KDevelop 3.4 has been released

KDevelop 3.4 has been released, bringing many new features to KDE's Integrated Development Environment. The first major release in over a year closes more than 500 bugs.

KDevelop 3.4.x Features

• Improved Qt4 support
  
  • Specify Qt installation dir upon project creation
    
  • Properly open the right designer for .ui files
    
  • Call the right qmake in qmake projects
    
  • Use Qt4 style includes
    
  • New Options for Qt4's QT variable in the project configuration
    
  • Handle Qt4 resource files in QMake Manager
    
  
  

• Improved QMake Manager
  
  • New Parser which doesn't replace the project file contents
    
  • Parses and displays the Qt4 buildsystem properly
    
  • Scopes
    
    • Display Scopes as tree nodes in the Overview
      
    • Add/Remove all types of Scopes (simple, Function and Include's)
      
    • Excluding files inside a scope is much easier
      
    • Support for disabling subprojects inside scopes, including proper display in the GUI
      
    
    
  • File Handling
    
    • Support of relative filenames
      
    • Support for file paths containing variables
      
    
    
  • Supports Subproject that are outside of the top-project dir
    
  • Support for all documented and a couple of undocumented QMake Features
    
    • Supports SUBDIRS = somename, somename.subdir = the_real_dir
      
    • Supports SUBDIRS = somefile.pro
      
    
    
  • New and Fixed Build options
    
    • Run qmake recursively
      
    • Dist-Clean
      
    • Build File
      
    
    
  
  

• Improved debugger
  
  • Brand-new memory viewer
    
  • Project is automatically rebuilt with starting debugger
    
  • Variables widget
    
    • Reliably work in presence of shadowed variables
      
    • New "format" menu, supporting extra "binary" and "character" formats, with keyboard shortcuts for each format.
      
    • Keyboard shortcut for deleting watches.
      
    
    
  • Stack widget
    
    • The content is now split in columns
      
    • Stack frames are fetched incrementally, allowing to debug programs stuck in infinite recursion.
      
    
    
  • Breakpoints improvements
    
    • Breakpoint types renamed for clarity
      
    • Watchpoints are now always set on address, not expression
      
    • On watchpoint hit, a message box is shown
      
    • Breakpoint conditions are correctly reloaded from session file
      
    • Breakpoints added manually are shown in breakpoint list too
      
    • Address breakpoints now work
      
    
    
  • GDB output window allows to filter out "internal" commands.
    
  • Face lift for "attach" dialog. Now it has search line.
    
  • Fixes
    
    • Never disable the "Interrupt" action
      
    • Specify gdb location using full executable name, not just directory
      
    
    
  • Uses GDB MI interface for faster and more robust operation.
    
  
  

• Improved Ctags support
  
  • It is now possible to have multiple tag files active at the same time, making it possible to do lightning quick searches in external sources.
    
  
  

• Improved UI
  
  • Simple IDEAl UI mode is now the default
    
    • It's faster and has less bugs
      
    • Takes less screen estate
      
    • The viewspace can be split, allowing KDevelop to show files side by side.
      
    • IntelliJ IDEA - alike toolview keyboard navigation (with <alt+1>, <alt+2>, etc.)
      
    • Better keyboard navigation and focusing
      
    
    
  
  

• Improved Code Reformatting
  
  • Less bugs (updated to AStyle 1.19)
    
  • Support for all AStyle options
    
  • Improved option settings dialog
    
  • Global and per project settings
    
  • Format multiple files at once
    
  
  

• C++ Support
  
  • switch header/implementation
    
    • works inside the single file
      
    • works correctly with methods with typedef'ed return values
      
    • works with constant functions
      
    • aware of using directives when locating the functions from the namespace
      
    
    
  • Persistant Class Store (Code Completion databases)
    
    • KDE class importer correctly finds kdelibs location
      
    • Qt4 class importer added
      
    • autodetected paths now overrideable
      
    
    
  • code hinting
    
    • status bar shows the type of the expression under the cursor
      
    
    
  • c++ parser
    
    • Modify the parser to extract comments from the code, attach them to corresponding items, and store them into the AST
      
    • Fix a case where the cpp parser suddenly ate all RAM when facing macro-heavy files
      
    
    
  • code model
    
    • make the code-model and repository store more information like templates and comments, and provide them.
      
    • the code-model now completely works with nested classes that are forward-declared in one file, and completely declared in another(file-groups are managed now, and code-model-items that are physically from one file, can now be attached to another, so some search-functions had to be improved).
      
    
    
  • code completion
    
    • is much more reliable
      
    • was rewritten in big parts
      
    • works within template-classes
      
    • works within functions of classes that are imported by using-directives
      
    • can parse much more complex expressions and can easily be extended to understand additional operators(using an abstract operator-class)
      
    • supports class-templates, function-templates, and even implicit template-instantiation for function-templates
      
    • evaluates all types in the completion-entry-list and shows their template-processed(real) types
      
    • calltips and the completion-list show the corresponding comments
      
    • the completion-entry-list now shows the members sorted by their access-rights, and shows a note behind members that are protected/private
      
    • Fixes the bug of KDevelop crashing while completing a class which has itself as base-class and a few other little bugs
      
    
    
  • new context-menus that evaluate the expression under the cursor and allow to browse the code and the code-model using all types and variables involved
    
  • new class wizard
    
    • bug fixes
      
    • creation of headers only
      
    
    
  
  

• Class View and Navigator
  
  • Add function-name-highlighting to the class-view and navigator
    
  • Make the navigator provide an own KCompletion so it is possible to write function-names without scope and get them completed
    
  • Restore ClassView state after refresh. The ClassView will now no longer close after each successful build
    
  
  

• QuickOpen
  
  • Arbitrary parts of the scope can now be used as a filter while searching for classes or functions
    
  • Quick open class has an additional selection dialog for cases when more than one class with given name exist
    
  
  

• Ruby Support
  
  • Rails application template
    
  • The parser recognizes classes in the modules
    
  • Use irb as a shell
    
  • Fix documentation TOC links so they work correctly for Rails and QtRuby
    
  • Use the Run menu option to start WEBrick.
    
  • the parser
    
    • recognizes "self.method"
      
    • does not loop in certain cases
      
    
    
  
  

• PHP Support
  
  • New PHP Parser / code competition
    
  • Fix bugs in the php support language that cause some crashes
    
  
  

• Konsole
  
  • Does not syncs with the active document dir anymore
    
  
  

• Grep (Find in Files)
  
  • Define more filetypes (incl. ruby) to search within
    
  • allow pattern to be a regular expression
    
  
  

• Outputviews
  
  • Support for Intel Fortran Compiler and Portland Group's PGI Fortran compiler (pgf90/pgf95)
    
  
  

• Application Wizard
  
  • Uses utf8 for created files - no encoding problems anymore
    
  
  

• Valgrind integration
  
  • Use the environment variables as set in the run options
    
  
  

• Misc
  
  • Add toolbar and menu entry for "Goto Last Edit Position"
    
  • Improved support for encodings
    
    • KDevelop will now obey the selected encoding in the File Open dialog
      
    • The OpenWith plugin now offers all available encodings in "Open As"
      
    • The encoding for each open file is saved with the session, and will be used to open that file the next time the project is loaded
      
    • Default encoding can be set per project in the Project Options - this will be the default when opening a file
      
    • File Open encoding will default to the open project's default
      
    
    
  • Moved plugin selection dialog out of project setting dialog and into main menu Settings menu and made it profile-based
    
  • Use profile engine to specify the default plugin set for a freshly created or imported project
    
  • Honor the UI Designer embedding setting
    
  
  

Packages are available for Kubuntu and openSUSE with unofficial builds for several others on the download page

Paint.NET v3.0 Released

Paint.NET is free image editing and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.
It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing.
The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with a small amount of C++ for installation and shell-integration related functionality.

What's new in Paint.NET v3.0?
Simple and intuitive tab-based multi-document user interface

Now available in 8 languages: English, Chinese (Simplified), French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish

Interactive Gradient Tool that makes it very easy to draw and then fine-tune placement and coloring of a gradient.

User-definable color palette (as opposed to just the color wheel)
New effects: Clouds, Median, Unfocus, Outline, and an improved Sharpen
More intuitive and more powerful toolbar
Generally improved and cleaner user interface
History files are now compressed to save disk space, reduce disk activity, and improve performance.
"Merge Down" layer command


Download it here

Vista Firefox 2 Theme Is Finally Here

A decent theme for Firefox that integrates nicely to Windows Vista GUI. Here is the BETA release (v4.2). Below is a list of things to be done until a final version is acceptable:

THE UPDATE BUG HAS BEEN FIXED.
NEW WINDOW GLITCH HAS BEEN FIXED.

- New throbber (status indicator)
- Remove verticle line next to drop arrow in search bar
- Small icons mode
- Error console menu background
- New icons for options window
- New icons for bookmark manager
- Auto complete drop arrow background (next to go button on address bar)


Get it here: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/44508564/

Nature's Porn

No words necessary!

MSFT: Microsoft Reports Record Revenue

Microsoft Corp. today announced record revenue of $12.54 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2006, a 6% increase over the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $3.47 billion, $2.63 billion and $0.26, respectively.

These results reflect the deferral of $1.64 billion of revenue and operating income, $1.13 billion of net income and $0.11 of diluted earnings per share from the second to the third fiscal quarter, due primarily to the technology guarantee programs that were announced on October 24, 2006 for Windows Vista™ and the 2007 Microsoft® Office release. Revenue growth over the same period of the prior year would have been 14 percentage points higher before the technology guarantee programs.

“Results this quarter exceeded our expectations across the board, with revenue growth at or above our high end guidance for all divisions,” said Chris Liddell, chief financial officer at Microsoft. “Healthy PC and server markets as well as broad-based business and consumer demand for Microsoft offerings fueled revenue growth this quarter.”

The same period last year marked the launches of Xbox 360™, Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005, Visual Studio® 2005 and Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM 3.0. One year later, these products have contributed over $1.0 billion of revenue growth.

“The execution of our field sales and marketing teams were a major contributor to this quarter’s extremely positive results,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft. “Customers have responded positively with strong contract renewals and license sales. We are pleased with such strong financial results and look forward to making Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system widely available to all customers next week."

Business Outlook

Microsoft management offers the following guidance for the quarter ending March 31, 2007:

• Revenue is expected to be in the range of $13.7 billion to $14.0 billion, which reflects $1.68 billion of revenue recognition as noted below.

• Operating income is expected to be in the range of $6.1 billion to $6.3 billion, which reflects a $1.68 billion impact due to revenue recognition as noted below.

• Diluted earnings per share are expected to be $0.45 to $0.46, which includes a $0.12 earnings per share impact due to revenue recognition as noted below.


Note: The guidance above includes the impact of third quarter recognition of revenue deferred from the first and second fiscal quarters, primarily related to the technology guarantee programs.

Management offers the following guidance for the full fiscal year ending June 30, 2007:

• Revenue is expected to be in the range of $50.2 billion to $50.7 billion.

• Operating income is expected to be in the range of $19.3 billion to $19.7 billion.

• Diluted earnings per share are expected to be in the range of $1.45 to $1.47.

Eclipse Foundation Launches Data Tools Platform 1.0

The Eclipse Foundation, an open source community committed to the implementation of a universal development platform, today announced the release of the Eclipse Data Tools Platform (DTP) 1.0, a collection of extensible frameworks and exemplary tools for developing data-centric applications in the Eclipse environment. With DTP 1.0, developers can now easily leverage existing data sources, such as enterprise databases, within the extensible Eclipse Platform. Data-related applications are growing in significance, so this release meets an important development requirement in the software industry.

“DTP 1.0 provides a rich set of frameworks that solve real-world issues related to the development of data-centric applications, said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. “The growth and momentum of the Eclipse Data Tooling Platform project has resulted from the efforts of committers from the Eclipse community, including many from Sybase, IBM and Actuate.”

DTP 1.0 greatly simplifies development of data-centric applications in heterogeneous environments by offering a range of agile development tools. DTP 1.0 features three major components: model-driven development, connection management and data access framework, and SQL development tools.

According to an Evans Data survey, 53 percent of developers said data access and management tools are extremely important. “Developers see data access and management tools as an integral part of their arsenal in data centric application development,” said John Andrews, CEO of Evans Data. “Eclipse will meet an important requirement of developers by providing data centric tools and frameworks.”

“Sybase is leveraging DTP and the Eclipse Platform for Sybase's unified development environment, Sybase WorkSpace,” said John Graham, chair of the Eclipse Data Tools Platform Project, Sybase. “By incorporating DTP into Sybase WorkSpace, developers benefit by gaining developmental economies of scale, the flexibility that open source offers, and a high level of software quality that comes along with testing by an active community of users. Leadership in the Eclipse Foundation, especially with the DTP Project, addresses the needs of developers and this effort is a critical component of Sybase's overall vision for an end-to-end solution that supports information management, data integration and mobile application development.”

“Actuate has been pleased to benefit from, and be involved in DTP 1.0. We have long been champions of data-centric applications and believe that Eclipse provides the ideal framework for their development,” said Mark Coggins, senior vice president of engineering at Actuate Corporation. “DTP is used for data access within BIRT, an Eclipse Project Actuate co-leads, and the Open Data Access (ODA) portion of DTP was contributed by us. We look forward to further cross pollination in the future.”

“DTP's technologies are important components of IBM's tooling for information application development, and IBM is pleased to see this milestone release of the DTP project, said David Fallside, IBM Information Management Open Source Manage. “IBM has supported the DTP project from the beginning, and plans to continue its support in the future.”

For more information on the Eclipse DTP Project, please visit:
http://www.eclipse.org/datatools

About the Eclipse Foundation
Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on providing an extensible development platform and application frameworks for building software. Eclipse provides extensible tools and frameworks that span the software development lifecycle, including support for modeling, language development environments for Java, C/C++ and others, testing and performance, business intelligence, rich client applications and embedded development. A large, vibrant ecosystem of major technology vendors, innovative start-ups, universities and research institutions and individuals extend, complement and support the Eclipse Platform.

The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit, member supported corporation that hosts the Eclipse projects. Full details of Eclipse and the Eclipse Foundation are available at www.eclipse.org

Investment tips for 2007

Investment tips for 2007.... , be
aware of the next expected mergers so that you can get in on the
ground floor and make some BIG bucks. Watch for these consolidations
in 2007.

1.) Hale Business Systems, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Fuller Brush, and
W.R.Grace Co. will merge and become: Hale, Mary, Fuller, Grace.

2) Polygram Records, Warner Bros., and Zesta Crackers join forces and
become: Poly, Warner Cracker.

3.) 3M will merge with Goodyear and become: MMMGood.

4.) Zippo Manufacturing, Audi Motors, Dofasco, and Dakota Mining will
merge and become: Zip Audi DoDa.

5.) FedEx is expected to join its major competitor, UPS, and become:
FedUP.

6.) Fairchild Electronics and Honeywell Computers will become: Fairwell

7.) Grey Poupon and Docker Pants are expected to become: Poupon Pants.

8.) Knotts Berry Farm and the National Organization of Women will
become: Knott NOW!

And finally
9.) Victoria's Secret and Smith & Wesson will merge under the new
name: Titty Titty Bang Bang

The Pirate Bay Is Planning To Buy Sealand

Notorious Swedish file-sharing website The Pirate Bay is planning to buy its own nation in an attempt to get around troublesome international copyright laws. The organization, the world's largest bit torrent tracker, has set its sights on Sealand, a former British naval platform in the North Sea that has been designated a 'micronation' and claims to be outside UK jurisdiction.

From the Buy Sealand site:
"Recently it was made clear that this country is for sale. To make sure the owners will be kopimistic and that the country won’t be governed by people that do not care about it’s future, we have come up with a plan.

With the help of all the kopimists on Internets, we want to buy Sealand. Donate money and you will become a citizien."

Visit the Buy Sealand site.

iPhone will not allow third party applications to be installed

Steve Jobs confirms reports that the recently-announced iPhone will not allow third party applications to be installed. According to Jobs, 'These are devices that need to work, and you can't do that if you load any software on them.' Jobs also said in a MSNBC article that, 'Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.'



Read the New York Times article here

Read the MSNBC article here

I didn't pull out in time...

"Son, you're making the same mistake in Iraq that I made with your mother. I didn't pull out in time..."

Windows Vista Ultimate Extras Revealed

This year's keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas by Bill Gates showed off Microsoft's upcoming Ultimate Extras for consumers who purchase the Windows Vista Ultimate SKU. MS now has three Ultimate Extras lined up to hit Windows Vista Ultimate users on 30th January to coincide with Windows Vista's general availability date.

Windows DreamScene: Windows DreamScene gives users the ability to use a video as their desktop background, just as they would any stationary image background. DreamScene will consist of high-quality looped videos that make your desktop come alive. As a default, we've included a nice waterfall video (shown at the keynote) among several others. Better yet, you can even use your own videos. Want to know a little-known secret? For computers that don’t support Windows Aero, DreamScene offers enhancements to positioning of stationary images as wallpapers in Windows Vista.

BitLocker and EFS Enhancements: MS will provide enhancements to BitLocker in Ultimate Extras, including a tool called the Secure Online Key Backup, with which you can store your BitLocker recovery password on a secure MS website.

Texas Hold'em Poker Game: MS is bringing this popular poker game to Windows Vista. With this Ultimate Extra, you can add to your Windows gaming experience. Hold'em players: Windows Vista's DirectX improvements give you amazing graphics effects in the game -- you can play up to five computer players at once. We've also thrown in the ability to customize the table and cards, too.


Ultimate Extras are slated for release on 30 January, and this is just the beginning -- we're not stopping here. More Ultimate Extras are coming. You're going to want to pay special attention to the brand new Windows Ultimate Web site for updates and information on current and upcoming Windows Vista Ultimate Extras.

Apple Introduces iPhone

Apple® today introduced iPhone, combining three products—a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod® with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, searching and maps—into one small and lightweight handheld device. iPhone introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting users control iPhone with just their fingers. iPhone also ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, which completely redefines what users can do on their mobile phones.


“iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We are all born with the ultimate pointing device—our fingers—and iPhone uses them to create the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse.”


iPhone is a Revolutionary Mobile Phone

iPhone is a revolutionary new mobile phone that allows users to make calls by simply pointing at a name or number. iPhone syncs all of your contacts from your PC, Mac® or Internet service such as Yahoo!, so that you always have your full list of up-to-date contacts with you. In addition, you can easily construct a favorites list for your most frequently made calls, and easily merge calls together to create conference calls.



iPhone’s pioneering Visual Voicemail, an industry first, lets users look at a listing of their voicemails, decide which messages to listen to, then go directly to those messages without listening to the prior messages. Just like email, iPhone’s Visual Voicemail enables users to immediately randomly access those messages that interest them most.



iPhone includes an SMS application with a full QWERTY soft keyboard to easily send and receive SMS messages in multiple sessions. When users need to type, iPhone presents them with an elegant touch keyboard which is predictive to prevent and correct mistakes, making it much easier and more efficient to use than the small plastic keyboards on many smartphones. iPhone also includes a calendar application that allows calendars to be automatically synced with your PC or Mac.



iPhone features a 2 megapixel camera and a photo management application that is far beyond anything on a phone today. Users can browse their photo library, which can be easily synced from their PC or Mac, with just a flick of a finger and easily choose a photo for their wallpaper or to include in an email.



iPhone is a quad-band GSM phone which also features EDGE and Wi-Fi wireless technologies for data networking. Apple has chosen Cingular, the best and most popular carrier in the US with over 58 million subscribers, to be Apple’s exclusive carrier partner for iPhone in the US.



iPhone is a Widescreen iPod

iPhone is a widescreen iPod with touch controls that lets music lovers “touch” their music by easily scrolling through entire lists of songs, artists, albums and playlists with just a flick of a finger. Album artwork is stunningly presented on iPhone’s large and vibrant display.



iPhone also features Cover Flow, Apple’s amazing way to browse your music library by album cover artwork, for the first time on an iPod. When navigating your music library on iPhone, you are automatically switched into Cover Flow by simply rotating iPhone into its landscape position.



iPhone’s stunning 3.5-inch widescreen display offers the ultimate way to watch TV shows and movies on a pocketable device, with touch controls for play-pause, chapter forward-backward and volume. iPhone plays the same videos purchased from the online iTunes® Store that users enjoy watching on their computers and iPods, and will soon enjoy watching on their widescreen televisions using the new Apple TV™. The iTunes Store now offers over 350 television shows, over 250 feature films and over 5,000 music videos.



iPhone lets users enjoy all their iPod content, including music, audiobooks, audio podcasts, video podcasts, music videos, television shows and movies. iPhone syncs content from a user’s iTunes library on their PC or Mac, and can play any music or video content they have purchased from the online iTunes store.



iPhone is a Breakthrough Internet Communications Device

iPhone features a rich HTML email client which fetches your email in the background from most POP3 or IMAP mail services and displays photos and graphics right along with the text. iPhone is fully multi-tasking, so you can be reading a web page while downloading your email in the background.



Yahoo! Mail, the world’s largest email service with over 250 million users, is offering a new free “push” IMAP email service to all iPhone users that automatically pushes new email to a user’s iPhone, and can be set up by simply entering your Yahoo! name and password. iPhone will also work with most industry standard IMAP and POP based email services, such as Microsoft Exchange, Apple .Mac Mail, AOL Mail, Google Gmail and most ISP mail services.




iPhone also features the most advanced and fun-to-use web browser on a portable device with a version of its award-winning Safari™ web browser for iPhone. Users can see any web page the way it was designed to be seen, and then easily zoom in to expand any section by simply tapping on iPhone’s multi-touch display with their finger. Users can surf the web from just about anywhere over Wi-Fi or EDGE, and can automatically sync their bookmarks from their PC or Mac. iPhone’s Safari web browser also includes built-in Google Search and Yahoo! Search so users can instantly search for information on their iPhone just like they do on their computer.



iPhone also includes Google Maps, featuring Google’s groundbreaking maps service and iPhone’s amazing maps application, offering the best maps experience by far on any pocket device. Users can view maps, satellite images, traffic information and get directions, all from iPhone’s remarkable and easy-to-use touch interface.



iPhone’s Advanced Sensors

iPhone employs advanced built-in sensors—an accelerometer, a proximity sensor and an ambient light sensor—that automatically enhance the user experience and extend battery life. iPhone’s built-in accelerometer detects when the user has rotated the device from portrait to landscape, then automatically changes the contents of the display accordingly, with users immediately seeing the entire width of a web page, or a photo in its proper landscape aspect ratio.



iPhone’s built-in proximity sensor detects when you lift iPhone to your ear and immediately turns off the display to save power and prevent inadvertent touches until iPhone is moved away. iPhone’s built-in ambient light sensor automatically adjusts the display’s brightness to the appropriate level for the current ambient light, thereby enhancing the user experience and saving power at the same time.



Pricing & Availability

iPhone will be available in the US in June 2007, Europe in late 2007, and Asia in 2008, in a 4GB model for $499 (US) and an 8GB model for $599 (US), and will work with either a PC or Mac. iPhone will be sold in the US through Apple’s retail and online stores, and through Cingular’s retail and online stores. Several iPhone accessories will also be available in June, including Apple’s new remarkably compact Bluetooth headset.



iPhone includes support for quad-band GSM, EDGE, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR wireless technologies.



iPhone requires a Mac with a USB 2.0 port, Mac OS® X v10.4.8 or later and iTunes 7; or a Windows PC with a USB 2.0 port and Windows 2000 (Service Pack 4), Windows XP Home or Professional (Service Pack 2). Internet access is required and a broadband connection is recommended. Apple and Cingular will announce service plans for iPhone before it begins shipping in June.




Learn More About iPhone

To learn more about iPhone, please visit Apple.com or watch the video of the iPhone introduction at www.apple.com/iphone/keynote.

SNDK: SanDisk Launches 32-Gigabyte Solid State Drive Targeting Hard Disk Replacement In Notebook Computers

SanDisk® Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) today introduced a 32-gigabyte (GB)*, 1.8-inch solid state drive (SSD) as a drop-in replacement for the standard mechanical hard disk drive. Initially aimed at enterprise users as the first step toward mass consumer adoption, SanDisk SSD offers field-proven durability to keep mobile PCs working in the toughest of conditions and improves the overall user experience.

Previously, large capacity flash-based drives had been used primarily by the military, aerospace and telecom industries, which demanded high performance and reliability under challenging environmental conditions. But now the declining cost of NAND flash memory has made SSD a viable and economically attractive alternative to existing technologies in a wider variety of applications, including mobile PCs aimed at enterprise and consumer users.

“This is an important milestone for SanDisk in our relentless quest to create new large-scale markets for flash storage solutions for consumers in the personal computing space,” said Eli Harari, SanDisk CEO. “The 32-gigabyte SSD that we are announcing today represents the fifth generation of flash-based solid state drives developed by msystems, which we recently acquired. The 32GB SSD has been made commercially viable through SanDisk’s technology leadership coupled with msystems’ tremendous experience and IP, which are captured in the high-performance, low-cost system controllers that distinguish this product.

“Once we begin shipping the 32GB SSD for notebook PCs, we expect to see its increasing adoption in the coming years as we continue to reduce the cost of flash memory. When these SSD devices become more affordable, we expect that their superior features over rotating disk drives will create a new consumer category for our retail sales channels worldwide,” said Harari. It is projected that inclusion of the SanDisk 32GB SSD in a notebook PC could increase the end-user price by around $600 in the first half of 2007, he added.

Using NAND flash enhanced by SanDisk’s patented TrueFFS® flash management technology, SanDisk SSD delivers two million hours mean time between failures (MTBF)[i]. With no moving parts, it does not need to spin into action or seek files in the way that conventional hard disk drives do. These characteristics, combined with SanDisk's advanced flash management technology, make it possible for SanDisk SSD to deliver excellent performance compared with hard disk drives and competing solid state drives.

The SanDisk SSD announced today achieves a sustained read rate of 62 megabytes (MB)[ii] per second and a random read rate of 7,000 inputs/outputs per second (IOPS) for a 512-byte transfer[iii] – more than 100 times faster than most hard disk drives. Taking advantage of this performance, a laptop PC equipped with SanDisk SSD can boot Microsoft Windows® Vista™ Enterprise in as little as 35 seconds [iv]. It also can achieve an average file access rate of 0.12 milliseconds, compared with 55 seconds and 19 milliseconds, respectively, for a laptop PC with a hard disk drive[v].

Another advantage of SanDisk SSD is its extremely low power consumption rate compared to the hard disk drive: 0.4 watt during active operation versus 1.0 watt [vi]. This is particularly important to extend the battery life for the benefit of enterprise road warriors. These results enable new operating systems, such as Microsoft® Vista™, to provide mobile PC users with a superior overall system experience.

"There has been a huge increase in demand for NAND flash memory over the past few years from consumer devices such as digital cameras, MP3 players and mobile phones,” said Robert Gray, analyst with IDC, based in Framingham, Massachusetts. “There are dramatically higher bit capacities and lower prices, so the technology is now well positioned to be the foundation for new generations of potentially disruptive solid state drives. Enterprise mobile PC users will find the high performance and low power consumption especially attractive,” he added.

SanDisk SSD 1.8-inch 32GB solid state drive is now available for original equipment manufacturers. It is the first in a range of solutions that SanDisk will be offering to bring flash to the mainstream mobile PC market.

Amos Marom, vice president and general manager of the embedded division at SanDisk, is scheduled to deliver a presentation at Storage Visions 2007 on Jan. 7 at 11:45 a.m. at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. There, he will explain the benefits of SanDisk SSD for the notebook PC market. Furthermore, a demo of SanDisk SSD can be seen during the Consumer Electronics Show at SanDisk Booth 36206, South Hall 4 in the Las Vegas Convention Center. More detailed information on SanDisk SSD is available on line at www.sandisk.com/ssd.

SanDisk is the original inventor of flash storage cards and is the world’s largest supplier of flash data storage card products using its patented, high-density flash memory and controller technology. SanDisk is headquartered in Milpitas, California, and has operations worldwide, with more than half its sales outside the U.S.


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* 1 megabyte (MB) = 1 million bytes; 1 gigabyte (GB) = 1 billion bytes.


[i] MTBF is calculated based on reliability demonstration test (RDT) per Weibull method
[ii] H2BENCH 3.6: average access time = average seek time + average latency time
[iii] IOMETER 2003.12.16
[iv] Stopwatch test performed internally at SanDisk; notebook computer (Intel Core Duo Processor ULV U2500, 1.20GHz, 533MHz, 1.0GB RAM DDR2-533 SDRAM); Microsoft Windows Vista
[v] H2BENCH 3.6: average access time = average seek time + average latency time
[vi] MobileMark 2005; notebook computer (Intel Core Duo Processor ULV U2500), 1.20GHz, 533MHz, 1.0GB, DDR2-533 SDRAM

MySQL Falcon Storage Engine Has Been Open Sourced

The code for the Falcon Storage Engine for MySQL has been released as open source. The Falcon Storage Engine has been designed with modern database requirements in mind, and particularly for use within high-volume web serving or other environment that requires high performance, while still supporting the transactional and logging functionality required in this environment. Falcon is currently available only for the 32-bit Windows and 32-bit or 64-bit Linux operating systems. Additional platforms will be added after the alpha release.

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eXPired This Office Is XP Free Poster Available For Download

Get the poster here
http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_howard/archive/2007/01/01/expired-poster-available.aspx