Planet Lowyat

After reading Techcrunch ‘It Took 16 Months, But Google Relaunches Jotspot’, I just did a search “Google Sites” in http://www.google.com and found something weird.

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Best Buy, once a Windows-only PC distributor, now sells Asus Eee PCs, which run the Linux distribution Xandros on its website.

Last year, Asus sold more than 300,000 copies of the small Linux laptop. The company has a very optimistic view for this year, predicting to sell several millions of copies. Best Buy sells the subnotebook in three versions: the pink, the white and the galaxy black models.

These laptops feature an Intel Celeron M processor at 900Mhz, 512 MB of DDR2 memory, a 7-inch widescreen display with a resolution of 800 x 480, a 4GB flash-based SSD hard disk, built-in web cam and Xandros Linux, but there’s no optical drive present. The EeePC has shock-proof design, to prevent accidents and data loss. Also, three high-speed USB 2.0 ports for fast digital video, audio and data transfer and a Secure Digital/MultiMediaCard slot are included.

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The seemingly endless wait for a new line of professional notebooks from Mac maker Apple Inc. appears to be nearing an end, with part numbers and pricing for new MacBook Pro models cropping up in inventory systems worldwide over the weekend.

AppleInsider has been able to confirm that three new Apple-formatted part numbers — MB402LL/A (Good), MB403LL/A (Better), and MB404LL/A (Best) — have turned up in inventory management systems of both Apple and its channel resellers such as Best Buy.

The part numbers, listed for future MacBook Pros models, were included alongside pricing that matches Apple’s current offerings at $1999.00, $2499.00 and $2799.00, respectively, for those part numbers.

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Personally, I have download Windows Server 2008 codename Longhorn from MSDN but yet to install and test it(My colleague installed as a VM guest in one of the VMware ESX 3.5 farm and it’s worked).

According to Yahoo and Inforworld, Windows Server 2008 enhancements work pretty much as expected such as restartable Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) and several integrity-related NTFS enhancements. Other Longhorn changes can take quite a bit of planning to deliver what you’d want, plus may require you to buy new hardware to take advantage of them: Server Core, RODCs (read-only domain controllers), failover clustering, multi-path I/O, and Next Generation TCP/IP. Read more »

Pakistan has blocked access to the popular YouTube website because of content deemed offensive to Islam.

Pakistan telecommunications authority ordered internet service providers to block the site until further notice because of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad that have outraged many Muslims, an industry official said on Sunday. The cartoons, published in Danish newspapers in 2005 and again earlier this month, angered Muslims because of their depiction of the Prophet Mohammad.

According to Reuters:

“They asked us to ban it immediately … and the order says the ban will continue until further notice,” said Wahaj-us-Siraj, convener of the Association of Pakistan Internet Service Providers.

Publication of the cartoons led to protests and rioting in many Muslim countries, including Pakistan, in which at least 50 people were killed and three Danish embassies attacked.

Several Danish newspapers reprinted one of the cartoons earlier this month after police in Copenhagen uncovered a plot by two Tunisians and a Dane of Moroccan origin to kill the cartoonist, sparking further protests around the world.

Attempts to access Youtube in Islamabad on Sunday were met with a generic error message saying the site was unavailable.

“Users are quite upset. They’re screaming at ISPs which can’t do anything,” Siraj said.

“The government has valid reason for that, but they have to find a better way of doing it. If we continue blocking popular Web sites, people will stop using the Internet.”

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