For The Second Time in Less than 1 Year, Internet is Down in ME
It’s my third day and my LAN cable is still disconnected, while I have a very limited internet access, 3 naval fiber cables that carries more than 98% of bandwidth to Middle East and Far East countries were broke down near Italy.
Authorities didn’t declare yet the reason of the broke down. That reminds us of the famous Internet broke down in Middle East and Asia in February 2008 where 4 naval cables were broke down in Mid Sea near Alexandria, Egypt and Dubai, UAE in the same way.
Airport planes booking systems were broken down and had to turn to manual systems to be able to book tickets for passengers, Outsourcing companies redirected most support calls to some third parties and partners in Europe to fulfill the needs of worldwide customers and most Internet services were broken down.
In Egypt, Dr. Tarek Kamel, Minister of Information & Communications declared in a report that some routes are being redirected to the Indian fiber cable that links South East of Asia with Europe in addition to routing to some satellite communications and promised that users will get a partial enhancement in Internet service within few hours as a temporary solution until the fiber cables are being fixed.
Official reports declared that Internet services were broke down by percentages between 80% – 100% in the affected countries.
Since most Middle East countries are on Weekend on Fridays, external operations from foreigner investors in ME stock markets won’t be affected except if the problem still persisted by “Saturday” or “Sunday” when opening these markets in those countries.
The previous broke down in February 2008 reported that a new type of electronic terrorism might be the reason of a massive dis-connectivity with the world leaving affected countries in a digital havoc and complete digital darkness.
I think because this problem occurred again by same method “3 cables were broke down”, it might be the new e-terrorism or due to a natural phenomena occurs in the Mid Sea that some water airflows may cause this problem.
Some would ask, and how could I post this topic, I can simply say, in absence of DSL and digital connections, thanks to Dial-up! ;)
Some funny reports declared that the reason was due to some sharks munched the giant high voltage charged cables! Who knows?! Maybe sharks got more wilder underwater like our world is! :D
TBot, Your Most Loyal Online Friend!
I' was really astonished when a friend asked me to add a Hotmail contact into my Windows Live Messenger. When I asked him, what’s it? He simply answered: a Bot!
My mind immediately went to the auto disturbing bots that IMs us in some other public messengers, but soon, I decided to add it and figure it out.
I was surprised, it’s an automated translation system released by Microsoft, Windows Live division!
TBot is a new technology Microsoft released as an add-on to the Windows Live Translator service. It’s to allow a complete interaction between automated bot system connected to the Windows Live Translator servers and billions of Windows Live Messenger users and Yahoo! Messenger users due to the interoperability between the most famous IMs to offer a real-time translations for up to 6 languages.
TBot is easy to use. Once you add it, it will welcome you and asks you to set a default language to translate to. It’s more similar like the automated phone systems by sending certain numbers for certain set of options. If you forgot these numbers of need any help anytime, just tell him: “TBot ?” and it will offer you rich options of help.
I recommend everyone with Windows Live Messenger or Yahoo! Messenger to add TBot to their IM. TBot is the most loyal friend you’ll have, always online, always available for you to reply your posts instantly.
Gartner: Vista to be last major Windows release
Research firm Gartner Inc. predicts that Windows Vista will be the last big release of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system. The era of monolithic deployments of software releases is nearing an end, and Microsoft will participate in the trend toward more flexible updates, Gartner said in a list of forecasts for 2007.
Gartner also expects that the blogging trend will peak in the first half of 2007. Given the average life span of a blog and the growth rate of blogs, the research firm predicts the peak number of bloggers will be around 100 million at some point in the first half of 2007. Gartner also said that by 2010, 60% of worldwide mobile phone users will be trackable via an emerging “follow-me Internet” technology as growing demands for national safety and civil protection relax some privacy limitations. Marketing incentives will also push users to forgo privacy concerns, it said.
MS Office Communications Server 2007 Goes to Beta
Microsoft will make its new enterprise voice communications server available to 2,500 companies under a private beta program on Dec. 11. The product, which will be known as Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, brings with it the ability for companies to integrate VOIP (voice over IP) technology into existing telephony infrastructure, Chris Cullin, the director of product management in Microsoft’s Unified Communications Group, told eWEEK. This server is also the successor to Microsoft Live Communications Server 2005, and forms part of Microsoft’s unified communications portfolio.
“It brings with it voice and conferencing capabilities for on-premise voice, video and Web conferencing, and integrates them together at the application layer for a unified user experience,” Cullin said. “It also provides a single applications infrastructure, a single point of administration and configuration, and a single directory, for the IT professional.” Earlier this year, Microsoft announced its unified communications vision and roadmap going forward, where executives talked about introducing voice technologies to its current lineup, developing new products and expanding the unified communications features its current products provide.
Microsoft Set to Deliver Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1
Microsoft plans to issue a service pack for Visual Studio on Friday, as well as a version of the update specifically aimed at fixing issues with the software for those running Windows Vista. The company said the updates will be available by midday ET.
The fixes come from customer and partner feedback, as well as the company’s own internal testing. The companies responsiveness to customer comments could be measured in the percentage of bugs addressed, Microsoft Redmond Campus pointed out.
“In some areas, more than 50% of the bugs addressed were reported by customers through the MSDN Product Feedback Center,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.
Issues remedied include errors in the syntax coloring functionality, and fixes for problems that caused the application to crash, the company said. Users of the software should notice improvements in the performance, stability, and responsiveness of Visual Studio due to the upgrade.
Visual Studio will now support modern processors, such as Intel’s Duo and Quad Core chips, to make the application faster and more responsive. Additionally, performance and scale improvements were made to Team Foundation Server, and additional support is provided for project file-based Web applications.
Microsoft said it understands that many developers are using Vista, thus a version of the service pack is being provided specifically for those users. Known issues with running Visual Studio 2005 on the next-generation operating system have been addressed, the company says.
The update is currently in beta, however the company plans to release a final version of the service pack sometime in the first quarter of next year, following the general availability of Vista set for January 30.
Visual Studio SP1 will be directed specially for Professional and Team System editions, no information it will support Express products as they are installed separately.
Microsoft also warns end-users running Windows Vista and those they will install the new service pack as the UAC “User Access Control” tool will show tens of permissions as the new service pack contains hundreds of commands it will perform and that will make the installation process up to 1 hour.
Microsoft update tackles Vista piracy
Microsoft has released an update to Windows Vista that will shut down unauthorised versions of the OS that allow users to skip the product’s activation system. The move comes as pirated copies of Vista are already making the rounds, just two weeks after the product was released to business customers. The update, which Microsoft has dubbed “frankenbuild”, detects tampering of Windows Vista code that would allow users of the OS to work around the product’s built-in activation system, which requires users to validate their copy of Vista with a product activation key to use the full version of the product after 30 days.
Frankenbuild mixes files from various test and final versions of the software. It will require only systems in which it detects specific tampering to go through a validation check for authenticity, according to a posting on the Windows Genuine Advantage blog. If a version of Vista that has used a workaround to avoid product activation is detected, a user of that software will have 30 days before the OS goes into a reduced functionality mode, Microsoft said. In this mode, all users can do is access their existing files and surf the web for an hour before having to log back on to the software. The pirating of Windows has been a perennial problem for Microsoft, particularly in developing countries. The company began coming down hard against piracy last year with the widely criticised Windows Genuine Advantage system, which initially required users to validate their copies of Windows if they wanted to use Microsoft’s update services.
Microsoft Patches IE 7 Phishing Filter To Boost Speed
Microsoft has released a fix for Internet Explorer 7 that should stop the browser’s built-in phishing filter from slowing Web surfing. According to the Redmond, Wash., developer, IE 7 users may see their PCs bog down as the filter evaluates multi-frame pages for fraud indicators. On pages with a large number of frames, or when the user browses several frames in a short time, IE 7’s processor appetite spikes.
“When you use Windows Internet Explorer 7 to visit a Web page, the computer may respond very slowly as the Phishing Filter evaluates Web page contents,” Microsoft said in a support document it posted Tuesday. IE 7’s anti-phishing filter was touted by Microsoft as one of several security enhancements to the new browser. The filter checks each site against a list of known or likely fraudulent pages kept on a Microsoft-run server. Mozilla Corp.’s Firefox 2.0, on the other hand, checks visited sites against a list of potentially dangerous sites kept on the PC. Microsoft and Mozilla have made conflicting claims that their anti-phishing tool is the best in the business. The patch, which was not automatically pushed to IE 7 users running Windows XP SP2 or Windows Server 2003, or posted on the list of possible fixes on Microsoft Update, can be downloaded from the Microsoft site. Users must be running a legitimate copy of Windows to grab the patch.
MSN, Baidu Partenership for Ads in China
Microsoft and Baidu announced a strategic partnership on Thursday that calls for the Chinese site to sell ads on select MSN and Live properties within China. Baidu, the top search provider in the country, disclosed the partnership in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, however.
The move is somewhat curious considering Microsoft
recently launched its adCenter offering in an effort to compete on a more even keel with Yahoo and Google. Initially offered in the United States, Britain, France and Singapore, Microsoft plans to expand it to other countries in the near future. However, in China its web properties are far less popular, possibly the reason for such a deal.
Vista SP2 – UX Approach
I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I’m going to give my personal user experience “UX” using Windows Vista SP2, and here I’m going to give an approach to it.
Installation
Installing Windows Vista SP2 requires Windows Vista SP1 to be installed, that’s unleashes any wonders why the size of SP2 is about 600 MB for x64 Bit while SP1 was about 700 MB, that means SP2 not yet including features and fixes found in SP1.
For optimum performance, I’ve installed a clean copy of Windows Vista Ultimate x64 then installed Vista SP1 and disabled automatic updates to prevent any Hotfix to be installed before SP2.
Setup process is very fast (less than an hour unlike SP1) and clean without any errors mentioned. SP2 doesn’t consume much space as SP1 does.
Performance
Computer's performance was amazingly increased by about 30-40% with fast access to applications, slightly faster startup due to some improvements in ReadyBoot feature.
GUI Updates
I’m very pleased with the new Bluetooth File Transfer new GUI. It has the common Vista’s look and feel with new icons, images and comfortable clean windows.
Bugs
Since the Windows Vista SP2 is still in the beta process of SDLC, it should contain some bugs until they’re all fixed by RTM. These bugs found with my UX till now include:
Sidebar
Windows Sidebar doesn’t keep its past state, it keeps loading gadgets randomly by priority of loading. For example, if you listed the Clock, Notes and Calendar gadgets, you may expect to get an arrangement like (Notes, Calendar & Clock) after restarting or maximizing, minimizing some windows..etc.
Screen Saver
To quit Screen Saver mode, I’ve use the mouse cursor to quit it, the desktop freezes and I am unable to navigate between windows and it takes some time to quit the non responding screen saver application or wait for it to respond.
System Configuration Utility
I was surprised once when I started up the computer and got a tray notification that some of startup programs are disabled by the System Configuration Utility, I’ve opened the window to try to figure which of startup programs Windows disabled, however, I found all startup program are unchecked, that means that nothing was disabled by Windows.
Recommendations
My recommendation is to wait until the pre-release beta of Vista SP2 is released if you are interested to beta test SP2 or wait till Vista is RTM.
I’ll follow up with several articles while I finish evaluating the Windows Vista SP2 :).
I’m still messing in depth with Vista SP2 and I’ll follow up in case something new appeared :)
Windows Vista SP2 – Amazing Features & Improvements
I’m glad to become one of the Microsoft Windows Vista SP2 private beta testers. As per h-NDA “hard-Non Disclosure Agreement” signed with Microsoft, I wasn’t able to leak any information about the Vista SP2, since it’s now released for public testers to tryout, I’m going list major list of features, improvements and will show my personal experience evaluating the Windows Vista SP2 in another post.
Windows Vista SP2 builds on the solid foundation laid by Windows Vista SP1. The incremental improvements provided in SP2 come primarily from the feedback we have received from customers and partners.
In addition to all previously released updates, SP2 will contain changes focused on addressing reliability and performance issues, supporting new types of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards.
FEATURES
Performance
• Resume performance when Wi-Fi connection is no longer available after resume from sleep.
• Inclusion of Windows Search 4 for improved indexing performance, improved relevancy in search, broader indexing scenario inclusion, as well as new Group Policy integration for Windows Search.
• Improvements to the RSS feeds sidebar gadget to improve update performance and responsiveness.
Application Compatibility
• Applications that run on the Windows Vista Operating System today and are written using public APIs will continue to work as designed on Windows Vista SP2.
• Previously released Application Compatibility updates are included in Windows Vista SP2.
• Spysweeper and ZoneAlarm now working with POP3 email accounts.
Administration and Support Improvements
• Customers installing .NET framework 3.5 service pack 1 will notice shorter download and installation times with Vista service pack 2 or Windows 2008 service pack 2 already installed.
• Service Pack Clean up tool (compcln.exe): This tool helps restore the hard disk space by permanently deleting the previous versions of the files (RTM & SP1) that are being serviced by Service Pack 2.
• Single installer for both Vista & Server 2008.
• Ability to detect an incompatible driver and block service pack installation or warn users of any loss of functionality.
• Better error handling and providing more descriptive error messages where possible.
• Better manageability through logging in system event log.
• Componentization for Serviceability of the installer.
Security
• SP2 includes all previously released security updates, and builds on the proven security benefits of Windows Vista.
• Secure Development Lifecycle process updates, where we identify the root cause of each security bulletin and improve our internal tools to eliminate code patterns that could lead to future vulnerabilities.
Reliability
• SP2 addresses previously released reliability updates, as well as addressing crashes, caused by Microsoft code, discovered since the launch of SP1.
Emerging Hardware Support
• SP2 contains the new stack of Bluetooth 2.1 feature pack supporting the most recent specification for Bluetooth technology.
• Ability to record data on Blu-Ray media.
• Adds Windows Connect Now (WCN) Wi-Fi Configuration to Windows Vista SP2.
• exFAT file system now supports UTC timestamps, which enables correct file synchronization across time zones.
• SP2 provides support for new form factors, such as ICCD/CCID. new form factor support --example USB form factor as opposed to PCMCIA).
• Support for the new VIA 64-bit CPU.
Some Specific Fixes/Additions Include:
· Inclusion of Hyper-V
· Event logging support in SPC
· DNS Server now listens over ISATAP address
· Fixes DRM issues from WMP upgrades
· Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless
· Reduction of resources required for sidebar gadgets
· Improved power settings for WS08