camera to Blu-ray Disc™, the Vegas Pro 10 collection delivers exactly what you need to produce outstanding results.

Precise editing tools
Edit SD or HD video with drag-and-drop functionality, mouse and keyboard trimming, and ripple editing. Features include ProType titling technology, multicamera editing tools, 32-bit floating-point video processing, customizable window layouts, color-coded snapping, HDV/AVCHD/RED/SDI/XDCAM support, A/V synchronization detection and repair, and automatic frame quantization.

More about video editing
Professional 32- and 64-bit workflow
The Vegas Pro 10 interface provides a fully customizable workspace for accomplishing a wide range of production requirements. Dock multiple windows across multiple monitors and save your layouts to fit specific editing tasks, nest Vegas projects within the timeline, customize and save keyboard commands, and use application scripting to automate repetitive tasks. Systemwide media management produces maximum efficiency.

Stereoscopic 3D editing
Create stereoscopic 3D projects utilizing the same workflow we’ve provided for 2D media! Vegas Pro 10 provides the ability to import, adjust, edit, preview, and output stereoscopic 3D media — all using industry-standard professional delivery formats including single or dual files with side-by-side, top/bottom, or line-alternate encoding. Anaglyphic monitoring and output are also supported.
More about 3D editing & delivery

Vegas Pro 10 Announcement Video
Watch our video highlighting the new features of Vegas Pro 10. The 3D version linked below is optimized for red/cyan 3D glasses, but additional options are available on our YouTube Channel.
Watch in 2D | Watch in 3D

Superior audio control
Use unlimited tracks, 24-bit/192 kHz audio, punch-in recording, 5.1 surround mixing, effects automation, and time compress/expand. Apply customizable, real-time audio effects like EQ, Reverb, Delay, and more. Expand your audio processing and mixing options with supported third-party DirectX® and VST audio plug-ins. Use the Mixing Console for precise audio control.
More about audio production

Broad format support
Vegas Pro 10 software natively supports the newest professional camcorder formats including XDCAM, NXCAM, AVCHD, and RED. Vegas Pro 10 software also includes support for still images greater than one gigapixel in resolution. Use Pan and Scan to create a stunning movie sequence from these large pictures while maintaining HD resolution.
More about capture and import

Powerful Blu-ray Disc authoring
Burn movies to Blu-ray Disc™ directly from the Vegas Pro timeline for high-definition delivery. Use DVD Architect Pro software (included with the Vegas Pro collection) to author DVDs or Blu-ray Disc media with multiple video angles, subtitles, multiple languages, and special features. Preview and test your work in real time. Apply Brightness and Contrast, Auto Levels, Crop, and Anti-Flicker filters. Set CSS and Macrovision® copy-protection flags for masters.
More about Blu-ray Disc authoring
Learn as you go with easy Interactive Tutorials

Vegas Pro 10 software has a comprehensive help system, as well as detailed interactive tutorials that provide walkthrough demonstrations of common features and functionality. These tutorials provide an easy step-by-step method of learning the product and the workflow necessary to complete most common tasks.


MIB 3 News

Will Smith and Josh Brolin Are Men in Black … Suits from MIB 3 Set

Take a gander at your first look at Will Smith and Josh Brolin on the Bronx, New York set of “Men in Black 3″ yesterday. In the sequel, Smith’s suave, wisecracking MIB character Agent J goes back in time where he meets a young Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones’ character, now played by Josh Brolin as a younger man) and must save the world from an alien menace or some such. You know how this thing goes, it ain’t exactly brain surgery. Expect more Tomfoolery, lots of sight gags, and if the first two movies are any indication, shockingly shoddy CGI.

The film also stars Alice Eve, Emma Thompson, Nicole Scherzinger, Rip Torn and Johnny Knoxville. Barry Sonnenfield, who directed the first two films in the series, returns behind the camera for the third time around.
“Men in Black 3″ saves the world from the scum of the universe one more time on May 23 2012.


Windows 8

Windows 8 M1 Build 7850 Leaks to the Web

Windows 8 leak season is in full swing and today we’ve learned that a leak of an early Milestone 1 build of Windows 8 has been posted to a BetaArchive FTP site. So far, the build is only available to private members, but is said by many to be legitimate and will soon be available to the public through the wonderful, albeit sometimes shady, world of torrent sites. The build is listed as:

6.1.7850.0.winmain_win8m1.100922-1508_x86fre_client-enterprise_en-us.iso – 2.45 GB

Windows 8 has already passed Milestone 2 and is said to be nearing M3 with a beta to come later this fall. While many sites confirm the authenticity of the build, I would not recommend any users rush out to download and install this one especially as your main OS. Keep in mind this is an older build (possibly September 2010), so many Windows 7 elements may be present.


Rosie Huntington-The new cast member of Transformers

Apparently the folks at CinemaCon (formerly ShoWest) think so highly of Michael Bay’s latest eye candy Rosie Huntington-Whiteley that they’ve awarded the former Victoria’s Secret lingerie supermodel the coveted “Female Star of Tomorrow” award.

Okay, so “coveted” is probably a bit of a stretch, especially when the winner of this year is a first-timer whose first movie hasn’t even come out yet. And from what I’ve seen, Huntington-Whiteley pretty much stands around gawking prettily as giant alien robots battle it out around her. Plus, she dresses way too respectable for someone who is supposed to be filling the “sexy eye candy” role formerly filled out oh-so-nicely by the fired Megan Fox. What’s up with the power suits, Rosie?

In case you were wondering, Chris Hemsworth won the male equivalent of the reward. I’m guessing he’s probably not all that enthused with being lumped in the same winner’s category as a former underwear model, but I could be wrong, especially if they LITERALLY lumped him in the same room with her. She is quite fetching, after all.

Source : http://www.beyondhollywood.com/transformers-rosie-huntington-whiteley-is-your-female-star-of-tomorrow/


Harry Potter 2 Interview

Some new footage from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 was shown at Cinema Con, and afterwards Potter producer David Heyman sat down with Cinema Blend to talk about what from the novels is going to be included in the film, and what will be changed. Their conversation included some pretty specific spoilers about the end of the film, but presumably most people have already read the books; so giving away story details isn’t as big of a deal as it might be normally.

If you’re one of the people who haven’t read the books, and who would like to see Deathly Hallows: Part 2 without any idea of what it has in store, then you should probably not read this article. Or, you know, do it anyways and then bitch about how stuff was given away in the comments section. Either way is good.

Spoilers ahoy…

The major changes that take place between the book and the film seem to be in the way the Battle of Hogwarts is presented. While it is confirmed that the big, destructive battle is still how the story will climax, the locations and specifics will play out a little differently. When Snape and McGonagall have their confrontation, it happens in the Great Hall, rather than in some anonymous corridor. A bigger deal is made of Snape’s final confrontation with Harry as well. It seems that the goal of the filmmakers was to stay true to the spirit of what happens in the book, but make it hit harder, boom louder, and resonate more from a character perspective.

Heyman says, “ … like you saw in the footage today, the statues coming to life [during the Battle of Hogwarts] — that’s not in the book. It’s quite a percussive ending, and we wanted to have some good magic.” He added, “Snape’s role in the film is minimal, and it was minimal in the second half of the book, and yet you wanted to have the emotional investment when you see his past story [the memory Harry views in the Pensieve]. We wanted to build that up in order for it to have its emotional impact.” It sounds to me like they’re focusing on all the right things. I’m not doubtful that they could actually improve on Rowling’s ending by ramping up the action and playing up the big moments more than she did in her prose.

Heyman’s comments about Snape and the Pensieve confirm some very important things that will be included in the film as well. We will get the flashback sequence of Snape’s memories that explains his seemingly traitorous actions in the previous installments and allows for another chance at seeing the dearly departed Albus Dumbledore up on the big screen.

Heyman says of these sequences, “ … what I love about these films, what I love about the books, is that all the action, adventure and magic, what means most to me is the character stuff, the slow stuff. I love having the time to tell the story. I’m really happy about breaking the book into two films, it gives us the time to really spend time with the characters and have the moments such as the flashback, Dumbledore at King’s Cross. If we had done it as one film, we would have lost the Snape flashback.”

This is an interesting look at what the people behind the scenes of the Potter movies were thinking about when they decided to make Deathly Hallows into two films. If Heyman is to be believed, then the decisions they’re making when adapting the books deal with story and character first, and financial logistics second. Personally, I would have been upset if they had excised the bits about Snape’s past. By the end of the books he becomes probably the most interesting, complicated character of the series, and to downplay that would have been a real shame. Plus, with this two-film structure, we got to watch Harry and Hermione have that cute little dance number in Part 1. I think they made the right choices.

The full interview goes on to talk about makeup effects used in the film’s epilogue, their thoughts on fan reactions to the films, and why they went about doing the series with multiple directors. It can be read here.


Rio

Blue Sky Studios has been a reliable producer of family content for 20th Century Fox, but I can't say I love their movies the way I love, yes, Pixar. And while that may seem an unfair comparison to make, they're certainly all playing in the same sandbox, and they're competing for the same family dollars.

Every studio wants to have a company they can turn to for this story of movie, and it's an important part of the business model for a modern movie studio. With Blue Sky, they've built their brand on the back of their very successful "Ice Age" series, and having one go-to franchise that does almost unbelievable business each time out allows them to try different things. I think "Robots" has some major story problems, but I like the way they designed that world. In adapting "Horton Hears A Who," they did a nice job of creating a Dr. Seuss world on film. They work within the general "family film" genre, but they've tried several different visual styles and they don't seem to just tell the same story every time out.

With "Rio," their latest movie, they've told a very simple story against a backdrop that allowed them to make some big exciting choices with the soundtrack, and they've included just enough sophistication about the setting of their story that I feel like it nudges a simple film into the "better than expected" category. Rio is a thrilling place to set a story because it is a world of haves and have nots, and it is a dangerous and beautiful city. For a film aimed at a family audience to even acknowledge the existence of the favelas seems sort of brave, but to actually set much of the movie there and to try to capture some of the diversity of the city in a movie like this… that's surprising. And admirable.

Even the film's opening scene tackles the notion of the export of exotic animals for pets, something that is a real-world problem, and uses it as a way of bringing the Cerulean macaw Blu (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg) into the life of a little girl in Minnesota, who grows up to be Linda (voiced by Leslie Mann), a bookstore owner. She and Blu are happy tucked away in their warm little bookstore, secure in their daily routine, until Tulio (voiced by Rodrigo Santoro) shows up one day. He's a bird expert from Brazil, working to preserve the species that Blu belongs to. Seems Blu is the last living male that anyone knows about, and they've found a female named Jewel (voiced by Anne Hathaway) in Brazil who they want to mate Blu with.

Blu is over-pampered, stifled from having been raised by Linda, and he's never flown in his life. Jewel, on the other hand, is a wild animal, and from the moment she and Blu meet in a laboratory setting, she's working to escape. The way their relationship plays out probably won't shock anyone who has ever seen a movie before, but both Eisenberg and Hathaway bring considerable energy and charm to their roles, and they are matched by the human story between Santoro and Mann. When Blu and Jewel are stolen, it kicks off these parallel adventure stories, and along the way, there are characters voiced by Jamie Foxx, Will.i.Am, Tracy Morgan, George Lopez, and most notably, Jemaine Clement as a villainous cockatoo named Nigel.

The film's soundtrack is exactly what you'd want from a film set in South America, very mainstream but with enough authentic local energy to make it feel genuine. The movie opens and closes with the same basic musical number, and it's incredibly infectious, immediately inviting. The movie has a warmth to it that is very direct and that works for audiences of vastly different age and experience. This was only my three-year-old's second movie in a theater, and he enjoyed it all, sitting quietly and reacting well to the various thrills and laughs. It helps that it's such a bright and colorful film, because even with the 3D glasses on, it's a very vivid visual experience. The designs are very broad, very cartoony, and not remotely aiming for reality, which excuses the way they clean things up a bit. Even sanitized for kids, the rougher parts of Rio definitely reflect the way things really are, and Fernando (Jake T. Austin) is a street kid who is the audience's way of seeing just how hard it is for some people in that country to scratch out a living.

Blue Sky's Carlos Saldanha has been a major part of that company's movies for a pretty much their entire existence. He's a co-director on the first "Ice Age," a co-director on "Robots," and he directed both the "Ice Age" sequels as well. With "Rio," it feels like this filmmaker (who was born in Rio himself) has made something with that extra added bit of personal passion, and maybe that's why I found it to be one of the most enjoyable things the studio has made. It feels effortless, like they just let it rip, and I can see why the film's enjoyed such massive openings around the world. I have a feeling it's going to do fantastic business over spring break as families in the US get their chance to see it next weekend.


Casio Atomic Watch

I've seen so many watches lately that record and display all sorts of data that I'd forgotten what a watch is really for: to tell you the time. But how do you make sure your watch has the right time? With Casio's atomic time watch, you don't need to worry about it.

The watch receives radio signals from five atomic clocks across the world, thus ensuring that your watch will tell you the correct time for the next 30 million years. Other features include the usual multiple alarms (4), timer, stopwatch, and solar power!

Source : http://www.thegadgetbox.com/


Death

Confusius Thinking About Death

Zilu asked Confucius, the renowned ancient Chinese philosopher:
‘May I ask what you think about death?’
‘You may ask,’ replied Confucius, ‘but if you still don’t understand life, why do you want to know about death. Leave thinking about death for when life is ove


Struggling Butterfly

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could, and it could go no further.
So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon.
The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.
The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time.
Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.
What the man, in his kindness and haste, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives. If we go through our lives without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. We could never fly!

Source :http://www.inspirationalstories.com/struggling-butterfly/


The Carpenter

Building Your House

An elderly carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer-contractor of his plans to leave the house-building business to live a more leisurely life with his wife and enjoy his extended family. He would miss the paycheck each week, but he wanted to retire. They could get by.
The contractor was sorry to see his good worker go and asked if he could build just one more house as a personal favor. The carpenter said yes, but over time it was easy to see that his heart was not in his work. He resorted to shoddy workmanship and used inferior materials. It was an unfortunate way to end a dedicated career.
When the carpenter finished his work, his employer came to inspect the house. Then he handed the front-door key to the carpenter and said, “This is your house… my gift to you.”

The carpenter was shocked!

What a shame! If he had only known he was building his own house, he would have done it all so differently.
So it is with us. We build our lives, a day at a time, often putting less than our best into the building. Then, with a shock, we realize we have to live in the house we have built. If we could do it over, we would do it much differently.
But, you cannot go back. You are the carpenter, and every day you hammer a nail, place a board, or erect a wall. Someone once said, “Life is a do-it-yourself project.” Your attitude, and the choices you make today, help build the “house” you will live in tomorrow. Therefore, build wisely — starting now!

Source : http://www.inspirationalstories.com/building-your-house/


PS 3 - Review

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- With its Cell processor engine, Blu-Ray DVD drive and beefy hard drive, the PlayStation 3 is unquestionably a powerhouse of a video game system. And forget about Elmo, this is the item that consumers will be sparring over as the holidays get closer.

But cut through the hype, and the desire for the newest, flashiest gadget and the product is not as compelling as it might seem. The PS3, for all its power, feels incomplete at launch. And that could leave some consumers, who have shelled out $500 or $600 for the system, depending on the configuration they choose, feeling put out.


"Resistance: Fall of Man" is among the most visually spectacular of the PS3's launch titles.

Want more video game news and commentary? Click the orc.
The potential for greatness is certainly there, but there are fundamental mistakes in execution that prove annoying. Take the initial user experience, for example: When you bought a PlayStation 2, it was a pretty simple process. You paid the store, took the PS2 home, plugged it in and started playing. Things aren't so simple this time.

Once you've plugged in and configured your PS3, you'll have to update the system software. Some (but not all) launch games will include that system update, which means the process will take 5 minutes or so. If not, you'll download and install the upgrade from the internet (as I did). This method takes more than 10 minutes. It's frustrating, especially having spent this much.

The money does buy something: The PS3 is the first system to fulfill the promise of being a true digital centerpiece of the living room. There's little you can't do with it. Watch high-definition movies. Listen to music. Surf the Internet. Chat with friends. And, naturally, play games.

Those system updates allow Sony (Charts) to add functionality down the road. The PSP portable gaming system Sony introduced last year has benefited greatly from system upgrades and there's every reason to believe the PS3 will as well. (But they're still a pain for day one users.)

The dashboard menu structure is similar to the PSP's. Navigating between the areas that let you launch a game, movie or music, along with the Sony Network (the online service which allows you to download trailers and buy add-ons for games) is all pretty easy.

The only part that could cause confusion for some is the settings field. If nothing else, Sony is thorough in letting you choose how you want to set up your PS3 -- but there's such a thing as TOO thorough. Quick: do you want your audio CD output frequency to be 48 kHz or 44.1 kHz? You get the point.

Eye Candy
Graphically, the PS3 is a tour de force. No, not better than Microsoft's Xbox --yet. But you quickly sense the greater potential of the PS3. It will ultimately be a question of how long it takes developers to learn to exploit what the system has to offer.

If you've got a high definition set, you're certainly in for a treat. And if you're one of the few to have a TV with 1080p high-def resolution, you'll be in heaven. 1080p is the PS3's sweet spot. It's the most detailed video available today -- and PS3 games plan to make the most of it. Launch title "NBA 07" is the best initial example, with detail as fine as the pores on player's skin. But expect no visual detail to be too minor.

For the majority of owners, though - those who only have a regular TV set - it's a slightly different story. The PS3 still looks good, but not awe-inspiring. Ultimately, it's a matter of the software. "Resistance: Fall of Man," for instance, looks fine in regular resolution. Electronic Arts' (Charts) "Need for Speed: Carbon"? Not so much.

Controlling games is pretty close to what PlayStation veterans are used to. The major shift this time is Sony has included a motion sensor in its controller (which has been redubbed the Sixaxis). In "NBA 07," for instance, twisting the controller will let you juke around an opposing player.

The problem is that the motion doesn't feel natural here, as it does with the Nintendo Wii. Perhaps as developers get more used to the feature, they'll be better able to incorporate it into their games. Initially, though, you get the impression they were caught off guard when the feature was announced -- and rushed to find some way to include it.

Gone also is the rumble effect from the controller -- an omission that has upset many Sony loyalists. Personally, I miss the shaking. The feeling of a slight rumble in your hands as you fired a virtual weapon added to the fun.

As for the much-touted Blu-Ray disc player, it's a nice addition, but it's almost immaterial if you don't have a top-of-the-line television set. For standard TV owners, it's just a player for more expensive movies -- and likely won't appeal. But it could be an ace up the PS3's sleeve in the years to come.

Online gaming, a big battleground for the current generation, unfortunately couldn't be tested yet. Microsoft (Charts) has big momentum with its widely celebrated "Xbox Live" system, which could be difficult to overtake -- even though the PS3 will not charge users for online play, as Microsoft does.

Looking forward
Compounding these shortcomings has been the PS3's unimpressive launch, including a tepid lineup of games and an embarrassing snafu that caused problems with its much-touted "backward compatibility," or the ability to play old games.

But the PS3 is far from a bad machine. It has the potential to be all the PS2 was and more. And remember: the console wars aren't won or lost at launch. They're marathons that usually don't start to shake out for two or three years after all the new systems are on the market. To count Sony out this early would be foolish.

The question is: If you're somehow able to find a PlayStation 3 on a store shelf this year, is it worth buying one? Sadly, the answer is not yet. The system is too expensive for what most people will get out of it -- and the initial slate of games don't offer enough innovation or thrills to justify the purchase.

Wait until prices drop $100 or even $200 -- and until there are a few more good games available - before you consider making the plunge.

Source : http://money.cnn.com/2006/11/15/commentary/ps3_review/index.htm


The Vision of a Prayer

The Vision of a Prayer
A Christian monk earnestly prayed that a vision of Jesus Christ might be revealed to him. After praying for many hours, the monk heard a voice telling him the visionwould occur the next morning at daybreak. Before the first rays of dawn appeared the following morning, the monk was on his knees at the altar.
A fierce storm was brewing, but the monk paid it no heed. He watched and prayed and waited for the vision. As the storm broke in great fury, a soft knock came at the door. Interrupted in his devotions, the monk turned away from the altar to open the door. He knew some poor wayfarer was seeking shelter from the raging storm. As he turned toward the door, he caught a glimpse of the vision for which he had prayed.
Torn between his desire to stay and experience the vision—one that he felt would last but for a moment—and his desire to help a brother in distress, the monk quickly decided that duty must come first. Upon opening the door, he gazed into the bright blue eyes of a small child who had apparently lost her way. She was tired, shivering from the cold, and hungry.
The monk gently reached out his hand and led the child into the warm room. He placed a bowl of milk and some fresh bread before her and did everything he could think of to make her comfortable. Warm, fed, and comfortable, the child fell asleep in a chair.
Then, with a heavy heart, he turned back toward his altar, fearing that the vision had vanished. To his joy and surprise, it was there—clear and bright and shining with radiant glory! As the monk gazed rapturously upon the precious vision for a long time, he heard a voice gently speak: “If thou had not attended to my little one, I could not have stayed.”


SONY ERICSSON XPERIA PLAY

Need a super-efficient, full-featured smartphone? And what if it also had real game controls? You've got it. The Xperia™ PLAY. A PlayStation™ Certified Android™ smartphone that lets you immerse yourself in the games you want.

The latest Google™ apps on your Android mobile
Never get lost again. Explore cities and sights with 3D maps. Use Google Voice Search™ to call, text and more. With your Xperia™ PLAY Android mobile, there's no need to type. Just speak. Want more? Get the apps you need from Android Market™.

"So, is this the PlayStation™ phone?"
Once a fantasy. Now a reality. The first PlayStation™ Certified Android smartphone gives you incredible graphics, great sound and real game controller. This phone is not actually named "the PlayStation™ phone" though - we call it Xperia™ PLAY.

Xperia™ PLAY - geared up for immersive gaming
What's your thrill? Slide out the controls of your Xperia™ PLAY and get behind the wheel of a race car. Or jump into a street fight. Challenge your friends: Xperia™ PLAY supports multi-player gaming. In addition to the pre-loaded games, you'll find an ever-growing selection of additional titles available for download.


The iPad 2 is the second generation of the iPad, a tablet computer designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc. Sometimes referred to as the "iPad 2nd Generation," it serves primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games and web content. Available with black or white bezels, the Foxconn-manufactured iPad 2 has a lithium-polymer battery that lasts up to 10 hours, a new dual core Apple A5 processor and VGA front-facing and 720p rear-facing cameras designed for FaceTime video calling.
Apple unveiled the device on March 2, 2011, began selling it by website and retail stores on March 11, and released it in 25 other countries on March 25. Apple announced that the iPad 2 will be released in Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and other countries in April 2011.


Selasa, 05 April 2011

Trees that Wood

Trees That Wood
by: Author Unknown, Source Unknown

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Once there were three trees on a hill in the woods. They were discussing their hopes and dreams when the first tree said, "Someday I hope to be a treasure chest. I could be filled with gold, silver and precious gems. I could be decorated with intricate carving and everyone would see the beauty."
Then the second tree said, "Someday I will be a mighty ship. I will take kings and queens across the waters and sail to the corners of the world. Everyone will feel safe in me because of the strength of my hull."

Finally the third tree said, "I want to grow to be the tallest and straightest tree in the forest. People will see me on top of the hill and look up to my branches, and think of the heavens and God and how close to them I am reaching. I will be the greatest tree of all time and people will always remember me."

After a few years of praying that their dreams would come true, a group of woodsmen came upon the trees. When one came to the first tree he said, "This looks like a strong tree, I think I should be able to sell the wood to a carpenter" ... and he began cutting it down. The tree was happy, because he knew that the carpenter would make him into a treasure chest.

At the second tree a woodsman said, "This looks like a strong tree, I should be able to sell it to the shipyard." The second tree was happy because he knew he was on his way to becoming a mighty ship.

When the woodsmen came upon the third tree, the tree was frightened because he knew that if they cut him down his dreams would not come true. One of the woodsmen said, "I don't need anything special from my tree so I'll take this one", and he cut it down.

When the first tree arrived at the carpenters, he was made into a feed box for animals. He was then placed in a barn and filled with hay. This was not at all what he had prayed for. The second tree was cut and made into a small fishing boat. His dreams of being a mighty ship and carrying kings had come to an end. The third tree was cut into large pieces and left alone in the dark. The years went by, and the trees forgot about their dreams.

Then one day, a man and woman came to the barn. She gave birth and they placed the baby in the hay in the feed box that was made from the first tree. The man wished that he could have made a crib for the baby, but this manger would have to do. The tree could feel the importance of this event and knew that it had held the greatest treasure of all time. Years later, a group of men got in the fishing boat made from the second tree. One of them was tired and went to sleep. While they were out on the water, a great storm arose and the tree didn't think it was strong enough to keep the men safe. The men woke the sleeping man, and he stood and said "Peace" and the storm stopped. At this time, the tree knew that it had carried the King of Kings in its boat.

Finally, someone came and got the third tree. It was carried through the streets as the people mocked the man who was carrying it. When they came to a stop, the man was nailed to the tree and raised in the air to die at the top of a hill. When Sunday came, the tree came to realize that it was strong enough to stand at the top of the hill and be as close to God as was possible, because Jesus had been crucified on it.

The moral of this story is that when things don't seem to be going your way, always know that God has a plan for you. If you place your trust in Him, He will give you great gifts. Each of the trees got what they wanted, just not in the way they had imagined. We don't always know what God's plans are for us. We just know that His ways are not our ways, but His ways are always best.



Introducing the first professional grade tablet. The BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet

  • All the videos, games, and apps the real Internet has to offer with built-in support for Adobe Flash
  • True multitasking lets you use more than one application at a time, just like you would on your desktop PC
  • Groundbreaking speed and power with a blazing fast, multi-core processor
  • Crystal clear pictures and video brought to life through an HD display and two HD videos cameras
  • Goes anywhere with an ultra portable design that's less than an inch thick and weighs under a pound
  • Works with your BlackBerry smartphone providing access to your email, calendar, and BlackBerry® Messenger


DotA 2

“What is Dota 2?” Dota began as a user-made modification for Warcraft 3 and has grown into one of the most played online games in the world. Following in the tradition of Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Portal, and Alien Swarm, Dota 2 is the result of Valve hiring the community developers who built the mod and giving them the chance to finally build a full product out of their idea with the help of a professional team of developers and artists at Valve.

As for the gameplay, it’s a little hard to describe. The camera is set in the traditional RTS perspective, but it wouldn’t be fair to call Dota an RTS. And while each hero starts at level 1, and many times hits the level cap of 25, it wouldn’t be fair to call it an RPG.

Lots of people have tried to assign various genre names to Dota, but we think Action RTS is probably the most descriptive. And while we don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out what genre the game is inventing, we can’t stop playing it internally and we’re pretty excited to show everyone how we’re doing.

This site is where you can come to follow us along as we build the game. The first four images we shipped with the initial announcement are just the start of us showing you our work as we build it. We’re all looking forward to getting more of the game in front of you all.

Source : www.dota2.com


Firefox 3.6 - Newest Version

What’s New in Firefox 3.6
Firefox 3.6 is built on Mozilla's Gecko 1.9.2 web rendering platform, which has been under development since early 2009 and contains many improvements for web developers, add-on developers, and users. This version is also faster and more responsive than previous versions and has been optimized to run on small device operating systems such as Maemo.

Available in more than 70 languages - get your local version.
Support for a new type of theme called Personas, which allow users to change Firefox's appearance with a single click.
Protection from out-of-date plugins to keep users safer as they browse.
Open, native video can now be displayed full screen and supports poster frames.
Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness, and startup time.
The ability for web developers to indicate that scripts should run asynchronously to speed up page load times.
Continued support for downloadable web fonts using the new WOFF font format.
Support for new CSS attributes such as gradients, background sizing, and pointer events.
Support for new DOM and HTML5 specifications including the Drag & Drop API and the File API, which allow for more interactive web pages.
Changes to how third-party software can integrate with Firefox in order to prevent crashes.
Developers can find out about all the changes and new features at the Mozilla Developer Center.

Source : http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.6/releasenotes/


Confirmation of Facebook Closing

Shocking news came from Facebook. The biggest social network in the face of this earth will be preached immediately closed within two months by the owner, Mark Zuckerberg. As quoted from weeklyworldnews.com, Sunday (09/01/2011), history of Facebook, which has 500 million users worldwide will soon be over on March 15, 2011.

“Facebook is completely excessive, I must end all this madness. All the pressure is now managing this company has ruined my life,” Zuckerberg said in a statement as claimed weeklyworldnews.com.

Statement Zuckerberg allegedly reinforced by Avrat Humarthi, vice president for Technical Affairs up. “After 15 March, everything will be closed. If you want to look back at your photos, we recommend immediate download from the internet. You will never again take it up our cap,” he said.

Still according to claim that site, Zuckerberg assess its decision to close up very heavy. But he felt that the best way for everyone.

“Frankly, this is the best way. Without up, people will go out and create friendshipsthat’s true. It is always a good thing,” he said.

Until now, the only site weeklyworldnews.com who wrote stories is about going to the closing up. There is no official media reported, because the site is only weeklyworldnews.com. The content is far from the truth. And it is proven right, until today, Facebook, the biggest online social network, has not been closed yet.

Source : http://www.coffetoday.com/facebook-will-be-closed-within-2-months/908099/


WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more than 1.2 million documents within a year of its launch. WikiLeaks describes its founders as a mix of Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the United States, Taiwan, Europe, Australia, and South Africa. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its director. The site was originally launched as a user-editable wiki, but has progressively moved towards a more traditional publication model and no longer accepts either user comments or edits.

In April 2010, WikiLeaks published gunsight footage from the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike in which Iraqi civilians and journalists were killed by an Apache helicopter, as the Collateral Murder video. In July of the same year, WikiLeaks released Afghan War Diary, a compilation of more than 76,900 documents about the War in Afghanistan not previously available for public review. In October 2010, the group released a package of almost 400,000 documents called the Iraq War Logs in coordination with major commercial media organisations. This allowed every death in Iraq, and across the border in Iran, to be mapped. In November 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing U.S. State department diplomatic cables.
WikiLeaks has received praise as well as criticism. The organisation has won a number of awards, including The Economist's New Media Award in 2008 and Amnesty International's UK Media Award in 2009. In 2010, the New York City Daily News listed WikiLeaks first among websites "that could totally change the news", and Julian Assange received the Sam Adams Award and was named the Readers' Choice for TIME's Person of the Year in 2010. The UK Information Commissioner has stated that "WikiLeaks is part of the phenomenon of the online, empowered citizen". In its first days, an Internet petition calling for the cessation of extra-judicial intimidation of WikiLeaks attracted over six hundred thousand signatures. Supporters of WikiLeaks in the media and academia have commended it for exposing state and corporate secrets, increasing transparency, supporting freedom of the press, and enhancing democratic discourse while challenging powerful institutions.

At the same time, several U.S. government officials have criticized WikiLeaks for exposing classified information and claimed that the leaks harm national security and compromise international diplomacy. Several human rights organisations requested with respect to earlier document releases that WikiLeaks adequately redact the names of civilians working with international forces, in order to prevent repercussions. Some journalists have likewise criticised a perceived lack of editorial discretion when releasing thousands of documents at once and without sufficient analysis. In response to some of the negative reaction, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed her concern over the "cyber war" against WikiLeaks, and in a joint statement with the Organization of American States the UN Special Rapporteur has called on states and other actors to keep international legal principles in mind.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks


Opte Project

Visualization from the Opte Project of the various routes through a portion of the Internet
The Opte Project is a project started by Barrett Lyon that seeks to make an accurate representation of the extent of the Internet using visual graphics.
Opte (pronounced op-tee) originated from the Latin word Opti, meaning Optical.

The name originated from the project creator Barrett Lyon and the fluid nature of the name opte.org made it stick.
The project was started in October 2003 in an effort to provide a useful Internet map with open source code. Lyon believes that the network mapping can help teach students more about the Internet. It can also be used to visualize sites of disasters in the world, citing the significant destruction of Internet capabilities after a disaster.

Additionally it can be used as an important gauge for the growth of the Internet and the areas of growth.
The images themselves are featured at the Boston Museum of Science and The Museum of Modern Art.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opte_Project


Fibre Optic Will be Ready to be Used by 2012 in Indonesia

The construction of a 50,000 kilometer fiber optic cable that will crisscross the entire archipelago, delivering better and cheaper data and voice services, should be finished by 2012, Minister of Communications and Information Technology Tifatul Sembiring said on Wednesday.

So far 40,000 km of the cable, stretching across Java, Sumatra and Kalimantan, has been built, Tifatul said.

The government has tendered the project out to a number of telecommunications companies that are building sections and will retain ownership of their respective parts of the cable.

“We only have to build the remaining 10,000 km to connect the nation,” he said.

The cost of building the rest of the system, mainly in eastern Indonesia, would be about Rp 5.3 trillion ($590 million), Tifatul said.

The fiber optic infrastructure will improve voice and high-speed data traffic nationwide, and will lower the prices consumers pay for telecommunication services, particularly in eastern Indonesia, he said.

Tifatul was speaking on the sidelines of the first day of the Infra structure Asia 2010 conference in Jakarta, which was reserved for small groups before today’s plenary sessions.

The government is waiting for state-owned PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia to finish construction of the Mataram-to-Kupang section of the cable, which should be completed next year.

After that, links to Ambon, North Maluku and Papua will be built, eventually forming a ring that will connect all the provinces of Indonesia.

The government is also planning to connect the cable to East Timor and run a link from Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, to Darwin, Australia.

“At the [World Movement for] Democracy forum in Bali, Xanana Gusmao, the prime minister of East Timor, requested this [link] from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,” Tifatul said.

The connection to Australia “is important so that we have an alternative overseas connection,” Tifatul said, pointing out that it would provide backup if the main overseas link went down.

“It will prevent trouble, such as when an earthquake in Taiwan occurred in 2006 that cut our connection,” he said.

Currently the country’s main international fiber optic link routes through Singapore to Taiwan and then to the United States.

The new link to Darwin will connect to Sydney and then to the United States.

PT Bakrie Telecom, the company that will build the 1,200 km cable from Kupang to Darwin, said it was still doing preparatory work on the project and it would cooperate with Australian telecom company Telstra and domestic investors to develop the project.

“We will start the project as early as 2012,” said Rakhmat Djunaidi, the director for corporate services at Bakrie Telecom, a unit of the Bakrie group


The World's First Laptop

As the personal computer became feasible in the early 1970s, the idea of a portable personal computer followed. A "personal, portable information manipulator" was imagined by Alan Kay at Xerox PARC in 1968, and described in his 1972 paper as the "Dynabook".
The IBM SCAMP project (Special Computer APL Machine Portable), was demonstrated in 1973. This prototype was based on the PALM processor (Put All Logic In Microcode).
The IBM 5100, the first commercially available portable computer, appeared in September 1975, and was based on the SCAMP prototype.
As 8-bit CPU machines became widely accepted, the number of portables increased rapidly. The Osborne 1, released in 1981, used the Zilog Z80 and weighed 23.6 pounds (10.7 kg). It had no battery, a 5 in (13 cm) CRT screen, and dual 5.25 in (13.3 cm) single-density floppy drives. In the same year the first laptop-sized portable computer, the Epson HX-20, was announced. The Epson had a LCD screen, a rechargeable battery, and a calculator-size printer in a 1.6 kg (3.5 lb) chassis. Both Tandy/RadioShack and HP also produced portable computers of varying designs during this period.
The first laptops using the flip form factor appeared in the early 1980s. The Dulmont Magnum was released in Australia in 1981–82, but was not marketed internationally until 1984–85. The $8,150 ($18,540 in current dollar terms) GRiD Compass 1100, released in 1982, was used at NASA and by the military among others. The Gavilan SC, released in 1983, was the first computer described as a "laptop" by its manufacturer From 1983 onward, several new input techniques were developed and included in laptops, including the touchpad (Gavilan SC, 1983), the pointing stick (IBM ThinkPad 700, 1992) and handwriting recognition (Linus Write-Top, 1987). Some CPUs, such as the 1990 Intel i386SL, were designed to use minimum power to increase battery life of portable computers, and were supported by dynamic power management features such as Intel SpeedStep and AMD PowerNow! in some designs.


10 Most Expensive Laptops in The World

10. Acer Ferrari 1100: $3000
Acer Ferrari laptop is built just like the Ferrari car. It’s built with ultralight design that wear resistant carbon fiber chassis. The laptop is built using AMD Turion X2 Dual Core CPU, 4 GB of RAM and of course all other features like Wifi. With the good specification of hardware, it’s hoped that it will get the maximal speed like Ferrari car. It’s a worthed buying with $ 3000. The reason to buy this most expensive laptop usually for the performance and of course for appearance.

Acer Ferrari 1100
9. Dell M6400: $3000
This notebook that coming from Dell is very powerful. It’s featured with Intel Core 2 Quad Core Extreme Edition Processors. The reason of using this laptop is for ripping complex analysis that need large data and graphics memory as the laptop have 16 GB of 1066 MHZ DDR 3 Memory for data as well as 1 GB of graphics memory. You won’t think that this laptop is the same as the low priced dell in all aspect. The price of this notebook reaches $3,000. Just provide that amount of money to buy this laptop.

Dell M6400
8. Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV660: $3500

The special thing about this laptop is can handle HD DVD. The laptop is powered by 2.0 GHZ Core 2 Duo, 240 GB RAID 0 HDD and Nvidia GeForce Go 7600. This is the first laptop computer that utilize with HD DVD player with 17 inch screen in 1920 x 1200 resolution. The price is quite expensive but you will think it’s worth of money because of the good design and the entertainment. Just provide $3,500 and you can take this laptop home.

Toshiba Qosmio G35 AV660
7. Lenovo ThinkPad W700DS: $4500
The special thing about this laptop is the secondary pull out display that can be drawn from the main dispaly. It makes this laptop different from normal 17 inch laptop. The additional dispaly is very useful for excel and CAD programs. The display itself is also very high in quality. This laptop is equipped with 2.53 Ghz Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9000, 4 GB RAM, Dual 250 GB 5200 RPM Hard drives. The price is $4,500.

Lenovo ThinkPad W700DS
6. Alienware Area 51: $5000
This laptop is dedicated for the game lovers. This laptop is sophiticated in hardware design with stylish and sleek casing design. The laptop is using Intel Core 2 Extreme Packs with Nvidia Geforce 9800M GT in dual SLI Configuration with 1 GB in graphic performance. This laptop has 1 TB of storage in high speed RAID 0 configuration. The storage is equipped with a smart bay system that can record HD TV and film with the built in TV tuner. For $5,000 this laptop is very reasonable in price.

Alienware Area 51



5. Rock Extreme SL8: $5000
This laptop is claimed to be the world’s fastest laptop computer with specs of Intel Core 2 Quad Processor, NVIDIA 9800 GPUs in SLI and 8GB of RAM. Equipped with blue ray that can display in high definition. You must be proud to own this prestige laptop. The price is $5,000 and I think it’s very reasonable price compared to its feature.

Rock Extreme SL8
4. Voodoo Envy H:171: $8500
If You want a high performance laptop that already optimized you should consider this laptop. The laptop is already optimized so will be maximal in performance. The specifications of the laptop are Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor, 4 GB of RAM, twin Nvidia Quadro FX Go 2500M graphics chipset, 1.3 Megapixel webcam, dual 250 GB hard diskk, 7 in 1 memory card reader, dual layer DVD RW drive and high resolution 17 inch 1920 x 1200 display. The special thing about this laptop is the casing that can be chosen from 14 tattoos options available. The price of this laptop is $ 8,500.

Voodoo Envy H171
3. Ego for Bentley: $20,000
From the image of this laptop, you will surely think that this is not a laptop for men. The authenticity of bentley logo make this laptop very stylish and worhty to carry match with the bentley car that also driven by the owner. The laptop can match the color of the Bentley car. This laptop usually bring by rich women that can spend $20.000 just for fashion purpose. For your intention this laptop just use 64 bit for vista and 160 GB Hard Disk.

Ego for Bentley
2. Tulip E-Go Diamond: $355,000
The laptop has an image as “most luxurious laptop in the world”. And I guess it’s true. The reason is because the laptop is designed with a touch of chrome in unique women bag shapre. The grip of the laptop can be replaced with white gold and diamonds. The price of this laptop can reach $355,000. Don’t ask about performace as this is the same as usual laptop. It’s just 12 antiglare screen display, 2 GB of RAM, 160 GB Hard disk, integrated webcam, bluetooth 2.0 and DVD burner. You should be rich enough to spend $355,000 for just a laptop.

Tulip E-Go Diamond
1. Luvaglio One Million Dollar Laptop: $1,000,000
The title says it all. You should own $1 million to own this laptop. This laptop is made to order and you will get your own design and specification. You can also order from what kind of material your laptop will be made. You can choose from wood, metal or iron. This laptop is also designed so the owner can upgrade the hardware themself. This laptop is equipped with 128 solid State drive, MP3 player, built in USB stick and equipped with “integrated screen cleaning feature”.

Do you want to own one of these expensive laptops?? GET A JOB :D

Source : http://www.mostexpensivelaptop.net/


The computer will be used by the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and will be ten times faster than today's most powerful system.

Two systems will be built for the super-computer by IBM. The first is Sequoia, a 20 petaFLOP/s (quadrillion floating operations per second) system based on future BlueGene technology. This will be delivered starting in 2011 and deployed in 2012. The second is an initial delivery system called Dawn, a 500 teraFLOP/s (trillion floating operations per second) BlueGene/P system, being delivered in the first quarter of 2009. Dawn will lay the applications foundation for multi-petaFLOP/s computing on Sequoia.


To put the size of the computer into perspective, if each of the 6.7 billion people on earth had a hand calculator and worked together on a calculation 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, it would take 320 years to do what Sequoia will do in one hour.

NNSA administrator Thomas D'Agostino said, "These powerful machines will provide NNSA with the capabilities needed to resolve time-urgent and complex scientific problems, ensuring the viability of the nation's nuclear deterrent into the future. This endeavour will also help maintain US leadership in high performance computing and promote scientific discovery."

Source : http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/03/09/234614/World39s-biggest-computer-built-for-US-nuclear-department.htm


Samsung 9 Series -Thinnest laptop in the world

Samsung has announced their new 9 series range of laptops in CES 2011 in LAS VEGAS. This laptop is synonymously called as the MacBook Air wannabe. But the stunning Samsung 9 laptop looking to give the wafer thin MacBook Air a run for its money.

With the duralumin machine barely troubling the scales at 2.89 pounds and the machine measuring just 0.68 inches thick, it’s matching the Apple MacBook Air in all aspect of the shape, although the Samsung packs a more ports and power, and comes with a backlit keyboard.
Although there’s no optical drive onboard, the wee fella bristles with Ethernet, HDMI, and USB connectivity, plus a headphone jack and two 1.5-watt speakers and a sub-woofer for hip-hop bass test too. It has a 400 nit LED-backlit display, while inside can be found a brand new Core i5 2537M processor, 4GB of RAM and 128GB SSD storage.

This Samsung 9 series has an price sticker of around $1,600 so it is known that beauty comes with a price. This is an powerful piece of equipment with killer looks to it. The release date is not confirmed yet.


The World's Worst Viruses

"As far as what [virus writers] can do, the sky is the limit," says April Goostree, virus manager for McAfee.com. "In the antivirus industry, we never say 'never' anymore. Because as soon as you do, you are going to be proven wrong. It's anybody's guess about what the next virus will do."

Here's a look at ten of the most malignant viruses and worms of all time.

10. Surreptitious Sircam
Sircam appeared in July 2001 on PCs running Windows 95, 98, and Me. The worm appeared in e-mail in-boxes with an attachment; the body of the message was in Spanish or English. Typical greetings included "Hi! How are you?" and "Hola como estas?" If you launched the attachment, Sircam installed itself on the infected computer, then grabbed random documents and sent them out to e-mail addresses it captured from your address book. It also occasionally deleted files and filled the infected computer's hard drive with gibberish. Visit Symantec's Security Response for instructions on how to remove Sircam.

9. Red Raider
Code Red burned brightly in the summer of 2001, infecting hundreds of thousands of computers--mainly on corporate networks. Code Red slithered through a hole in Internet Information Server (IIS) software, which is widely used to power Internet servers, then scanned the Internet for vulnerable systems to infect and continue the process. The worm used contaminated PCs as weapons in denial of service attacks--flooding a Web site with a barrage of information requests. The original target was the official White House Web site, but government officials changed the site's IP address to thwart the attack.

The worm exploited a weakness in the IIS software (which has since been fixed with a patch from Microsoft) that allowed an intruder to run arbitrary code on a victimized computer. Multiple variants of this worm now exist. Visit Symantec's Security Response for instructions on how to protect your system from Code Red.

8. Bad Benjamin
Benjamin--a new breed of worm--was let loose in May 2002, and it affected users of the popular file-sharing program Kazaa. The crafty worm posed as popular music and movie files. Kazaa users thought they were downloading a media file to their machines, but they got the imposter instead. It then set up a Kazaa share folder and stuffed it with copies of itself posing as popular music and movie files, which other Kazaa users would download. It congested the system's network connection and would ultimately fill up a hard drive. Visit Symantec's Security Response for instructions on how to remove Benjamin.

7. Numbing Nimda
Nimda (also known as the Concept Virus) appeared in September 2001, attacking tens of thousands of servers and hundreds of thousands of PCs. The worm modified Web documents and executable files, then created numerous copies of itself. The worm spread as an embedded attachment in an HTML e-mail message that would execute as soon as the recipient opened the message (unlike the typical attached virus that requires manual launching of the attachment). It also moved via server-to-server Web traffic, infected shared hard drives on networks, and downloaded itself to users browsing Web pages hosted on infected servers. Nimda soon inspired a crowd of imitators that followed the same pattern. Visit Symantec's Security Response for the Nimda removal tool.

6. Tennis Anyone?
The Anna Kournikova (or VBS.SST@mm) worm, appearing in February 2001, didn't cause data loss, although in the process of boosting the profile of its namesake, the Russian tennis player, it did cause embarrassment and disruption for many personal and business users. The worm showed up in Microsoft Outlook users' e-mail in-boxes with an attachment (supposedly a picture of Kournikova). The attachment proved hard to resist. The result? Clicking the bogus attachment sent copies of the worm via e-mail to all addresses found in the victim's Outlook address book. Kournikova also brought about a number of copycat variants. Visit Symantec's Security Response for instructions on how to remove Kournikova.

Most worm creators have never been identified, but a 21-year-old Dutchman, Jan de Wit, admitted to unleashing this worm. The admitted virus writer is appealing a 150-hour community service sentence handed down in September 2001 by a judge in the Netherlands.

5. (Expletive Deleted) Explorer
The Explorer.zip worm appeared in the summer of 1999, following in the footsteps of Melissa. The worm deleted Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files and randomly altered other types of files. Like Melissa (see below), Explorer traveled via e-mails that appeared to be from someone the recipient knew. The message included a file that, if activated, showed a fake error message to the user. Unlike Melissa, this virus did not use Outlook to gather e-mail addresses. Instead, it watched the in-box of the infected computer and then sent automatic replies to senders, using the same e-mail subject as the original message.

4. Maniacal Magistr
Magistr is one of the most complex viruses to hit the Internet. Its victims, users of Outlook Express, were hooked by an infected e-mail attachment. The virus, discovered in mid-March 2001, sent garbled messages to everyone in the infected user's e-mail address book. Attached were files pulled at random from the infected PC's hard drive plus an executable file with the Magistr code. This virus was not as widespread as many others, but it was very destructive. Magistr overwrites hard drives and erases CMOS and the flashable BIOS, preventing systems from booting. It also contained antidebugging features, making it hard to detect and destroy. Visit Symantec's Security Response for instructions on how to remove Magistr.

3. Malevolent Melissa
The Melissa virus swamped corporate networks with a tidal wave of e-mail messages in March 1999. Through Microsoft Outlook, when a user opened an e-mail message containing an infected Word attachment, the virus was sent to the first 50 names in the user's address book. The e-mail fooled many recipients because it bore the name of someone the recipient knew and referred to a document they had allegedly requested.

So much e-mail traffic was generated so quickly that companies like Intel and Microsoft had to turn off their e-mail servers. The Melissa virus was the first virus capable of hopping from one machine to another on its own. And it's another good example of a virus with multiple variants. Visit Symantec's Security Response for instructions on how to remove Melissa.

2. Klez the Conquerer
The Klez worm, which blends different virus traits, was first detected in October 2001. Klez distributes itself like a virus, but sometimes acts like a worm, other times like a Trojan horse. Klez isn't as destructive as other worms, but it is widespread, hard to exterminate--and still active. In fact, so far, no other virus has stayed in circulation quite like Klez. It spreads via open networks and e-mail--regardless of the e-mail program you use. Klez sometimes masquerades as a worm-removal tool. It may corrupt files and disable antivirus products. It pilfers data from a victim's e-mail address book, mixing and matching new senders and recipients for a new round of infection. Visit Symantec's Security Response for instructions on how to remove Klez.

1. Love Hurts
LoveLetter is the worm everyone learned to hate in spring 2000. The infection affected millions of computers and caused more damage than any other computer virus to date. Users were infected via e-mail, through Internet chat systems, and through other shared file systems. The worm sent copies of itself via Microsoft Outlook's address book entries. The mail included an executable file attachment with the e-mail subject line, "ILOVEYOU." The worm had the ability to overwrite several types of files, including .gif and .jpg files. It modified the Internet Explorer start page and changed Registry keys. It also moved other files and hid MP3 files on affected systems. Visit Symantec's Security Response for instructions on how to remove LoveLetter.

Source : http://www.pcworld.com/article/103992/the_worlds_worst_viruses.html


Selasa, 29 Maret 2011

                  The USSR's launch of Sputnik spurred the United States to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA or DARPA) in February 1958 to regain a technological lead. ARPA created the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) to further the research of the Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) program, which had networked country-wide radar systems together for the first time. The IPTO's purpose was to find ways to address the US military's concern about survivability of their communications networks, and as a first step interconnect their computers at the Pentagon, Cheyenne Mountain, and Strategic Air Command headquarters (SAC). J. C. R. Licklider, a promoter of universal networking, was selected to head the IPTO. Licklider moved from the Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory at Harvard University to MIT in 1950, after becoming interested in information technology. At MIT, he served on a committee that established Lincoln Laboratory and worked on the SAGE project. In 1957 he became a Vice President at BBN, where he bought the first production PDP-1 computer and conducted the first public demonstration of time-sharing.


Professor Leonard Kleinrock with the first ARPANET Interface Message Processors at UCLA


                  A plaque commemorating the birth of the Internet at Stanford University
At the IPTO, Licklider's successor Ivan Sutherland in 1965 got Lawrence Roberts to start a project to make a network, and Roberts based the technology on the work of Paul Baran, who had written an exhaustive study for the United States Air Force that recommended packet switching (opposed to circuit switching) to achieve better network robustness and disaster survivability. Roberts had worked at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory originally established to work on the design of the SAGE system. UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock had provided the theoretical foundations for packet networks in 1962, and later, in the 1970s, for hierarchical routing, concepts which have been the underpinning of the development towards today's Internet.
                  Sutherland's successor Robert Taylor convinced Roberts to build on his early packet switching successes and come and be the IPTO Chief Scientist. Once there, Roberts prepared a report called Resource Sharing Computer Networks which was approved by Taylor in June 1968 and laid the foundation for the launch of the working ARPANET the following year.
                 After much work, the first two nodes of what would become the ARPANET were interconnected between Kleinrock's Network Measurement Center at the UCLA's School of Engineering and Applied Science and Douglas Engelbart's NLS system at SRI International (SRI) in Menlo Park, California, on 29 October 1969. The third site on the ARPANET was the Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics center at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the fourth was the University of Utah Graphics Department. In an early sign of future growth, there were already fifteen sites connected to the young ARPANET by the end of 1971.
                 In an independent development, Donald Davies at the UK National Physical Laboratory developed the concept of packet switching in the early 1960s, first giving a talk on the subject in 1965, after which the teams in the new field from two sides of the Atlantic ocean first became acquainted. It was actually Davies' coinage of the wording packet and packet switching that was adopted as the standard terminology. Davies also built a packet-switched network in the UK, called the Mark I in 1970. Bolt, Beranek & Newman (BBN), the private contractors for ARPANET, set out to create a separate commercial version after establishing "value added carriers" was legalized in the U.S. The network they established was called Telenet and began operation in 1975, installing free public dial-up access in cities throughout the U.S. Telenet was the first packet-switching network open to the general public.
Following the demonstration that packet switching worked on the ARPANET, the British Post Office, Telenet, DATAPAC and TRANSPAC collaborated to create the first international packet-switched network service. In the UK, this was referred to as the International Packet Switched Service (IPSS), in 1978. The collection of X.25-based networks grew from Europe and the US to cover Canada, Hong Kong and Australia by 1981. The X.25 packet switching standard was developed in the CCITT (now called ITU-T) around 1976. X.25 was independent of the TCP/IP protocols that arose from the experimental work of DARPA on the ARPANET, Packet Radio Net, and Packet Satellite Net during the same time period.
                         The early ARPANET ran on the Network Control Program (NCP), implementing the host-to-host connectivity and switching layers of the protocol stack, designed and first implemented in December 1970 by a team called the Network Working Group (NWG) led by Steve Crocker. To respond to the network's rapid growth as more and more locations connected, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn developed the first description of the now widely used TCP protocols during 1973 and published a paper on the subject in May 1974. Use of the term "Internet" to describe a single global TCP/IP network originated in December 1974 with the publication of RFC 675, the first full specification of TCP that was written by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine, then at Stanford University. During the next nine years, work proceeded to refine the protocols and to implement them on a wide range of operating systems. The first TCP/IP-based wide-area network was operational by 1 January 1983 when all hosts on the ARPANET were switched over from the older NCP protocols.


T3 NSFNET Backbone, c. 1992
In 1985, the United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) commissioned the construction of the NSFNET, a university 56 kilobit/second network backbone using computers called "fuzzballs" by their inventor, David L. Mills. The following year, NSF sponsored the conversion to a higher-speed 1.5 megabit/second network that became operational in 1988. A key decision to use the DARPA TCP/IP protocols was made by Dennis Jennings, then in charge of the Supercomputer program at NSF. The NSFNET backbone was upgraded to 45 Mbps in 1991 and decommissioned in 1995 when it was replaced by new backbone networks operated by commercial Internet Service Providers.
The opening of the NSFNET to other networks began in 1988. The US Federal Networking Council approved the interconnection of the NSFNET to the commercial MCI Mail system in that year and the link was made in the summer of 1989. Other commercial electronic mail services were soon connected, including OnTyme, Telemail and Compuserve. In that same year, three commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) began operations: UUNET, PSINet, and CERFNET. Important, separate networks that offered gateways into, then later merged with, the Internet include Usenet and BITNET. Various other commercial and educational networks, such as Telenet (by that time renamed to Sprintnet), Tymnet, Compuserve and JANET were interconnected with the growing Internet in the 1980s as the TCP/IP protocol became increasingly popular. The adaptability of TCP/IP to existing communication networks allowed for rapid growth. The open availability of the specifications and reference code permitted commercial vendors to build interoperable network components, such as routers, making standardized network gear available from many companies. This aided in the rapid growth of the Internet and the proliferation of local-area networking. It seeded the widespread implementation and rigorous standardization of TCP/IP on UNIX and virtually every other common operating system.


This NeXT Computer was used by Sir Tim Berners-Lee at CERN and became the world's first Web server.
Although the basic applications and guidelines that make the Internet possible had existed for almost two decades, the network did not gain a public face until the 1990s. On 6 August 1991, CERN, a pan-European organization for particle research, publicized the new World Wide Web project. The Web was invented by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. An early popular web browser was ViolaWWW, patterned after HyperCard and built using the X Window System. It was eventually replaced in popularity by the Mosaic web browser. In 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois released version 1.0 of Mosaic, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic, technical Internet. By 1996 usage of the word Internet had become commonplace, and consequently, so had its use as a synecdoche in reference to the World Wide Web.
Meanwhile, over the course of the decade, the Internet successfully accommodated the majority of previously existing public computer networks (although some networks, such as FidoNet, have remained separate). During the late 1990s, it was estimated that traffic on the public Internet grew by 100 percent per year, while the mean annual growth in the number of Internet users was thought to be between 20% and 50%. This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary open nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network. The estimated population of Internet users is 1.97 billion as of 30 June 2010.
From 2009 onward, the Internet is expected to grow significantly in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Indonesia (BRICI countries). These countries have large populations and moderate to high economic growth, but still low Internet penetration rates. In 2009, the BRICI countries represented about 45 percent of the world's population and had approximately 610 million Internet users, but by 2015, Internet users in BRICI countries will double to 1.2 billion, and will triple in Indonesia.

Sumber : WIKIPEDIA (Internet)