Microsoft’s Anti-Virus The Worst

Microsoft’s Live OneCare security suite is not as secure as they think. OneCare is Microsoft’s foray into the security suite world. that is already hot contested by companies such as Symantec and Mcfee. Now one would think that since it’s made by Microsoft, it should be able to do a pretty good job, protecting other Microsoft products (namely, Windows XP/Vista and IE), right? Wrong. Various security experts who conduct security suite tests, including AV-Comparatives (www.av-comparatives.org) have already pish-toshed Microsoft’s attempts. Andreas Clementi, the AV-Comparatives reviewer has gone as far s suggesting that OneCare might not even bve included in the next comparison, because it’s just no good!

Microsoft was quick to do the necessary PR clean-up job promising to look into the test and make sure that OneCare does better. Of course since OneCare is still a registered security suite, certified by the International Computer Security Association, it will continue to be sold. We must concede that it is still early days, and OneCare can obviously get better. What worries us is that it is a Microsoft product. Which is obviously being scrutinsed by every hacker and script kiddie for flaws . Do we really want to be using security software from the most virus-targeted company in the world? Of course in a few years Microsoft may make us eat this very paper we’ve printed on, by using the whole experience to build another stable and secure product-and we’ll be only too glad to pay for the ketchup to help digest the paper. It’s ironic, isn’t it? All those virus writers out there are unknowingly helping Microsoft  clean-up their code, resulting in more stable products by the day. Perhaps 25 secruity patches down the line, OneCare will win the 2008 anti-virustest. I look forward to the day.

How to create a good model of a Dam

This is my school science project. I need to make a model of a Dam. To see the problems that I have come across view The Bitmap Images . But you might need the program google sketchup to view that file. The program google sketchup ia available on download.com. Thank you for the work that you will put in helping me out here. I  eagerly anticipate your reply.

Broadband!! Yeah right!!!!! Bloody $#@%$#!&*(*(^!!!!…..

I had known for a long time and now finally. It’s here! The 2mbps revolution is here!! Well, what is this so-called revolution? I’ll tell you what it is. You see the most popular conventional internet connection in India is or should I say was broadband, the connection which gives you the speed of 256 kbps. Which was also a kind of fraud in the sense that people used to think that there download speeds would actually goup to 256 kilo “bytes” per hour. Whereas the actual speed was 256 kilo “bits”. Now you see This is where everything went haywire. The difference between kilobytes and kilobits is that 1 kilo-byte equals 8 kilo-bits. Yes if you think that this means that even 1 mega-byte per second(1 mBps) equals 8 mega-bits (8 mbps). You may have noticed that everytime you see the speed given on any advertizing board they always talk about a 256 kbps connection and not about a 256kBps connection. What’s the difference? If you haven’t figured it out yet let me tell you the diference. mbps stands for mega-bits per second whereas mBps stands for mega-bytes per second.

The download speed is measured in kBps. So, if you do the math you get that you are actually recieving 256/8 kBps which is (32kBps) of data  that is why your download speed never goes beyond 32 kBps for an appreciativley long period of time. Another sad case of mass fooling of customers by even more retarded companies. If you’re internet connection comes from MTNL, you just want to check out the section “Revolution” for The 2mbps revolution.

ASSASSIN’S CREED

Set in 1191 AD, during the time of the Third Crusades, Assassin’s Creed puts the player in the shoes of Altair lbn’la-Ahad (The son of none). Orphaned as a child, he is raised by the secretive Hashashin clan, who train him in their ways and mould him into a master Assassin. As conflict rages between the armies of Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, Altair -freshely disgraced and struggling to regain his honour – is handed the responsibility of tracking down and eliminating nine key figures that are fuelling the war machine. Journeying across the holy land in an effort to end the strife and rise through ranks of the Hashashin brotherhood, Altair gradually discovers that things aren’t what they seem and that the crusades are a facade for something much worse.

FAST FORWARD TO THE PAST ?Although Ubisoft has carefully avoided major spoilers, Assassin’s Creed seems to have an unique “Twist in the tale” element. While being pimped at various shows, trailers and gameplay footage showed futuristic elements making their subtle presence felt at various points. Contrary to the plot, the game is supposedly set in the distant future, with an unnamed descendant of Altair recalling his ancestor’s medieval exploits using Genetic Memory Access technology. Taking on shades of The Thirteenth Floor and Quantum Leap, the game has this descendant plug his mind into a virtual-reality simulation to decode his genes and discover the dark secrets of his lineage. Producer Jade Raymond, has talked about subsequent sequels bearing a futuristic streak, with the player alternating between the worlds of the past and future.Assassin’s Creed seems to borrow its gameplay style from Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, allowing you to decide your own path. Caught neck-deep in conspiracy, the out of the flavour assassin is forced to explore the countryside and the cities of Acre, Damascus and Jerusalem, eavesdrooping on secret conversations and picking pockets to find clues as to his victims wheareabouts. NPC interaction is critical here- since the NPCs of the world usually have conflicting interests. Helping one group could easily land Atlair in the bad books of another, prompting careful consideration before accepting the quests.Once the board is set, the assassination shifts from planning to execution. helping altair dispatch his victims is a collection of melee and short-range weapons – Short Swords, Mini-crossbows and Throwing Knives are this assassin’s weapons of choice. What we have seen and liked the most however, is a wolverine-esque retractable dagger conceiled beneath Atlair’s left arm. Daresome in-game histiory behind this – Altair’s left ring finger was chopped of to make for this spring-loaded dagger, a rite of passage that each assassin endures as he makes the transation from novice to master. TO ALL SNEAK-FRIENDS
Whats interesting here is the stealth dynamics – defined by the developers as next-generation. assassin’s creed introduces the concept of social stealth. The crowd is a living obstacle that changes with every action. As long as Altair behaves in a completely ordinary way and maintains a low profile, the masses pay no attention to him. However, if he decides to run through streets and engage in roof-top jump session, the crowd erupts into chaos, making it dificult for the character to complete his mission. For example, shoving people aside to move forward, instead of gently making your way through the crowd, would result in getting shoved in turn and recieving a punch for added measure. Such actions attract the attention of the guards – you know the drill after this.Encourage flight over fight, the game borrows heavily from th french free-running phenomenon of Parkour, with Altair being able to use any protruding object to nimbly scale walls, vault over rails and leap over rooftops. In combat, however, he cannot take the least bit of damage – even a single blow is instantly fatal. Much like the protagonist in Condemned: Criminal Origins, you get a chance to sidestep or block an oncomming attack. If manoeuvre succeds, your stamina is preserved. This allows you to counter yout opponent’s attack by shoving him violently to the ground and sticking the dagger into his heart. However once Altair or his opponents run out of stamina, they lose their ability to bloc attacks, allowing the final blow to connect.The development team at Ubisoft will look to hone the fighting system from Prince of Persia, allowing players to create their own styles of movement and combat. Assassin’s Creed will make a fair puppet out of Altair, with the controller action buttons being mappd to his head, arms and feet, allowing for full-body awareness at all times.Explaining the concept in a developer interview, Creative Director Patrice Desilets talked about how the organic design of the scheme will let you control Altair much more fluidly. Faced with a set of struts on a rooftop, pressing the (PS3)\(A) (x360) button on the controller would make altair jump across them inturn, while the (CIRCLE)\(B) button allows him to grab them and swing from one to the other. With the (SQUARE)\(X) button controlling Altair’s weapon’s hand, the (LEFT ARROW)\(Y) button allows him to translate the local language being spoken around him or single out his target in the crowd. Using the dual-analouge sticks in their traditional roles, the control scheme also features an emotinal trigger, which can be used to alternate Altair’s intensity of action between gentle and violent – making him run, shove people side roughly or dish out heavy attacks.

Featuring a soundtrack composed by Hitman and Splinter Cel vetaran Jespre Kyd, stunning visuals and a revolutionary social gameplay mechanism, the POP team seems hard at work creating a bright and shiny future action-adventure games. Assassin’s creed seems all set to prove that true next-gen gaming involves improved gameplay mechanics, rather than just giving pretty-looking stuff to blow up. Until the game finds it’s way into our homes sometime next year, it looks like thew only thing we get to kill is time… Unless you count dead rising.

FACT FILE:
HASHASHINS

Formed in 1090 by al-hassan (Te old man of the Muntain), the hashashins were the world’ s first professional hitmen-faceless, silent hunters who struck out a high-profile target and dissappeared without a trace operating from the stronghold at masyaf in Syria, these disciplined killers introduced the world to assassin’s. they executed daring murders that changed the course of human history. they were known for their unflinching loyalty to the cult and their violent initiation ceremonies. the cause of many mdieval bueaucrat nightmare, the Hashashins have figured prominently in contemporary media-often in tales involving major conspiracies.

All the trailers of assassin’s creed are available HERE.

METAL GEAR SOLID: portable ops

T he Playstation Portable launched, had it’s share of the spotlight, and has been on the decline ever since. At the same time, its rival (the Nintendo DS) suckered the non-gamer\retro-gamer\faggot for it’s success. And for all this time, I’ve expected Hideo Kojima to bring the Metal Gear series to the hand-held system. Metal Gear fans couldn’t help but ask for more when Metal Gear Acid was announced for the PSP (and though we’re gullible as hell MGS card games won’t win us over). The wait is finally over with the comming of Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops(MGSPO).

MGSPO plays out in 1970, roughly 6 years after the events of Snake eater, where Snake (sickening name if you ask me) defeated the Boss, split away from the FOX unitand gained the title of the Big Boss. He proceeded to start a misspelled reality show that grew to become the second best programme on TV (right after Takeshi’s Castle of course). But for this game, but for this game snake wakes up in a prison with no particular memory of recent events and learns much to his horror FOX unit colleagues have stolen nuclear warheads (yawn, koosh-koosh balls are far more interesting) and plan to start a war. Snake has been accused of treason and must get out of prison, stop his former comrades and clear his name.

A loosely strung history, over-the-top drama and a Hollywood style presentation are just some of the things we expect of MGS games and MGSPO would do well to feature them all. Graphically, MGSPO seems to be pushing the PSP to it’s limits just as MGS 3 did with the PS2. The game will have comic-book styled cutscenes done by Ashley Wood, artist of Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel.

It will be interesting to see however, if Kojima will stick to see his old top-down perspective, or go with the 3rd person view introduced in MGS3 subsistence.

Gameplay-wise, things are pretty much the same (except for the fact that we won’t be selecting a ’shoot’ card to take out enemies), which is probably a good thing. The game will have you sneaking around, snapping necks (YaY!!) and watching really long cutscenes. The biggest difference in MGSPO however, is the decision of allaince (sorry ladies, snake isn’t geting married). In the numerous outings of snake, he is always preferred working alone-teaming up to complete missions isn’t the snakey way of doing things. Time around the swirls, snake can capture enemies, interrogate them and make them do his dirty work (Laundry, etc.). You can form your own army of disposible goons, though only three will be usable at a time. Allies will gain ranks as they complete missions alongside you. However, if you lose an ally in the heat of battle, he is lost forever.

But the real highlight of MGSPO is it’s multiplayer. evidentely, kojima discovered the Wi-Fi capibilities of yhe PSP! and now he is allowing you to team up with other humans(which is great since you blame them for your loss). Apart from this, the game will also have an onlinemultiplayer mode which is identical to MGS3: subsistence. The regular DM, Team DM and CTF (dubbed capture the frog) modes will be available to quench your online thirst.

MGSPO could very well be the game that revives the PSP. In the recent trailers, the story seems to be good with the expected quality of dialogue and graphics. If you’re an MGS fan, you’ve possibly decided a purchase quite a while back. And if you haven’t, I suggest that you save up for the UMD and watch the Tokyo game show trailers to create an appetite… after all, not all of us are snake eaters (sic).

All the cheat codes and trailers of the Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (aka MGSPO ) are avalaible HERE

No Flash In The Pan

Flash memory teams up with hard drives to speed up your PC.

I have been closely following the Microsoft Vista beta releases, and trying to figure out the benefits that the new OS will offer regular users. Sure eye candy looks good, but it’s the more tangible benefits that count. By tangible I mean features that will make a difference in performance and productivity.

I am particularly intrigued by the technologies in Vista that aim to make the computer faster. The “Ready-Boost” feature sounds like a magical speed up in a sluggish PC by plugging in a high speed USB flash drive. The operating system will automatically use the fast flash memory on the USB drive to boost performance-without restarts or drivers.

  Ready for the boost?

Vista’s Readyboost Uses the available free memory on the flash drive to create an additional page file that stores freequently acessed data. Naturally, fetching data on the flash memory is a lot quicker than getting it from your hard disk-making your PC much more responsive.

Following this train of logic, would it not be a good idea to entirely dump the hard disk and run everything off flash memory? For one the cost would be prohibitive (think how much 60 GB flash drive would cost you). The second is that flash memory is good for small, random I/Os (like paging to-and-from disk), but hard drives are better for large sequential I/O commands. So, it’s probably a better idea to combine the two and to leverage thneir individual advantages, with some clear support from software.

 What if you yank the flash drive, either accidently or deliberately? Will the system hang or crash? According to microsoft, it won’t. (But we need to watch this). Vista, it seems, maintains a back-up copy. Of course, any performance gains are also nullified. The good thing is that this performance boosting measure can be used anytime and will work with any hardware-so no need to open up your PC to add RAM. And it even works for PCs that have limited, or no memory expansion slots.

The bigger picture

While readybost is specific to Vista, we have another concept from hard drive makers that also aim to speed performance. These are hybrid hard drives, which combine a magnetic hard disk drive and non-volatile flash memory on a single device. With the hybrid HDD, manufacturers are seeking to combine the robustness, low power consumption and speed of flash media with the storage density, low density and low cost of magnetic drives.

 Samsung has already announced a hybrid hard drive that combines NAND-based flash memory with a mechanical drive to speed up performance and conserve power. In the hybrid mode, the mechanical drive is spun down for majority of the time, while data is written to the flash write buffer. When the write is filled the rotating spins and the data from the write buffer is written to the hard drive. The hybrid drive saves power by keeping up the spindle motor in idle mode almost all the time-a portable devices. Windows Vista already supports hybrid hard drives with it’s “Ready Drive” feature.

Intel’s next mobile platform, code named Santa Rosa, also implements flash memory to storage related performance. It uses Intel’s Robson cache technology which will enable motherboards to embed flash memory to store common elements of the OS and other related data to boost performance right from the boot process. Thus the boot times as well as the resume times will improve significantly. Imagine your system taking just 3 seconds to boot and get ready for action!

The marriage of flash based storage with hard drives is a step in the right diection, and I hope the industry giants concentrate more on smarter solutions that don’t necessarily require cutting edge hardware to run applications.

MS To Blame For Piracy? (The Russian Perspective)

Russia is amongst the top 10 nations responsible for usingpirated software. According to studies conducted by Bussiness Software Allaince (www.bsa.org), 83% odcomputers sold in Russia run on pirated software. Incidently, the top ten pirated pirated software countries are listed below:-

Vietnam 90%
Zimbabwe 90%
Indonesia 87%
China 86%
Pakistan 86%
Kazakhstan 85%
Ukraine 85%
Cameroon 84%
Russia 83%
Bolivia 83%

Russia IT minister Dmitry Milovantsev recently said that the cause of high piracy rates in Russia was more the fault of software vendors than that of the users! Now that may sound like a really tal claim, and a lot of you will be going, “Oh no, not another person moaning about how Microsoft should take into account the earning of the average Russian!” Do Russians really want a crippled version of XP, like the one India saw a few years ago? Will the Russian public pay to have a Windows version which allows only three windows to open at a time, especially when the “free” version that is available from the local market costs almost nothing and gives you full functionality? It’s an old debate, and we are not going to get into that…

Those of you who want to sit down and start shooting off an e-mail to Mr. Milovantsev and point out that open source is always a viable alternative might want to hold off hitting “Send” on that pirated Outlook window for a while… apparently, in a bit to reduce piracy, Microsoft does not allow hardware partners to sell computers without Windows loaded. So Russians have no choice but to buy from smaller assemblers or fork out the cost of the Windows OS that’s preloaded on their machine. But the bit that really stinks is that if you buy from these PC manufacturers, still insists on using an Open Source OS, and do not want Windows loaded, you have to shell out an extra $50 to have the company remove Windows! Now that’s just a cost of formatting your PC- they won’t load Linux for you!

We’ve heard of extreme measures being adopted to combat piracy, but this one takes the cake! Hopefully with Vista’s new phone-home type security, which forces you to uninstall it if you haven’t payed for it, will get rid of such ridiculous policies.

For those of you who are interested on knowing where India stands on the piarcy list, don’t worry, we aren’t in the top twenty however with 72% piracy, and an evergrowing number of users buying assembled PCs, we will have to spread awareness if we want to avoid being put on the list of shame!

One thing you need to remmember is that this 72% figure means that for every 100 Indian users who buy a computer, only 28 buy genuine software. So according to BSA, even though Vietnam tops the list of shame in terms of percentage, it is not the country with the most PCs running on pirated software. Take China for example: studies and estimates put the number of Internet accessing users in China (not PC owners), stand at around 120 million.

Lets supply BSA’a stats to this figure: 86% x 120 million = 103.2 million Chinese users run pirated software. Compare this figure to vietnam’s entire population of 84 million humans, and you should get what we’re saying…

Vista Vs. XP For Gamers

Ever since the launch of Microsoft’s latest operating system, Window’s Vista, confusion has reigned on the Web. Since it’s mostly gamers who are early adopters of the latest hardware and OS upgrades, it’s no surprise that windows vista is on every gamer’s mind. “Should I switch, or should I ditch the idea?” seems to be the question. And the answers are not hard to come by. Quite the reverse actually; there are just too many answers at this point in time, and all of them contradicting the other in some way or the other.

It’s obvious that no previous operating system from the Microsoft stables has created so much buzz-whether it’s apple fans crying foul fr alleged “copying” of Mac OS X’s prettiness, or Windows fanatics raving about Aero, to confused PC gamers standing in the corner shaking their heads at all the commotion while console gamers happily ignore everyone and everything as they rejoice with their PS3s! and Xbox 360s!

Respected geek sites-Extreme Tech. Tom’s Hardware and the likes have done every Vista review possible, including benchmarking the performance differences between a clean Vista install vs. an upgrade from Windows XP. Incidently, an upgrade from Windows XP seems to be better for gaming than a clean install of Vista, according to benchmarks.

Facts remain facts, however, and currently, Windows XP is slightly ahead in terms of performance for most games. This may be because those games were built for windows XP, or just the fact that Windows XP has lower hardware requirements, but the message is clear; if you want the best performance you can eke out of your hardware for current generation games, stick to Windows XP!

So that’s it? Am I telling gamers not to upgrade to Windows Vista? Keeping up the confusion that reigns, I’ll say yes and no! For some of you the answer is yes, don’t upgrade; for a smaller number it’s no, upgrade immediately, and for the majority… well… I just don’t know, and you’ll have to make up your own minds.

Here in India when it comes to gaming Hardware demographics are a little more of a complicated affair. The majority of computer owners have aging hardware that has no right to be running even Windows XP, very obvious that if those users upgrade to windows Vista, they’ll have to deal with really slow PCs. Those with better hardware are seldom gamers. Now we come to PC gamers segment, which again is broken into two segments: the first and larger segment comprises of computers that have pretty decent configurations- an equivalent of an Athlon 64 or Pentium D, 1 GB of DDR RAM, and a good DirectX 9 graphics card with 256 MB of RAM. The second and the smallest section of the public is the hardcore gamers with on top of the line hardware- Core 2 Duo/AM2, 2 gigabytes of RAM, and the latest DirectX 10 capable cards.

For the first gamer segment, switching to Vista right now may be a problem and kind of pointless. The reason being: Vista brings to table DirectX 10 compatability, which the next generation games will run on. If you’re going to be running DirectX 9, it’s perhaps best you do it on the operating system it was designed for.

For the top-of-the-line-or-nothing-else gamer Vista is probably what you should be looking for future-proofing. That said before switching to Vista, make sure your hardware your hardware manufacturers are making Vista drivers-this is for al your hardware.

The majority of Indian PC gamers will probably play it smart with the wait and watch game, which isn’t such a bad idea – atleast until some good DirectX 10 games come out and alland all the initial teething problems for Vista are solved. For now, just watch the Vista news flashes on various sites, all the benchmarks, and chuckle contentedly.

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