Yahoo Inc. plans to offer unlimited e-mail storage to its roughly quarter of a billion users, starting in May, it said on Tuesday. The world’s biggest e-mail service is scrapping its free e-mail storage limit of 1 gigabyte, or about a billion bytes of data, responding to explosive growth in attachment sizes as people share ever more photos, music and videos via e-mail. Microsoft has a 2 gigabyte free e-mail storage limit, while Google caps its Gmail service at 2.8 gigabytes. “We are giving them no reason to ever have to delete old e-mails,” Yahoo co-founder David Filo said in a phone interview. “You can keep stuff forever.”
Officials said the decision to remove e-mail storage limits reflects the plunging cost of storage as new personal computers store up to a trillion bytes of data and owners of 80-gigabyte iPods can carry 100 hours of video in their pockets. By contrast, when Yahoo first introduced its e-mail service a little under a decade ago, it capped individual storage at 4 megabytes per user. At that time, an “ultra high-density” floppy disk for personal computers then held 144 megabytes. “People should think about e-mail as something where they are archiving their lives,” said Filo, who remains active in managing technical operations at the Sunnyvale, California, company and carries the honorific title of Chief Yahoo. Starting in May, the changeover to unlimited storage should take a month, said John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo Mail.
source: Yahoo News
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The highly anticipated “Halo 3″ video game will come in three editions for gamers to choose from
Microsoft Game Studios and Bungie Studios have both confirmed that Halo 3 will be released this fall in three different versions for gamers to choose from. Gamers will be able to pick either a Standard Edition, Limited Edition or Legendary Edition.
The Standard Edition ($59.99) is the edition for those who simply want a copy of the Halo 3 video game.
The Limited Edition ($69.99) will come in a metal collector’s case that has a bonus disc and a fiction and art book. The art book and fiction will help expand the storyline and shed some light on details of some of the subplots of the Halo universe.
The Legendary Edition ($129.99) will ship inside a Spartan helmet case and come with two bonus discs with additional content — behind-the-scenes footage, videos, and high-definition featurettes will be on the first bonus disc. The second bonus disc will contain cinematic material from Halo 2 and Halo: Combat Evolved, along with a featurette on what it is like to work at Bungie. The Legendary Edition will also have a variety of storyboard art.
source: DailyTech
Next month will see the arrival of a new top-of-the-line Nvidia GeForce 8 series GPU, the 8800 Ultra, along with a host of lesser products, it has been claimed.
The 8800 Ultra’s speeds and feeds aren’t yet known, but it will represent an “overclocked 8800 GTX”, according to a report at NGOHQ.com, citing Nvidia partner sources.
The day of the launch isn’t known precisely either: some say 17 April, others suggest 28 April is the day Nvidia has down in its diary. Whenever it’s released, the 8800 Ultra is almost certainly intended to shore up Nvidia’s hold on the high-end of the graphics business against AMD’s delayed R600.
The AMD next-generation, DirectX 10 GPU was to have been announced last week, but the event was canned at the last minute.
Meanwhile, some moles maintain Nvidia will announce 8300, 8400, 8500 and 8600 graphics chips alongside the Ultra.
News source: Reg Hardware
Some statistics for the closing beta:
* This beta started on 27th March 2006.
* There were a total of 3080 registered users in the managed beta.
* They received 832 bugs and 358 suggestions over the entire beta
* The newsgroup has had over 3500 posts.
Feedback has closed and no more submissions are being taken on, but it’s important to stress that only the managed beta is closing - the product will still be in beta for some time yet. The newsgroups will remain active for a while, and access to the beta product will still be ongoing. There will be a next release of this product it’s important to say, as development to v2 of the product is going ahead. All current testers will be shifted across to the new beta, just as Windows Live Messenger testers will be onto 9.0.
What next? A new build is just around the corner - shouldn’t be far off at all. Maybe not the final product, but a new build isn’t far off at all.
The megapatch, also known as Mac OS X 10.4.9, is the seventh Apple security patch release in three months. It deals with vulnerabilities in Apple’s own software, as well as third-party components such as Adobe Systems’ Flash Player, OpenSSH and MySQL. Sixteen of the vulnerabilities addressed by the update were previously released as part of two high-profile bug-hunting campaigns. Several of the flaws could be exploited to gain full control over a Mac running the vulnerable component, according to Apple’s advisory. Other holes are limited and could only be exploited to crash a Mac or used by somebody who already has access to a machine.
Eight vulnerabilities are related to the way Mac OS X handles disk images; mounting a malicious image may lead to an error and could provide a means for an attacker to breach a Mac, Apple said. Nine vulnerabilities were released as part of the Month of Apple Bugs in January and seven bugs disclosed in the Month of Kernel Bugs in November. While several of the vulnerabilities repaired by Apple’s updates were previously known, it doesn’t appear that any attacks that exploited the flaws actually occurred. Apple also issued a second update which fixes a security bug in iPhoto that could allow an attacker to craft a malicious “photocast” which, when opened, could compromise a Mac.
News source: News.com
Even though DreamScene is still technically a preview release, Microsoft has just posted a little Content Pack featuring 4 new animated backgrounds.
The four videos are:
* A field of thistle, with a bee gathering pollen
* The rushing water of a forest stream
* A streetlamp reflected in a puddle, with softly falling rain
* Orange wisps flowing in a computer-generated scene
“We’re offering these video backgrounds only to users who have installed the Windows DreamScene Preview. However, the Content Pack will continue to be available when the final version of DreamScene is released, so don’t worry about installing the preview just so you can obtain them. The preview version is an unsupported release; it is not appropriate for users who are uncomfortable with installing prerelease software. If you’ve installed the Windows DreamScene Preview, click Check for updates in Windows Update to see the Content Pack, which is offered as an Ultimate Extra.”
View: Windows DreamScene Content Pack
Today I just got the mail from Microsoft asking to Test Windows Live for TV beta.Here is how it reads-
Hi,
We’d like you to try a new great service from Microsoft called Windows Live(TM) for TV Beta.
Click here to download
Here are some things you might want to know about Windows Live for TV Beta.
It’s a new Spaces browser–browse millions of Spaces in rich 3D graphics with new Gallery views and full keyword search.
It lets you keep up with your friends and family–find out what your friends have been doing and saying on Windows Live Spaces
Have real-time text and voice conversations with Windows Live Messenger
Thanks for being part of the Windows Live for TV Beta.
Best regards,
The Windows Live for TV Beta team
IMPORTANT FOR USERS OF MICROSOFT ONECARE.
PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE
Microsoft has admitted that its Live OneCare security suite has been accidentally deleting some users’ Outlook and Outlook Express e-mails.
According to postings on Microsoft’s OneCare forum, erasures have been caused when the antivirus programme finds a virus in an e-mail attachment. Instead of then quarantining that single e-mail, users have reported that entire .pst or .dbx files -— the personal folder where non-Exchange Server users’ messages and other details are kept -— have been quarantined or, in some cases, even deleted.
One user commented on the forum: “Is there a chance to recover it? If not, OneCare will have done more damage than any virus in my 30 years of active computing.†Forum postings indicate, however, that recovery is possible in some cases, where the .pst or .dbx file is still available in OneCare’s quarantine facility.
Stephen Boots, a forum administrator, commented that he was “very unhappy about this problem as it was reported over a year ago and fixed in the 1.0 releaseâ€, adding: “It never appeared throughout the beta, but suddenly appeared when 1.5 was releasedâ€.
In a statement reported on Computerworld, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the company was “working to address an issue where the antimalware engine for OneCare is erroneously quarantining Outlook .pst files or Outlook Express .dbx files, when the .pst file or .dbx file contains an infected attachmentâ€. The spokesperson added that a fix would be included in the next OneCare update, which is due on 13 March.
OneCare has been hit this year by ongoing criticism, having only days ago failed to achieve certification in an independent test of security products. Shortly before that, it emerged that the product did not sufficiently protect users of Microsoft’s Vista operating system against malware.
source: bink.nu
Ankur Mittal | March 28, 2007
