Month: June 2008

RIP: Ulysses Spacecraft

Over 17 years ago, the Ulysses spacecraft was launched aboard the space shuttle Discovery for a unique NASA/ESA mission. NASA has decided to formally conclude the mission on July 1, 2008.

nasa ulysses photo

Ulysses is a robotic space probe designed to study the Sun at all latitudes. It was launched October 6, 1990 from the Space Shuttle Discovery (mission STS-41) as a joint venture of NASA and the European Space Agency. The spacecraft is equipped with instruments to characterize fields, particles, and dust, and is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). The Ulysses mission is ongoing, still collecting valuable scientific readings to this day. However in February of 2008, what scientists had always known began to materialize. The power output from the RTG, which is generated by heat from the radioactive decay of plutonium-238, has dwindled to the point where it is insufficient to power some critical internal heaters to keep the spacecraft’s attitude control fuel from freezing.

The Ulysses spacecraft has endured for almost four times its expected lifespan. However, the spacecraft will cease operations because of a decline in power produced by its onboard generators. Ulysses has forever changed the way scientists view the sun and its effect on the surrounding space.

Google Say They Don’t Know How To Make Money From YouTube

Google still unsure how to make money with YouTube website.

YouTube is a popular video sharing website which was acquired by Google for US$1.65 billion in 2006. Now Google says they don’t know how to make money from YouTube. From the article:

A whole new industry’ could be created around video advertising on the web, Google said, but it’s not sure how. Google has said that it is still unsure how to make money from YouTube, the enormously popular video-sharing website it owns, but hopes to be able to do so soon.

Apple iPhone 3g Wireless Announced

Steve Jobs unveils a new version of its iPhone, with support for faster 3G wireless networks and faster phone.

Finally, Apple has unveiled a second generation of its iPhone, with support for faster 3G wireless networks and communication. It is third generation of mobile phone standards and technology. New 3g phone should provide broadband speed upto 384 kbit/s. Currently Nokia and Blackberry phone leads smart phone. I have palm Treo 700p smartphone and it works like a charm.

The 3G iPhone will be released on 11 July and starting price will at US $199 for basic model. According to BBC news:

The new iPhone also comes with GPS satellite navigation built in for location-based services. The iPhone was first launched last year and was criticised for its support for slower 2G networks only. Mr Jobs said the 3G iPhone was “three times faster” downloading content over a mobile network compared to the original device.

=> Apple announces cheaper 3G iPhone

Most Dangerous Top Level Domain Name ( TLDs )

McAfee found the most dangerous domains to navigate to are .hk, .cn, and .info. Of all .hk sites McAfee tested.

Our domain name is theos.in and TLD is .IN. The letters which follow the final dot of any domain name is called TLD (Top Level Domain Name). Management of top-level domains is handled by the ICANN.

Now McAfee has published the list of most dangerous TLDs in the world used by spammer and to install virus / other dirty stuff on your computer without authorization.

From the article:

McAfee found the most dangerous domains to navigate to are “.hk” (Hong Kong), “.cn” (China) and “.info” (information).

Of all “.hk” sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 percent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 percent of “.cn” sites and 11.7 percent of “.info” sites that way.

A little more than 5 percent of the sites under the “.com” domain — the world’s most popular — were identified as dangerous.

Find Windows Version and Architecture

Explains how to find out Windows operating system version and architecture easily.

You can run the Winver.exe command-line tool to determine the version of Windows Server 2003 / Windows Vista or XP that is installed on your computer:

  1. Click Start, and then Select Run.
  2. In the Open box, type winver, and then press [ENTER] key.

Find Windows Version
(Fig.01: Viewing Windows Version [Click to enlarge])

Getting Windows Version and Architecture Information

Simply find out My Computer on desktop > Select My Computer > Right click > Properties :
Basic windows version architecture information
(Fig.02: Viewing Windows Version and Other Basic Information [Click to enlarge])