Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Released

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is an update to Windows Vista that addresses feedback from our customers. In addition to previously released updates, SP1 contains changes focused on addressing specific reliability and performance issues, supporting new types of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards. Windows Vista SP1 also addresses some management, deployment, and support challenges.

Downloads:
Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista [434.5 MB]
Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista 64bit [726.5 MB]

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Turn Insomnia into a Productivity Boost

Insomniac and coder Chad Perrin says that hackers who stay up all night coding can get more done in those hours than most people can in a month because an all-nighter lends itself to getting into “hack mode,” or the state of flow. The Jargon Wiki defines hack mode as:

A Zen-like state of total focus on The Problem that may be achieved when one is hacking (this is why every good hacker is part mystic).

Perrin says that insomniac coders kick into hack mode because there’s no one else around to distract them and they have to stay quiet (and avoid the television) so not to disturb others sleeping. He also says the surreal perspective one gets at sunrise after a whole night awake encourages “crazy,” creative thoughts and new ideas to emerge. Insomnia can really suck, but if you have to be awake all night, knocking something out in hack mode seems like the best way to do it.

Source: Lifehacker

Posted in Coding, General BS | No Comments

Six-core Intel processors coming this year

Advancing its architecture at what most independent observers would now agree is a breakneck pace, Intel offered further details today on how soon it would begin phasing out the Core Microarchitecture it introduced in the summer of 2006.

With the second phase of its 45 nm generation microprocessors — what it calls “tock,” using a metaphor that drives rival AMD mad — Intel will move to a processor design that utilizes scalable cores, from two all the way to eight, it will introduce another new microarchitecture for processing instructions, and it will phase out the front-side bus as a component of its architecture. We’ve known these facts based on bits and pieces of information compiled from Intel hints over the past six months. Now we know this as absolute fact, confirmed by senior vice president Pat Gelsinger during a special presentation this morning.

Now we know when it will all happen for certain. The six-core Dunnington server CPU platform using Penryn architecture (the “tick” generation of 45 nm), with 16 MB of L3 cache, goes into production as soon as this summer. The 45 nm Nehalem architecture (“tock”) enters production in the fourth quarter of this year. That will be the beginning of the end of the era of Intel x86 computers with a front-side bus (a separate circuit linking the CPU to memory, with a dedicated clock).

Source: BetaNews

Posted in Gaming, Hardware | No Comments

20 Percent of SSD Notebooks Failing?

The whole reason to pay the obscene premium for a SSD is because it’s supposed to be way more reliable than your average spinny hard drive. According to an analyst at Avian Securities, however, an unnamed “large computer manufacturer” is having 10 to 20 percent of its flash-based notebooks sent back because of technical failure—and still more are being sent back for not matching purchasers’ expectations for a total of 20 to 30 percent of SSD-based notebooks getting the heave-ho.Keep in mind that the return rate for standard hard drive failures is only about one to two percent. Crave narrows down the most probable manufacturer to be Dell, who pointed out when admitting that SSDs suck for small data packets (like in Outlook) that Samsung is about to drop a new SSD that doesn’t cry itself to a slow churn when faced with them. Not exactly an admission, but about the best you could expect out of a flack.

That said, it doesn’t really address the whole issue of a 20 percent fail rate, which doesn’t exactly stoke the lines with people ready to throw down the platinum card.

Source: Gizmodo

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Yahoo Mail Delivering Trojans?

I’m not sure if this is an isolated incident or another mass attack through third party advertising like what had happened with Facebook a while back, but the folks over at ha.ckers.org are reporting a case where one of their users was browsing their Yahoo Mail account and got hit with an avast! warning about an HTML:Roguelframe trojan installation.  Here’s the screenshot that was posted:

Hopefully this was just a one-off incident but I’ll be keeping my eyes and ears open for more reports of this behavior.

Note to self: Do not trust third party code.  Ever.

Posted in Coding, Internet, Privacy, Security | 2 Comments