Apple releases its new iPhone today

Apple is set to release the much-hyped iPhone with AT&T today. According to manufacturer the new device uses a technology called multi-touch, which allows users to work the interface without a stylus, using finger gestures for enhanced functionality.

Other features include

• Edge transfer technology
• Bluetooth 2.0
• 802.11b/g Wi-Fi.
• A 2 megapixel camera
• Proximity sensor for using the phone near your ear
• Ambient light sensor which adjusts the illumination for use under different lighting conditions
• An Accellerometer which detects and adapts the display based upon the units orientation
• Safari based web browser
• A rich email client, Google Maps Support and Widgets

Wrestler Chris Benoit found dead

In a major blow to the World Wrestling Entertainment, WWE superstar Chris Benoit was found dead on Monday along with his wife and son at their home in Fayetteville, USA. The local police said they are investigating the deaths as a murder-suicide, adding that it could only be confirmed after the evidence is examined by a crime lab.

Investigators believe Benoit (pronounced ben-WAH) killed his wife, 43-year-old Nancy, and son Daniel during the weekend and then himself Monday. The bodies were found Monday afternoon in three separate rooms of the house, off a gravel road about two miles from the Whitewater Country Club.

The WWE canceled its live “Monday Night RAW” card in Corpus Christi, Texas, and USA Network aired a three-hour tribute to Benoit in place of the scheduled wrestling telecast.

Benoit earned his title shot at Vengence for the vacant ECW World Championship, within days after being drafted to ECW from Smakdown and pulled out at the last minute due to 'personal reasons'. His replacement Johnny Nitro, drafted to ECW from RAW, went on to win the championship beating C.M Punk with a swinging neck-breaker.

Bulk mails!! Spammers' best friend

For the last couple of months my gmail address was getting increasingly popular. Geee.. just for a moment I thought somebody had stolen and published my very own poem collection with my mail address . Everyday I checked mails, I had about 10 to 20 mails in the inbox from guys I had never heard of . 90% of them were promoting tit-bits in the internet. The best part of it was that my address was never there in their receiver list. At the first glance, I thought they were unintentional. But it didn't take me too long to put the thinking cap on and realise that I was getting blind carbon copies(bcc). So I picked the spammers' mail addresses and checked them against the bulk mails I got from some of my friends. Yep. I found plenty in forwarded mails.

I took a leaf out of those spammers' book and decided to bcc all my bulk mails thereafter so that no one will have hands on my contact list and asked my pals to do the same. It's pity that my super-star-inbox has been back to normal now that I have blocked most of my spammer fans, but it feels like heaven every day I see my inbox clean.

What could be the 4th subject of this semester of Curtin ?

I went through the courses handbook of Curtin lately to verify the subjects we have in this semester and found bit of a contest for the 4th subject. It's interesting that neither DBMS 362 nor web technology has been added to the list. Wonder what SLIIT course administration will go for this time. Following are the 3 subjects that will be included without a doubt

• Computer Communications 352
• Systems Programming and Design 361
• Software Engineering Tools and Metrics 352

According to the handbook, one of the below will replace last year's DBMS for the 4th subject.

• Machine Perception 362
• Theoretical Foundations of Computer Science 352
• Software Security 303
• Network Systems Design 304

What ever it is, I have a haunting feeling that DBMS 362 might still remain as an option since Dr. Athauda is there at Curtin Bentley Campus as the lecturer in charge of DBMS. Anyway the issue will be addressed in one week's time as soon as the semester begins.

Microsoft fails yet again to fix a famous Notepad bug

I read about this bug in the notepad ( version 5 for XP) about 6 months back at digg.com and thought Microsoft would fix it with the release of Vista. The bug causes notepad to convert the characters to unicode for some letter combinations such as 4-3-3-5 (AAAA BBB CCC EEEEE) upon saving. But it's not been the case as I found the bug is still there under vista also. I fogot to see the notepad version as I checked it on one of my friend's pc and mine is still running with XP. Anyway I hope Microsoft would attend to this issue sooner rather than later.

MaTHaKa is just one presentation away to make SLIIT shine at Imagine cup 2007

I'm extemely happy to hear that SLIIT has finally made it to the top six Sri Lankan contestants of imagine cup 2007. A team called MaTHaka representing SLIIT, will be presenting their application (code named KAMZA ) on stage on 18th June. 3 teams from Faculty of Information Technology - University of Moratuwa, one each from Informatics and UCSC will also be competing for the number 1 spot.

The prime idea of developing KAMZA according to MaTHaka, is to address how organizations can preserve a person’s intellectual gain, in a way which the organization would not be affected even though that the particular person is no longer in service. KAMZA attempts to centralize the knowledge of professionals in service, where even if the person has left the company, “the knowledge” will be stored and reused within the organization itself.

I wish MaTHaka the very best at the final presentation and may you have the stength and courage to rock Korea and bring Imagine cup to Sri Lanka.

What does SLIIT have to do with this video??

I found a video at esnips.com, a file hosting site, uploaded under the name 'Apiit_from SLIIT' by someone called Shashika on March 24 2007. The original video has beeen re-dubbed in Sinhala with the intention of despising APIIT and its activities. What worries me is that the name of this video implies this is some dirty work of SLIIT or someone at SLIIT. As far as I know SLIIT has no real competition with APIIT as SLIIT is the only IT institute in Sri Lanka who can award its own IT degree. Both the institutes are allowed to conduct exams of their affiliated universities and SLIIT never denies the fact that such institutes also maintain a high degree of quality in their courses and materials. I strongly believe as a Sliitian that no student of SLIIT is in a frame of mind to do something cheap like this and publish to bring a black mark to the institute.

click the link below to watch the video and post your comments.

http://www.esnips.com/doc/e5662f45-ed61-450a-9e4f-14613f3ce772/Apiit_from-SLIIT

WWE Chairman Mr. Mcmahon presumed dead

Wow. This is extremely unbelievable that Mr. McMahon is dead due to what is suspected a car bomb blast happened at Mr. McMahon Appreciation Night. Local authorities have stated it is still too early to declare anything as fact, including exactly what caused the explosion, but they have revealed that no body had been recovered from the incinerated wreckage.
I watched the video from the WWE official site and the chairman’s Limo exploded as soon as he stepped into it. I’m damn sure that this incident wasn’t scripted out like most of the other backstage scenes.
Anyway the way he behaved at last week’s Monday Night RAW after losing his ECW World title to Bobby Lashley at One Night Stand, showed he was mentally down and had no idea what he was doing.
For more information visit http://www.wwe.com/

Common ADSL Router Configuration for SLT Broadband

Many people who have got new ADSL connections seem to be having problems configuring their routers/modems. I guess the configurations provided at SLT site are bit outdated. Since I'm bit tired of providing the details to my friends over and over again, thought of adding a post here at last. The genaral parameters are as follows. These may vary slightly depending on the manufacturer.

• You may leave the autentication/operation mode to its default value which is Auto, but in case of a connection error try changing it to G.992.1 (G.DMT).
• Verify the stability of the ADSL Connection by checking the indicator LED on the router. It should be emitting light continuously without blinking.
• You don't have to create a separate connection ( like in dial-up connections),but the router web interface itself has a connect button.
• You can monitor your internet usage at http://www.sltnet.lk/usagemeter.html . This is useful if your package is an entree package.

Kaspersky's reign comes to an end

BitDefender has hit the peak of the Antivirus software rating list this year beating Kaspersky, which was considered to be the most trusted antivirus solution for years. For a complete list of antivirus ratings visit http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com

A risk free software serial/crack generator site

If you are looking for a serial/crack from a 100% virus, adware or spyware free site, I recommand http://www.keygen.ms . I have tried so many cracks/serials downloaded from keygen and they really work. It's got a variaty of serials/cracks so one could often find whatever he/she looks for. The best thing about keygen is that the site gets updated regularly to meet its user needs.

DirectX 10 says goodbye to Windows XP

DirectX 9.0 has been with us since December 2002 and we have seen some good progress made since its inception and it was always on the cards of a new release before too long. DirectX 10, the newest release of DirectX family is only available with Windows Vista and there isn't a version released for Windows XP . The main reason for this is the new driver model designed by Microsoft. Microsoft claims that the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) has been splitted into two key components: User Mode Driver (UMD) and Kernel Mode Driver (KMD) to achieve unprecedented stability and performance.

The new DirectX hasn't been named Windows Graphic Foundation (WGF) as it was planned and remains at the old name, as in DirectX. This new API is said to be composed of new and faster dynamic link libraries (DLLs) for optimised performance.

IBM Unleashes World's Fastest Processor

IBM has unveiled what it claims is the fastest processor in the world. The new Power 6 runs at 4.7GHz, and has an 8MB L2 cache and 790 million transistors built on a 65nm scale. At 4.7 GHz, the dual-core POWER6 processor doubles the speed of the previous generation POWER5 while using nearly the same amount of electricity to run and cool it, according to IBM. The POWER6 chip has a total cache size of 8MB per chip - four times the POWER5 chip - to keep pace with the processor bandwidth.

The POWER6 processor is built using IBM's 65 nanometer process technology. Coming at a time when some experts have predicted an end to Moore's Law, which holds that processor speed doubles every 18 months, IBM presented a host of technical achievements including an improved way the instructions are executed inside the chip. IBM scientists increased chip performance by keeping static the number of pipeline stages - the chunks of operations that must be completed in a single cycle of clock time -- but making each stage faster, removing unnecessary work and doing more in parallel. In addition, the company has separated circuits that can't support low voltage operation onto their own power supply "rails," allowing IBM to reduce power for the rest of the chip. Processor clocks can be also dynamically turned off when there is no useful work to be done and turned back on when there are instructions to be executed, for furhter power saving.

Power saving is also realized when the memory is not fully utilized, as power to parts of the memory not being utilized is dynamically turned off and then turned back on when needed. In cases where an over-temperature condition is detected, the POWER6 chip can reduce the rate of instruction execution to remain within a user-defined temperature envelope.