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The fifth edition of OS X called Leopard following in the big cat names has quite a few notable new features. These features include Core Animation features.
The new OS X is a mixture of open-source and closed-source software and is much different to Windows, which still relies on a decade-old registry file system. OSX gives mac users many of the same features Linux users will be familiar with but also the stability and security that has become an Apple trademark.
These updates come at a price, as the system requirements cause support for everything before 800 MHz Power PC processors to be dropped. . However, when compared to the systems requirements of Vista, support for the previous few generations of computers seems generous.

Even farms will not be able to escape the high tech revolution with a network of electronic sensors, currently under development by the CSIRO, which could one day allow farmers to monitor every hectare of pasture and every animal using a laptop on the farmhouse veranda. The system could promise to boost the profitability of farming by providing reliable information for the smarter use of land and stock.

Also under development is the animal sensor, a solar-powered unit the size of a mobile phone battery and attached with a collar, would record the location of the stock using GPS navigation and motion detectors could also show if a cow was walking, running, resting, grazing or ruminating. A Series of other detectors could monitor the animal's health or its weight, which determines when it is ready for market.

Similarly, soil sensors would collect and transmit data on temperature, sunlight, plant characteristics and soil moisture - all of which inform farmers about when and where to move their animals.

A business machine, a computer that is for word processing, spread sheets, databases tends to be of a lower spec than a gamming machine. Gaming machines needs additional hardware like Hi Spec Video cards with hi powered graphics processors and memory dedicated to the video card. Also the sound card often is a 5.1 surround sound where as the standard business machine does tend to have only 2.1 sound.

Many people get into trouble when they buy games and try to run them on a system that does not have the specifications for the game.

I have a simple plan I run by since gamming machines tend to be more expensive than business or workhorse machines, if you want a gamming machine buy a games console.

No so wacky website, but its fun anyway. Whilst we are talking games how about a stack of free to play online games. All you need is a web browser, internet access and the adobe flash player installed www.folash-games.net has thousands of games.

As like all toy industries, Australia's billion-dollar videogame industry is gearing up for its biggest Christmas ever!!!! The three major players, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony will be launching a host of new titles and revamping three of the six major game consoles to capture the market.

Some of the alterations will be consoles that are faster or store more data, some come in different colours or sizes. It appears that many console manufactures are also creating significant price cut to their consoles to attract a bigger market share.

It also appears that videogames are also attracting new audiences, mainly because of family-friendly and interactive games, the winning console, they say, is not necessarily the one you might expect.

Nintendo’s WII which promotes exercise could be the winning console this time around.

A website offering sheet music which was from mostly from long dead composers was threatened with legal action recently and shut down. The International Music Score Library Project was taken offline by its founder

South African Military authorities are investigating how nine soldiers were killed and 15 injured during a training exercises, when one of the countries most sophisticated an anti-aircraft gun went out of control. Theories seem to indicate a software glitch or a small explosion might have caused the gun to malfunction, causing it to begin "wildly swinging" as it sprayed 15-20 high-explosive 0.5kg 35mm cannon shells. The weapon discharged a burst of shells lasting one-eighth of a second before it ran out of ammo and fell silent.
The gun is designed to target to automatically target aircraft, helicopters, and cruise missiles and fire when they come into range. The weapon is capable of operating, and even reloading, without human intervention. This accident has now sparked a major review of these guns in South Africa.

It would appears that 3 and Skype are working together on a new product to make Skype completely mobile but the details are indeed sketchy. Whilst it appears that neither company is willing to release details before the official launch it However, information technologists are confirming that it is probably one of the most radical steps forward in operator thinking and will mobilise internet calls for a mass market. The handset will be the first that Skype is having manufactured itself, and will be easier to use than existing mobile phone models that support Skype, according sources.

Heard of bacn!!!

First it was SPAM! Now, there is BACN Not what you eat for breakfast, but it is what you find in your email inbox that is a legitimate email, but not really worth viewing. There are stacks of these emails that land in our inboxes each day, like messages from communities, social networking sites, news groups and other web things you have joined that simply notify you of updates or a new friend, that is bacn.

Its unfortunate that bacn can add up in your inbox, but several services offer you the option to opt out of receiving emails. It is usually as simple as visiting your preferences or account settings page.

Well one can expect that a day after Microsoft has released a patch the next day there will be some kind of exploit and this time it’s a cracker. Not only has it got a few people perplexed but it does seem that it could have been created on shock horror a Macintosh!!!
According to website information week (http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202401683) Microsoft Security Bulletin MS07-060, issued on Tuesday, identifies a Word memory corruption vulnerability in Microsoft Office 2000 Service Pack 3, Microsoft Office XP Service Pack 3, and Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac that could allow code to be executed by a remote attacker.
According to the team at Symantec "We tried using various combinations of Word versions, patches and languages, and in each case (with the exception of Office 2007) opening the document would cause Word to crash," said Orla Cox, a Symantec Security Response engineer, in a blog post. "After taking a closer look, we could see that the document contained shell code and three other pieces of malware. What was interesting about the document was that it wasn't in OLE format, meaning that it wasn't a standard Microsoft Office document. After some investigation we determined that the document had actually been created using Word for Macintosh."

Hard drives, the pit falls of such, edited and expanded upon from an original article called Wonderous Hard Drives by James Walsh

But the advance of technology over the years has forced the computer hard drive to change form and speed. Today, all consumers, be it a personal user or a commercial enterprise, use the hard drive in some form or the other. In 1989, Disklabs launched an initiative to educate the consumer about the hard drive.

Good hard drives should be:
• Physically robust
• Large storage space
• Reliable
• Lends itself to archiving
• Easily accessible – can be easily recycled and sold by vendors
• Equipped with inbuilt cooling systems of ventilation

The hard drive has the following disavantages:
• Has a finite lifespan of three—five years but can be stretched to six-eight years with proper maintenance and usage
• Prone to data loss as it is highly susceptible to temperature variations, movement and dust or bacteria
• Prone to virus attacks and man-made disasters of terrorism
• Lends itself to data loss through electrical spikes

The hard drive has the following physical characteristics
• Fragile disk interior with magnetic glass platters which are capable of spinning at high speeds
• Interior disk is composed of micro electron particles which are charged with electricity


The hard drive suffers from many disadvantages and require the user to undertake optimal care and maintenance of the drive. In Many cases the drive simply stops spinning or functioning due to an external natural or man-made disaster, or due to information overload. This usually happens in the case of old used hard drives which slow down after three years of prolonged use. It could also happen when the user uses recycled drives which already contain residual data and are often unable to save further data. Another reason could also be due to surface contamination. This could occur due to temperature variations including overexposure to light, heat and humidity. Research reveals that the drive’s magnetic layers simply dissolve in high level of heat or humidity. Sometimes, the drive stops spinning due to overheating. The user has to practice caution lest the tips of the magnetic platters collide causing a head disk crash.

Hard drives can also fail when there is a controller failure. This occurs when a hard drive experiences controller failure when an error message flashes across the computer screen during computer booting or in earlier versions of windows some times you get the BSOD or the blue screen of death.

Controller failures commonly occur when:
• CMOS battery fails
• Accidental user intervention leading to the saving of incorrect data in the CMOS setup
• Adaptor is not firmly plugged into electrical slot
• Hard drive or the motherboard corrupts or is damaged
• Due to non- connectivity or non-installation of the hard disk drive
• Hard disk drive cable wires have been twisted and broken
• Master Boot Record or the partition tables in the driver become distorted or bent out of shape
• Due to improper connection of the IDE drive
• When the IDE drives i.e. the twin master and slave drive, are incompatible with each other


The user has to commit themselves to undertake proper maintenance routines to guarantee the longevity and optimal functioning of the hard drive. With Laptop hard drives certainly radical movement could cause problems, this is including scratches, jars and pushes thatcould ruin a hard drive’s ability to save. This means that proper location care becomes extremely vital.

The look after your hard drive the user should:
• Avoid holidaying with your hard drive
• Try not to expose the drive to extreme heat, light and humidity
• Keep the drive away from pets to avoid urination and chewing
• Avoid prolonged usage of the drive
• Try to constantly cool the hard drive by keeping it below high-speed fans
• Always keep the hard drive dust-free by dusting it with a soft and dry tissue cloth.
• Always run Scandisk and Defrag computer applications periodically to clean the internal magnetic structure of the drive. In addition, the two applications check for errors – logical and software errors.
• Defragment your hard drive once a month to avoid hard drive failures and for easy data access.
• Installation of good virus protection programs to prevent hard drive failures from virus contamination