Microsoft Releases Windows Vista SP2 RC to the Masses

Feel free to check out its latest service pack, everyone is a VIP now, says Microsoft

DailyTech reported a couple weeks back on Microsoft's release of its Windows Vista and Server 2008 Service Pack 2's Release Candidate.  The SP2 RC was only available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers.  Not wanting to leave the general public out of the testing process, Microsoft has at last announced the availability of the SP2 RC to the masses.

The service pack brings a number of changes and bug fixes to Windows Vista.  It provides support for VIA's new 64-bit CPU, Bluetooth v2.1, Windows Connect Now (WCN) Wi-Fi Configuration wireless functionality, faster Wi-Fi resume times after hibernation, and most significantly the ability to record Blu-ray.

It also features a number of software/connectivity improvements, including faster RSS feeds in the sidebar, Windows Search 4.0, the ability to configure the maximum number of TCP connections.

The service pack is also for Windows Server 2008, and offers the Hyper-V virtualization environment as a free fully integrated feature, with one free daughter OS with Windows Server 2008 Standard, four free licenses with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise, and an unlimited number of free licenses with Windows Server 2008 Datacenter.  It also improves the management options in Windows Server 2008 and fixes some licensing key problems.

To top it off, the service pack bundles into a single package numerous bug fixes that Microsoft has been working on over the past several months and slowly releasing over Windows Update.  Altogether, SP2 should help to make Windows Vista and Server 2008 more solid platforms, with many small improvements.

Testing is critical to the service packs success.  Microsoft has been burned by past SP releases, which at times caused extreme errors like machine resetting.  The company is looking to give this one a thorough public testing and resolve any issues before deeming it complete.

For those wanting to grab the new SP2 RC, you can download it here.  You will have to uninstall the beta of SP2, if you have it currently installed.

DailyTech - Microsoft Releases Windows Vista SP2 RC to the Masses

NASA Moves Shuttle Launch Target Up to March 11

NASA's space shuttle Discovery is now set to launch no earlier than March 11 - one day earlier than previously planned - after nearly a month of delays due to suspect fuel valves, the space agency announced late Wednesday.

Mission managers set the new launch target after reviewing the status of Discovery's new fuel control valves, which were

replaced last week. The shuttle is now slated to launch toward the International Space Station on March 11 at 9:20 p.m. EDT (0120 March 12 GMT) pending a final discussion by top NASA officials on Friday.

Kyle Herring, a NASA spokesperson at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston, told SPACE.com that Discovery's new launch target - up one day from March 12 - is feasible because mission managers opted to forgo an extra modification to the shuttle's engine plumbing that would take more time to develop.

"All of the other analysis, the impact testing and the fact that we've got poppets and fuel control valves that are essentially crack-free, gave everyone comfort that we could fly without a modification," he said.

Discovery's two-week construction flight to the International Space Station has been delayed since Feb. 12 due to concerns with the shuttle's three fuel control valves. The valves, one for each main engine, are designed to work in concert to maintain pressure in the shuttle's liquid hydrogen reservoir inside its attached external tank.

To maintain a stable pressure during launch, metal poppets in the valves pop up as needed - much like lawn sprinkler heads - to route gaseous hydrogen from the shuttle's aft-mounted engines through a set of plumbing lines and into the external tank. 

When NASA's shuttle Endeavour launched last November, one of its fuel valves cracked and chipped. The spacecraft's two other valves compensated for the damaged one and the shuttle reached orbit without incident.

But NASA wanted to be sure that a similar problem, if it occurred during Discovery's launch, would not cause catastrophic damage by puncturing the shuttle's vital plumbing lines or overpressurizing its hydrogen tank. A plumbing line break near the shuttle's aft could cause an emergency engine shutdown, while an overpressurized tank could end up venting the flammable gas overboard during launch, according to a NASA document.

Last week, NASA set a tentative March 12 launch target for Discovery as engineers replaced the shuttle's fuel valves with newer ones that had flown fewer times.

NASA must launch Discovery by about March 13 in order to complete its 14-day mission before the arrival of a previously scheduled Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying the space station's next crew later this month. If Discovery does not launch by then, NASA would stand down until April 7 to launch after the space station crew change.

Commanded by veteran astronaut Lee Archambault, Discovery's STS-119 crew will deliver the final segment of the space station's backbone-like main truss and the last pair of U.S. solar wings for the outpost. Four spacewalks are scheduled for the two-week mission.

Discovery will also ferry Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata to the space station to join the outpost's three-person crew. Wakata will replace NASA astronaut Sandra Magnus as a flight engineer for the Expedition 18 mission, then joint the incoming Expedition 19 crew when it arrives in late March.

Magnus, who has lived aboard the station since last November, is due to return to Earth aboard Discovery after four months living and working aboard the orbital laboratory.

Discovery's STS-119 mission is the first of up to six NASA shuttle missions scheduled to fly in 2009. The others include the final shuttle mission to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope – slated to launch no earlier than May 12 – and a series of space station construction flights.

SPACE.com -- NASA Moves Shuttle Launch Target Up to March 11

Call of Duty: WaW PC Patch 1.3 Arrives, Fixes Sound

Treyarch has released a new patch for the PC version of Call of Duty: World at War, which you can now find over on FileShack.

The 1.3 patch resolves the Vista sound issues that accompanied the last update and enables players to record and view multiplayer matches, among other changes. Oh, and it's an incremental patch, so you'll need to have installed the 1.2 update to apply 1.3.

 

The patch notes follow below:

• /record and /demo enabled in MP.
• Server Log File improvements, including:
  • Team Names on Kill loglines.
  • Round Win and Loss.
  • Timestamps.
  • Additional action logging (took flag, destroyed headquarters, planted bomb, etc).
• Improved sound initialization for Vista - fixes loss of sound for audio devices set higher than 16 bit 48000 Hz.
• Screenshots no longer overwrite each other.
• Tweaked autobalance on select game modes.

Call of Duty: WaW PC Patch 1.3 Arrives, Fixes Sound - Shacknews

NVIDIA Forceware 182.08 WHQL

NVIDIA ForceWare software unleashes the full power and features in NVIDIA's desktop, gaming, platform, workstation, laptop, multimedia, and mobile products. Delivering a proven record of compatibility, reliability, and stability with the widest range of games and applications, ForceWare software ensures the best experience with your NVIDIA hardware.

New in Release:

• Added support for GeForce GTS 250.
• Added SLI profile support for some newly released games.
• Additional information on specific bug fixes can be found in the release documentation notes.
• Users without US English operating systems can select their language and download the International driver here.

Download: NVIDIA Forceware 182.08 WHQL

NVIDIA Forceware 182.08 WHQL

Mars Volcano Could Harbor Life

Ancient water may lie hidden within the largest volcano on Mars, researchers now say, and they speculate that such a setup could also harbor life.

While there is

no firm evidence that Mars does or ever has hosted life, one of the prerequisites would be water. The surface of the red planet is bone dry, but several studies have shown liquid water may once have flowed on Mars and could still exist in pockets below the surface.

The Martian volcano Olympus Mons is about three times the height of Mount Everest, with gentle slopes that sprawl across more than 150 miles of the planet surface. The widespread volcanic material suggests the presence of water-formed clay which can reduce friction — an effect seen on Earth at volcanoes in Hawaii.

"What we were analyzing was the structure of Olympus Mons, why it's shaped the way it is," said Patrick McGovern, a geophysicist at the NASA-affiliated Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. "What we found has implications for life — but implications are what go at the end of a paper."

Olympus Mons soars 15 miles (24 km) above the surface, dwarfing the largest terrestrial volcano, Mauna Loa, which is just 6 miles (9 km) high, including the portion of the volcano that extends underwater to the sea floor.

NASA's hard-digging Phoenix lander uncovered water ice last year near the Martian North Pole. So some researchers think it's reasonable to suspect water that may lie trapped underneath the largest volcano in the solar system, although many suspect that remaining water on the planet remains ice-locked.

McGovern and Julia Morgan, a Rice University geologist, used computer models to simulate how Olympus Mons might have formed. They concluded that only ancient clay sediments could account for the volcano's asymmetric shape.

Any existence of clay sediment would certainly indicate water at some point, said Jack Farmer, an astrobiologist at the University of Arizona who did not participate in the study. But he cautioned that researchers would want to see more direct evidence of clay underneath Olympus Mons — perhaps from one of the Mars orbiters currently eying the Red Planet.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft has in recent years found abundant evidence of clay on Mars. This at least supports a previous theory that where Olympus Mons now stands, a layer of sediment once rested that may have been hundreds of meters thick.

What may be trapped underneath is of great interest, said the researchers. Fluids embedded in an impermeable, pressurized layer of clay sediment would allow the kind of slipping motion that would account for Olympus Mons' spread-out northeast flank — and may still exist in deep, trapped pockets within the volcano.

"This deep reservoir, warmed by geothermal gradients and magmatic heat and protected from adverse surface conditions, would be a favored environment for the development and maintenance of thermophilic organisms," McGovern and Morgan write in this month's issue of the journal Geology.

Such primal organisms already thrive deep in Earth's ocean near geothermal vents. These and other seemingly extreme spots on Earth represent focal points for intense biological activity, Farmer noted.

"Even within an environment that might otherwise be rather dry, a point heat source in contact with subsurface water or water ice can set up a convection system that provides chemical nutrients to the near-surface environment, and maybe even the surface," Farmer told SPACE.com.

Finding a currently active source of heat represents one of the future challenges.

"We'd love to have the answer to that question," McGovern said, noting evidence of methane on Mars is considered by some to be another possible marker for life. Spacecraft have yet to detect a true thermal event on Mars, such as a magma flow or active volcano.

"What we need is 'ground truth' — something reporting from the surface saying, 'Hey, there's a Marsquake,' or 'Hey, there's unusual emissions of gas,'" McGovern added. "Ultimately, we'd like to see a series of seismic stations so we can see what's moving around the planet."

SPACE.com -- Mars Volcano Could Harbor Life

Microsoft Office Labs vision 2019 (montage + video)

When Microsoft decides to imagine the future, it never fails to impress. Not only do you have some of the smartest people envisioning what’s possible, but they also invest so much into communicating these ideas through sights and sounds which the production value can be compared to most blockbuster sci-fi films.

Today at the Wharton Business Technology Conference, Microsoft’s Business Division president Stephen Elop unveiled the latest production from Microsoft Office Labs called “2019″, starring stock photo men, women and children playing with the next-generation of communication, collaboration and production technologies. (via Steve Clayton)

Those with a keen eye and a good memory might recognize a few familiar concepts in this video already shown in earlier videos of the “envisioning” series, for example the future of personal health, having said that, I believe there’s still a couple of new never-before-seen concepts sliced between. Please correct me if I’m wrong. And I’m not wrong. Update below.

Update: I’ve been able to get my hands on the new “2019″ video in its full glory. This 5-minute long spectacle is available separately below. Some of the new technologies demoed including a “transparent wall” between two classrooms around the world, animated drawings, realtime conversation translations, surface displays, electronic boarding cards, transparent displays, mini projectors among many others. The electronic newspaper is definitely my favorite.

(Full video not available to embed, visit source link to see it.)

Microsoft Office Labs vision 2019 (montage + video) - istartedsomething

DailyTech - Samsung Shows New Hybrid Digital Camera at PMA 2009

Samsung point-and-shoot camera uses D-SLR size sensor

One reason for the bulky size of many D-SLR cameras is the use of a mirror box, which forces a longer distance between the lens and the image sensor. Samsung has introduced a new hybrid digital camera that features new advancements to combine the portable size of a point-and-shoot with the performance of a D-SLR camera.

The new NX series digital point-and-shoot cameras from Samsung will feature an APS-C size image sensor providing a similar surface area to that of the image sensors used in D-SLR cameras. Rather than using a mirror box, Samsung uses an ultra precise Electronics Viewfinder (EVF) that helps reduce the size of the camera by 60% compared to a traditional D-SLR.

The new EVF allows the user to use the camera's Live View LCD to align shots.

Samsung CEO Sang-jin Park said in a statement, "We estimate that the hybrid digital camera market will be over 20% of the global digital still camera market by 2012,” said Sang-jin Park, CEO of Samsung Digital Imaging Company. “With the release of the NX Series, a digital camera that combines the strengths of a DSLR and compact digital camera, Samsung Digital Imaging will become a global leader in the new hybrid digital camera market and achieve the company’s goal to become the global leader in the digital camera market by 2012."

Samsung says the new hybrid NX series will bridge the gap between high-end D-SLRs and the compact point-and-shoot cameras. Hard details on the new series are unavailable at this time. Samsung says that the first NX series model will be available in the second half of 2009.

Samsung recently announced a new line of point-and-shoot cameras that includes the TL320 and HZ15W.

DailyTech - Samsung Shows New Hybrid Digital Camera at PMA 2009