What appears to be a suicide note was posted a day before he was found dead on base

By ABHI RAGHUNATHAN
St. Petersburg Times

Before signing off his Web page on MySpace.com Monday, Army Pvt. Dylan Meyer typed a farewell note to the world.

"Jesus, I don't know if any of you have heard what has happened to me yet, but I just want to remind you not to be sad. Laugh, that's what lifes about," Meyer wrote. "When it is all said and done ... it is the ones you love who you will remember."

The next morning, Meyer was found dead in the Army barracks at Fort Gordon in Georgia. He was 20.

Because the Army is still investigating, officials would not release the cause of Meyer's death or say if he committed suicide. But the note on Meyer's MySpace page seemed to indicate that he had taken his own life.

A place to share

In the three years since it was launched, MySpace.com has gained more than 70 million members. The site's size, as well as the intensely personal nature of the pages that many members maintain, has embroiled the Web site in controversy. There have been scattered accounts of sexual predators targeting minors they met through the site, and some critics say MySpace.com doesn't have enough safeguards against criminals looking to prey on underage children.

Even people with little computer experience can easily upload photos and videos, keep online diaries, and chat with other users.

Millions of teenagers create personal Web pages that reveal intimate details of their lives to anyone who happens across their sites.

They talk about love, sex and politics. They list their favorite books and movies.

In Meyer's case, he may have posted his suicide note.

MySpace.com said in a statement Thursday that a third of its staff is devoted to monitoring content, mostly for violations of its terms-of-use agreement, including posting of inappropriate photos and hate speech.

The company added that it could not comment on specific cases or ongoing investigations. But when situations arise "that put the safety and security of our more than 74 million members at risk, we work with the appropriate authorities" to quickly resolve them, the company said.

Searching for direction

Until this week, little on Meyer's MySpace site suggested he was considering suicide.

He was a filmmaking fanatic who admired director Quentin Tarantino and won a spot in the Pinellas County Center for the Arts at Gibbs High in St. Petersburg, Fla. His MySpace page paid homage to his favorite movies.

Keven Renken, the head of the Gibbs theater department, remembers Meyer as a student with a "very natural acting style" who "really loved film." Meyer had roles in school productions of The Shadow Box, The Laramie Project and 12 Angry Men, Renken said.

But he felt lost after he finished high school in 2004, those who knew him said. Dustin Triplett, 20, a friend of Meyer's since their freshman year at Gibbs, said Meyer joined the Army early last year to get some direction. The decision surprised friends who knew Meyer disliked President Bush and opposed the war in Iraq.

Meyer soon became miserable in the Army, where he worked in a military intelligence unit.

Triplett said Meyer would sometimes talk about how the Army gave him a decent salary. But he also described how he felt around people he believed could not relate to his interest in the arts.

"He would tell me how much he hated it," Triplett said. "He wasn't ever comfortable."

Meyer didn't show up for his physical training formations at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday. Military personnel who opened the door to his room soon after found him unconscious, and he was pronounced dead.

Meyer logged onto MySpace for the last time Monday. He told friends to "dry your eyes" and listed a phone number for his father.

A woman who answered the phone listed for Meyer's father said the family would not comment.

By 7:26 a.m. Tuesday, within hours of Meyer being pronounced dead, friends were already writing testimonials on his MySpace page. Within a day, the site became a place of public mourning.

Just days before, his friends were writing to Meyer about movies, Army food, a Bob Dylan concert.

On April 21, Meyer made one last movie that he added to his MySpace site, a short film about Army life he called Bored As Hell: A Weekend at Ft. Gordon.

The movie shows soldiers listening to music, drinking Jack Daniels out of the bottle and playing hacky-sack. It ends with two messages of white script on a black screen.

The first reads: "Dedicated to America's Youth. Go to college and lead a normal life. Don't make the same mistake I did."

The second ends with an exhortation to vote, adding: "Don't let old people run your lives, you have a choice."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

With ever-expanding music, movie and photo collections, hard drives are filling up fast. The Yellow Machine, a storage device that holds nearly a terabyte — that's 1,000 gigabytes — is here to take the load off.

The Yellow Machine is a dedicated file-storage device with four 250-gigabyte hard drives that can be configured so that, to a computer, they look like one big terabyte-size drive. Built-in automatic backup software ensures that memories and downloaded files will not be lost in a system crash.

Aimed at home and business users, the Yellow Machine also acts as a virtual private network, or V.P.N., storage device, allowing access to data on your Yellow Machine from any computer on any network.

The Yellow Machine costs $999 for the one-terabyte model and is available online at www.yellowmachine.com.

The box, which weighs about 14 pounds, has eight LAN Ethernet ports and one WAN port for connecting a cable modem or digital subscriber line. Inside a home network, the Yellow Machine appears as a networked disk drive and can stream video and music to networked devices like the Xbox 360 or TiVo. Now the question is how long it will take to fill up one terabyte.

David Pogue

ABOUT 85 percent of the Internet population uses the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser to surf the Web, even though it's relatively ancient, crusty with neglect and about as secure as a screen door. In what other industry would 85 percent of consumers choose such a product — when better ones, also free, were also available?

Trick question. Those consumers aren't actually choosing Internet Explorer; in fact, they're not choosing. They just use what came on their Windows computers. Thanks to this built-in following, Microsoft hasn't felt much need to keep Internet Explorer current. Version 6 has been creaking along for five years — an eternity in Internet time.

But hope is in the air. Earlier this week, Microsoft took the wraps off IE 7. The new version is a public beta — Beta 2 — and therefore technically unfinished. Still, Microsoft feels that this release is ready for average people to try out; you can download it from www.microsoft.com/ie. Phone help is available, and you can easily restore Version 6 if necessary.

How this new browser measures up depends on the ruler you're using. If you've never used anything but Internet Explorer, you won't be able to wipe the grin off your face.

But next to rivals like Firefox, Opera and Safari, IE 7 is a catch-up and patch-up job. Some of its "new" features have been available in rival browsers for years.

For example, IE may be the last Web browser on earth to offer tabbed browsing. This useful feature lets you keep several Web sites open on the screen simultaneously — not in a hopeless mess of overlapping windows, but all in one window. File-folder index tabs at the top of the window keep them straight.

Truth is, Microsoft's version of tabbed browsing offers some very nice features. (And yes, dear e-mail correspondents, I'm aware that many of them also made their debut in other browsers.)

For example, you can summon a sheet of Web page miniatures, offering a handy, visual, clickable table of contents for your open tabs. IE 7 can also memorize a fleet of open tabs, saving them as a single bookmark. Later, one click opens them all again, arrayed just as you had them. Similarly, when you quit the browser, it offers to memorize the current open-tab setup, so that later you can pick up where you left off.

SCREEN real estate has been given a priority in Internet Explorer 7, too. ("Say goodbye to bulky toolbars," says the IE Web site — never mind that Microsoft gave us those bulky toolbars in the first place.)

The menu bar (File, Edit, View and so on) is gone, having been replaced by tiny pop-up menus at the right side of the window. (Those feeling disoriented can still summon the menu bar by tapping the Alt key.) And a single, noncustomizable toolbar contains the address bar, Back and Forward buttons, and the welcome new Search box, which can be programmed to use Google, Ask.com, MSN Search or whatever you like. Even with the added height of tabs, Microsoft has conserved so much space that you can see an additional inch or so of Web goodness without scrolling.

R.S.S. feeds represent another major new feature — new to Internet Explorer, anyway. R.S.S. (for Really Simple Syndication) is the Web's version of home delivery: instead of having to slog on over to your favorite sites, you are sent their latest articles and news automatically. To receive these convenient, free "subscriptions," though, you used to need a piece of software called an R.S.S. reader, which you had to download and configure yourself. No wonder R.S.S. doesn't yet play in Peoria.

But IE now joins the list of browsers with built-in R.S.S. readers. Whenever you visit a Web site that offers an R.S.S. subscription, a special logo lights up in IE; click it to see a sample of the R.S.S. broadcast (usually one-paragraph summary blurbs), and click Subscribe if you like what you see. The reading window offers a useful assortment of searching and sorting controls.

Other IE 7 enhancements include a Shrink to Fit printing option that eliminates chopped-off printouts; a print-preview mode whose draggable margins let you print only the useful parts of Web pages; a pop-up menu that magnifies the entire Web page (not just the text); and a single Delete Browsing History dialogue box that can erase all your tracks at once: History list, saved cookies and passwords, Web form data and temp files. (Who will find this feature useful? You know who you are.)

Now, if you currently use IE 6, those are all good reasons to upgrade, perhaps when the final version becomes available this summer. But the most important reason is mostly invisible: security.

As a bulwark against frauds, viruses and spyware, Internet Explorer has been about as solid as a sieve. It was such a fat target for Internet bad guys that using it was like hanging a blinking neon Hackers' Entrance sign on your PC.

Internet Explorer 7 is a different story. Not many people beyond engineers will find its 15-page list of patches compelling reading; it's about stuff like Cross-Domain Script Protection, IDN Display Protections and Enhanced Validation SSL.

But some of the security measures are comprehensible even to laymen, and they sound reassuring indeed. For example, any files that you download go into a Temporary Internet Files folder that prevents them from running automatically, in that way thwarting the installation of many evil programs. Spyware can no longer enter your machine by piggybacking on some piece of innocent software, either.

Most welcome of all, a sophisticated phishing detector warns you, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, whenever you open a fraudulent phishing page. (An example of a phishing fraud is an e-mail message that says, "Your eBay account will soon be closed; click here for details." Worried, you click the provided link and confirm your account information. Unfortunately, you've just handed over your credit card and account numbers to the Internet baddies, who have set up a fake eBay screen just for suckers like you.)

All those desperate swindlers, spammers and phishers will, no doubt, devise even more nefarious ways to invade PC's and trick their owners. But Internet Explorer 7 will make their job a heck of a lot harder.

Compared against Internet Explorers past, the new version is more secure, better looking and more efficient. There are, however, a few strings attached.

For example, it works only with Windows XP with Service Pack 2. (It will also work with next year's Windows Vista, of course — in fact, that version will offer an additional feature or two, including excellent parental controls.) The installation process is somewhat eccentric, and requires a restart of the PC.

Note, too, that Internet Explorer still offers no Autofill button that completes online order forms with a single click. The new placement of controls will baffle veterans of almost any browser — for example, the Back/Forward, Refresh, Home and Stop buttons are no longer near each other.

Finally, Microsoft says IE 7's better compliance with behind-the-scenes Web technology standards will delight Web designers. Still, some Web sites won't look or work right until they're rejiggered to accommodate the new browser. Thousands of lazy designers, for example, deny access to their sites to anyone not using Internet Explorer 6.

If you want the best browser on the market, several million fans will recommend that you look at programs like Firefox or Opera.

But without question, Internet Explorer 7 represents a big, long-awaited step in the direction of modernization. Millions of people still consider Internet Explorer their window into the Internet — and the sooner they leave the 1990's, the better.

E-mail:Pogue@nytimes.com

by JOHN MARKOFF

SAN FRANCISCO, April 27 — Microsoft reported strong third-quarter revenue growth on Thursday, but analysts said the company also telegraphed a significant increase in spending, an indication that it was preparing to take on its big online rivals, Google and Yahoo.

The company reported a 13 percent increase in sales for the quarter, to $10.9 billion, and a 16 percent rise in net income, to $2.98 billion, or 31 cents a share, from $2.56 billion, or 28 cents, in the period a year earlier.

The earnings were 2 cents a share below what analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call had forecast.

The chief financial officer for Microsoft, Chris Liddell, said: "Over all for the quarter, we are very happy with the continued market momentum we're seeing. Revenue is accelerating for the year."

Despite a bullish stance on revenue, Microsoft evidently surprised analysts by predicting significantly higher expenses in the next fiscal year. Its shares, which had gained 15 cents, to $27.25, in regular trading, fell on the expectation of higher expenses, dropping more than 6 percent after hours, to $25.50.

Executives also said they did not see any immediate increase in profit on the horizon even as Microsoft prepared for its largest release of new products in more than five years.

The company said once again that the update for its new operating system software, Windows Vista, would not be available until January.

For the first time, the company offered guidance on the coming year; its 2007 fiscal year starts in July.

Microsoft said revenue for 2007 would be $49.5 billion to $50.5 billion, with earnings expected to be $1.36 to $1.41 a share. Financial analysts were forecasting $1.53 a share. That guidance created some concern among securities analysts in a conference call with Mr. Liddell.

Richard G. Sherlund of Goldman Sachs, in a comment during the conference, said, "There is something really big here that we haven't put our fingers on."

Other analysts were more direct in their assessment.

"It looks like Microsoft is going to war with Google, and trying to get their product development back in track," said Eugene Munster of Piper Jaffray.

According to Mark Stahlman of Caris & Company, the fact that Microsoft plans to spend significantly more in 2007 was an indication of renewed aggressiveness in its competitive strategy and an indication that the company was returning to the kind of actions it exhibited before the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit in the mid- and late 1990's.

"It's pretty clear that Bill is running the company again," Mr. Stahlman said, referring to Bill Gates, "and they are going to remake the business. They are being much more combative and much more strategically managed."

After Microsoft released its report, Mr. Sherlund issued a research note saying it appeared that the company planned to spend $2.4 billion more than he had expected in the 2007 fiscal year. He pointed to the costs of building the new Windows and Office Live online services, both intended to reposition the company to compete against Google and Yahoo.

When confronted with that figure during the question-and-answer session with analysts Thursday, Mr. Liddell only partly disputed the conclusion of several of them that Microsoft had begun preparing to "go to war" with its online search rivals.

"I would characterize it as a broad-based approach," he said. "There are some big numbers there, that is certainly true."

Several other analysts noted that Microsoft's expenses appeared to be running away even before 2007, many of them focusing on what they called "margin compression."

"It looks like a mess," said Brendan Barnicle, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities, "and the big issue is margins and expenses, the big issue is the bottom line. It makes it hard to get very excited about the company's near-term prospects."

During the conference call, Mr. Liddell was optimistic about progress in the introduction of the next-generation Xbox 360 video game player. He said that a significant part of the increased spending this year was related to a push Microsoft is making in an effort to capitalize on a delay in Sony's PlayStation 3.

Microsoft now says it will ship 5 million to 5.5 million of the new Xbox systems in 2006. Sales of Xbox rose 85 percent, to $1.06 billion, in the quarter.

The company also noted that its search ad revenue fell during the quarter as it tried to shift its online advertising away from a service provided by Yahoo to the newly developed MSN Ad Center system.

It also reported that losses widened in its home and entertainment division, the Mobile and Embedded Devices Group, and the MSN service.

Sales of Windows for PC's increased 7.5 percent, to $3.19 billion, in the quarter, while office sales rose 5 percent, to $2.95 billion.

[April 27, 2006]

Google SketchUp helps create models of a variety of items--including houses, sheds, decks, home additions, and woodworking projects.

By Antone Gonsalves
TechWeb.com

Apr 27, 2006 07:31 PM

Google Inc. on Thursday launched a free version of the 3D modeling software the search engine acquired when it bought @Last Software last month.

Google SketchUp, which is free for personal use, includes simple tools for creating 3D models of a variety of items, including houses, sheds, decks, home additions and woodworking projects. The software comes with a plug in for Google Earth, so items can be posted on the service, which provides satellite views of geographical locations.

In addition, Google launched 3D Warehouse, online storage for work created in SketchUp. The service also enables users to search and share models.

Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., plans to continue selling SketchUp Pro 5 for professional designers. The software costs $495.

Google bought @Last Software, based in Boulder, Colo., in March for an undisclosed sum. The purchase was expected to add value to its mapping platform through integration with Google Earth. The technology is expected to eventually find its way into other Google services as well.

You'll be able to spill water on a new laptop from Matsushita Electric without having to fret about ruining your computer.

The company's Let's Note CF-Y5, due to hit stores in Japan on May 19, features a waterproof sheet and special drainage system that protects the hard drive and circuit board from light water damage, according to the Associated Press. That's light water damage, mind you--as in a spilled glass of water, not a dousing by the garden hose.

The CF-Y5 can withstand a force equivalent to a maximum of 220 pounds, offering extra protection in packed commuter trains, the Osaka, Japan-based electronics maker said.

The product will cost around $2,300.

LOS ANGELES, April 27 (Xinhua)-- Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, said on Thursday that they have created anew mechanical eye, which looks and works like an insect's eye.

The eye's many lenses and curved shape give it a wide field of view, as well as super-fast motion detection and image recognition, the researchers reported in the April 28 issue of the journal Science.

Minute cameras and motion sensors with these types of lenses could have medical, industrial and military applications, according to the researchers.

Insects have multiple imaging units called "ommatidia" that are pointed in different directions. The researchers used flexible polymers to build artificial ommatidia, each with a tiny lens connected to a tube-like "waveguide" that directs the light down to an opt electronic imaging device.

Then, they arranged the ommatidia around a dome, projecting outwards in all directions. Of the many different types of insect eyes, a bee's eye is most similar to the new mechanical eye, they said.

Just like pins in a pincushion or a dragonfly's 30,000 ommatidia, the team's artificial ommatidia are each oriented at a slightly different angle. The researchers have shown that the lenses and waveguides of the artificial eyes focus and conduct light in the same way as an insect's eye.

"The lenses and waveguides are the most important part of the system," said Luke Lee, the principal investigator of the study.

"People have said that it would be totally impossible to create them with an angle, but now that we've done it, we're ready to integrate imaging or chemical sensing into the eyes," Lee said.

While conventional micro fabrication techniques are expensive and use high temperatures, Lee and his team borrowed from nature, using a low temperature system, photopolymerization, and self-aligning, self-writing technology.

To create the artificial eye, the team first needed to construct a hemispherical mold of the eye's outer layer, a structure consisting of thousands of microlenses.

Using existing technology, they made a flat array of these tiny,domed lenses arranged in the hexagonal honeycomb pattern. On top of this, they applied a thin slab of an elastic polymer called polydimethylsiloxane, or PDMS, creating a concave pattern of the lenses in the polymer.

By affixing the PDMS membrane over the opening of a vacuum chamber and applying negative air pressure, they pulled it into the dome shapes they needed, controlling its form by using different pressures.

These eyes can eventually be used as cameras or sensory detectors to capture visual or chemical information from a wider field of vision than previously possible, even with the best fish-eye lens, according to Lee.

The researchers speculate that the artificial compound eyes will be put to use within a few years. Their first applications may be in ultra-thin camera phones, and then in camcorders for omnidirectional surveillance imaging and such uses as small, hidden, wearable cameras. Enditem

Editor: Pliny Han

By Ed Bott
InformationWeek

Apr 26, 2006 10:44 AM

Next year at this time, if you find yourself using and liking Internet Explorer 7, thank the volunteers at the Mozilla project. The release of Mozilla Firefox 1.0 roughly 18 months ago marked the beginning of a steady downhill slide for Internet Explorer -- the open-source browser has been taking increasingly bigger bites out of IE's market share (and mindshare) ever since. After a series of solid and reliable updates, Firefox is, by most objective measures and in nearly every category, a better browser than Internet Explorer 6.

The rise of Firefox was a wake-up call for Microsoft. The result? IE7. Click image to enlarge and to launch image gallery.

The rise of Firefox was a wake-up call for Microsoft's developers. Having Firefox as a target inspired sweeping changes for Internet Explorer, whose basic interface and core features were overdue for an overhaul. IE7 is a serious attempt to close the gap with Firefox in one long stride. With the official release of IE7 Beta 2 (for Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows XP Professional 64-bit Edition, and Windows Server 2003), Microsoft has unveiled a browser that looks a lot more polished than the "beta" label might suggest.

The final release of IE7 won't be ready until later this year, but there's little mystery about it. The question isn't whether you'll upgrade. If you use Windows XP, how can you resist a free update to a core program, especially when that update fixes some long-standing annoyances, substantially improves your online security, and is generally easier to use than IE6?

No, the real question is, "Will you use it?" Can IE7 lure you back if you've switched to Firefox as your default browser? Will you trust its tighter security settings enough to recommend it to friends and family? In an environment where anyone, anytime can switch browser allegiances with a five-minute download and a few quick clicks, is there really such a thing as loyalty to a browser?

If you've tried one of the Beta 2 Preview editions, which were aimed exclusively at Web developers, you've already got a pretty good idea of what this release is all about. The first preview release was back in early February, and a second preview was delivered in late March at the Mix06 conference.

You have to look pretty closely to see the cosmetic differences: Icons for the Favorites Center have changed a bit since February, and the choices on the Tools menu have been rearranged slightly, but otherwise, virtually all the changes are under the hood. The official Beta 2 release incorporates bug fixes and changes to the underlying rendering engine that developers should appreciate, and the whole thing should now be stable enough for anyone to use or test.

How does the latest release of IE measure up to the latest from Firefox? For the answers, I compared IE7 Beta 2 on Windows XP against the most recent general release of Firefox, version 1.5.0.2.

Which browser handles the basics better?
The clean and spare IE7 interface is essentially unchanged from the Beta 2 preview release I looked at in February. By efficiently mixing buttons and menus in a single command bar that shares a row with the tab bar, IE7's page layout provides a bit more room than IE6 or Firefox for viewing the contents of the current page. The traditional top-level menu is hidden in a default installation (it reappears temporarily with a tap of the Alt key). The standard toolbar vanishes too, shrinking to a much smaller and more compact set of buttons.

The new Favorites Center. Click image to enlarge and to launch image gallery.

The new Favorites Center in IE7 combines the Favorites menu and the Explorer Bar in a single drop-down list that can be pinned to the left side of the browser window. Printing is smarter, shrinking pages to fit on a single sheet of paper and offering a useful preview. One especially innovative feature in IE7 is the new Zoom button in the lower-right corner of the browser window. Clicking the button zooms the entire page -- graphics and text -- from 100% to 125% and then 150%; or use the slider to pick custom zoom levels up to 10 times the original page size.

Despite the significant interface changes, this version of IE feels familiar, and it's easy to accomplish common tasks. All in all, it's a cleaner look than Firefox and easier to navigate for everyday tasks, but the difference is hardly enough to make it worth switching.

Advantage (a slim one): IE7

Is support for Web standards still an issue?
Web developers have heaped scorn on IE6 over the years, and with good reason. Building a Web site that works well with modern browsers and IE6 requires memorizing an encyclopedia of hacks and workarounds. IE7 promises to fix many of the most critical bugs and do a better job at following Web standards. Although it won't pass the Acid2 Test, the preview version of IE7 Beta 2 has received favorable early reviews from some influential Web designers.

Advantage: Too close to call

Which browser makes it easier to use and manage tabs?
One advantage of coming in late to the tabbed browsing party, as Internet Explorer has, is that you get to improve on the ideas of those who've gone before you. IE7's controls for opening, closing, and managing tabbed windows are noticeably simpler than those in Firefox, with a button on the tab bar to open a new window and a red X to close the active Web page. Out of the box, closing a Firefox tab is a potentially awkward two-click operation -- one click to select the tab, and a second click on the red X at the far right of the tab bar. The process is annoying enough that most Firefox experts quickly install a tab-browsing extension.

You can click the Quick Tabs button to see thumbnails of all your open tabbed pages. Click image to enlarge and to launch image gallery.

You can manage two or three open pages easily enough, but after opening a dozen or more pages the tabbed interface becomes essentially unusable. At that point, Internet Explorer provides a much easier way to manage all those open pages. Click the Quick Tabs button at the left of the tab bar to see a thumbnail view of all open tabs. From this window, you can close any tab you no longer need to keep open and then switch to a new active tab with a single click. To get similar functionality in Firefox, you need to install an extension like Viamatic foXpose.

Advantage: IE7

Can IE7 resist viruses, spyware, and online attacks?
Since its introduction, the most powerful argument in favor of switching to Firefox has been the promise that it's more secure and less vulnerable than IE to infestations of spyware, viruses, and other forms of malware. Technically, at least, IE7 should level the playing field a bit.

Can I use either browser to manage RSS feeds?
Firefox has offered the capability to turn RSS feeds into Live Bookmarks since version 1.0. Clicking a Live Bookmark icon from the Bookmarks menu displays a list of the headlines available from the selected feed. That's fine for a feed with punchy, descriptive headlines. It's a terribly inefficient way to read information-rich feeds, however, especially those that are packed with graphics and full text.

RSS feeds appear as formatted Web pages along with a link to subscribe to the feed.. Click image to enlarge and to launch image gallery.

By contrast, IE7's implementation of RSS feeds is simple and elegant. When you click on a link that leads to an RSS feed, the feed's contents display in a specially formatted page within the browser. A box at the top of the page provides details about the feed and offers a link to subscribe to it. The box on the right side of the page lets you filter the list by entering search terms or clicking category names, which are automatically extracted from the feed.

Best of all, the RSS store is a system service that other applications can share. For instance, Outlook 2007, now in beta testing and scheduled for release with the rest of Office 2007 later this year, can share RSS subscriptions and downloaded items with IE7, so that you can subscribe to a feed in either program and view the same feed in a browser window or alongside e-mail messages. NewsGator, which sells RSS readers for virtually every operating system, has already announced its intention to support IE7's sync features.

Advantage: IE7

Where does IE7 fall short?
Despite its excellent efforts, IE7 falls short of Firefox in two crucial areas.

The first is the ever-expanding library of Firefox extensions, small user-written programs that add features and fix annoyances in the officially released browser. By contrast, the number of add-ons for Internet Explorer is much smaller -- not surprisingly, the tightest levels of integration are between IE7 and Microsoft Office. If you're a fanatic about tweaking and tuning your browser, Firefox offers many more choices.

The other critical failing in IE7 is a weak set of password management tools. Just as in previous versions, IE7 can save a username and password combination for any Web page. But there's no way to edit saved passwords or copy them to a secure location. By contrast, Firefox allows you to view and manage saved passwords; it even imports saved passwords from IE7's protected store.

Advantage: Firefox

Conclusions
On a straight, feature-for-feature comparison, IE7 stacks up well against Firefox. If its improved security model lives up to its design specs, malware distributors will find it much more difficult to make a dishonest living, and the tabbed browsing features in the new release should make it much easier to deal with multiple pages.

The biggest hurdle that Internet Explorer has to overcome, however, is one that doesn't fit on any features chart. Its tattered reputation -- especially when it comes to security -- has created an indelible negative impression among the technically savvy users who've enthusiastically adopted Firefox so far. Even if the final release of IE7 improves mightily over the current beta, building that new and improved reputation will be an uphill climb.

Unmanned Russian Cargo Ship Arrives at International Space Station

MOSCOW Apr 26, 2006 (AP)— An unmanned Russian cargo ship arrived Wednesday at the international space station, bearing supplies and Easter gifts from the families of the American and Russian crewmen.

The Progress M-56 ship, which was launched from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan two days ago, hooked up with the orbiting station on schedule, Russian Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said.

In addition to some 2.5 tons of food, water, books, DVDs and scientific equipment, the ship is also bringing Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and U.S. astronaut Jeffrey Williams parcels from their families.

Vinogradov and Williams on April 1 began a six-month mission aboard the space station.

Russia's Progress cargo ships and Soyuz space capsules have been the station's lifeline since the U.S. space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. The shuttle program was suspended for more than two years; the shuttle Discovery flew to the station in July, but problems with its insulation raised doubts about when the next shuttle would go into space.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The long-running football series is coming to Revolution Wii in ways you never dreamed of before.

While Nintendo has wowed people with its fancy new motion-sensing Wii controller, many have wondered aloud about the fate of traditional games on the console. Nintendo insists that it will still have its classic series there for hardcore gamers, but we still know little about what will happen to, for want of a better term, normal games.

EA is giving direction here. During a demonstration of the upcoming Madden Revolution to news site GameSpot, the company revealed that it has pulled the series from its usual development home and passed it to a team in Canada. (It should be noted that the new studio has people from current Madden developer Tiburon).

The developers there are reimagining the game for the Wii and using the controller for all sorts of in-game functions, including hiking, kicking and passing the ball and controlling runners on the field.

Working with real-world motions complicates matter, though. EA's John Schappert told GameSpot how the throwing mechanism had to be refined to take into account how different people will physically move the controller to throw the ball.

And that's not all. It appears that EA is already working on redesigning some of its other franchises, which include FIFA and Tiger Woods PGA Tour. The company says it's not ready to name them "just yet", but that bodes well for an unveiling at next month's E3.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games

Thursday, April 27, 2006
By Leslie Brooks Suzukamo
Knight Ridder Newspapers

T. PAUL, Minn. — Every so often, technology comes to a crossroads, and nobody knows which direction will win out. A generation ago, Betamax and VHS battled over which format would dominate for video. Those who bet on Betamax won't soon forget the experience of getting stuck with irrelevant technology.

Thursday, April 27, 2006 Posted: 1409 GMT (2209 HKT)

HONG KONG, China (Reuters) -- China plans to take the first step in its ambitious lunar exploration program next April, launching a satellite that will orbit the moon, a space official said on Thursday.

The craft will be followed a few years later by a remote-controlled lunar rover that will perform experiments and send data back to Earth, and, in another few years, a module that will drill out a chunk of the moon and return with it.

China's lunar exploration scheme, which includes long-term plans for piloted moon missions, underscores the ambitious scope of a space program that has come a long way, especially in recent years, since its launch 50 years ago.

On Thursday, China sent a science research satellite into orbit, marking the country's first space mission this year.

In 2003, China became only the third country -- after the United States and Russia -- to launch a man into space aboard its own rocket. Last year, it sent two men into space aboard another ship.

Yang Duohe, with China's Lunar Exploration Program Center, said the lunar fly-by was on schedule.

"It will be next year in April," he said.

The moon shot will take several days, including about three days of orbit around the Earth, during which the craft will use gravity as a catapult to fling it on the more than four-day journey to the moon.

Luan Enjie, chief commander of the lunar exploration center, said on Thursday there were still problems to work out.

Among them were how to remotely control the craft, how to handle widely varying temperatures on the moon, and how to coordinate gear that needed to be pointed in a specific direction, such as solar panels and communication equipment.

More generally, he said China was working on ways to standardize its rockets and increase their thrust, which he said was too small at about nine tons. China also had too many types of satellites and the quality was not high enough, he said.

Investment in the lunar exploration programme so far was less than $187 million, he said. He did not give a figure for the total budget.

China's total annual investment in its space programmes was roughly $500 million, another Chinese space official said on a visit to the United States earlier this month.

In the United States, the Bush administration announced a $104 billion plan in September to return Americans to the moon by 2018. Its Apollo program carried the first humans to the moon in 1969.

Japan has also announced plans to land a person on the moon by 2025.

By WILSON ROTHMAN

Posted Wednesday, Apr. 26, 2006

For a few weeks this spring, Panasonic had the world’s smallest 10X optical-zoom camera. No larger than the average point-and-shoot, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1 has a single compact Leica lens that can crawl right up someone’s nose, or at least up to it, at 20 paces. Though Panasonic's $350 camera is still available, Kodak has just usurped Panasonic's title of world’s smallest 10X zoom camera.

The EasyShare V610 looks, at a glance, like other compact point-and-shoot cameras. Only a bit larger than an iPod and hardly thicker than a deck of cards, it has a spacious 2.8-in. LCD screen. However, as you power it up, the front cover slides open and you realize something strange is going on: the V610 has two lenses.

The V630 is not the first two-lens camera from Kodak. It follows closely on the heels of the EasyShare V570, launched in January. The V570 uses its second lens for ultra wide-angle shots – four people crammed into a chair lift, for example. The V630, as you can guess, has a telephoto lens as its Number Two, to achieve super zoom.

The results are surprising. I haven’t been crazy about Kodak cameras’ picture quality of late, but the 6-megapixel V630 took some terrific pictures. Outdoors at full zoom, shots were crisp and clear. Indoors, where Kodak’s compact cameras tend to have more trouble, shots came out clean, without the blurring or graininess that sometimes occurs. In fact, I tested the Kodak alongside the chunkier Panasonic’s Lumix TZ1, and the Kodak outperformed the TZ1 shot for shot. I was not expecting that.

Compact size is not the only reason Kodak’s 10X camera lists for $100 more than Panasonic’s. The V630 also has built-in Bluetooth, for transferring photos to nearby cell phones or computers. In the past I’ve had some hard times with Bluetooth file transfers, especially from a phone to a Windows PC. This time I was able to send full-resolution shots from the camera to a Bluetooth-enabled iMac on my first try. It only took seconds. If you’re sending shots to a phone, you have the option of downgrading them to QVGA or XVGA resolution, or send at the full six megapixels.

Kodak has been earning respect for innovation and ease of use — this camera not only embodies both, but it takes pretty good pictures, too. And that’s a nice thing, for a camera.

By Walaika K. Haskins
April 26, 2006 2:05PM

Rob Ayoub, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, said that Microsoft's increasingly severe crackdown on piracy might actually serve to further the spread of viruses and other malicious software. "The more of this cracking down on piracy that they do, the more they will keep people who have pirated copies from updating," he said.

Microsoft has given software pirates a little more to worry about, following the announcement this week that it has begun to widen the scope of its Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program to include checks for the authenticity of Microsoft Office software. The company also has made changes to WGA to broaden the reach of its Windows XP verifications.

Currently in the pilot-testing phase, the new Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) service notifies Microsoft Office users whether their software fell off the back of a truck or is authentic.

Microsoft has not said where pilot users for the program are located or how many are participating, and the company has declined to say when the program will reach North America.

Real or Faux

Also beginning this week, some users of Windows XP in the U.S. who have signed up for Microsoft's automatic updates and have granted the company the ability to do WGA checks might be presented with an alarming notice.

After installation and a system reboot, users who have an illegitimate copy of Windows XP will be greeted with a message that reads: "This copy of Windows is not genuine; you may be a victim of software counterfeiting."

The notice directs users to a WGA site on which they can "learn the benefits of genuine software." The reminders will continue until a genuine copy of the OS has been installed.

"Microsoft is clearly interested in maximizing its revenues for XP and minimizing piracy," said Andrew Jaquith, a Yankee Group analyst. "They are gradually turning the screws on people who don't register with WGA."

Since the its launch in 2005, Windows users have had the option to register for the WGA program if they wanted to receive automatic security updates and other free goodies from Microsoft's site.

However, according to Microsoft, the program might become compulsory for users later this year. Those who have not validated their software through WGA will not be able to download Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Defender, among other applications.

Crackdown Threat

The Business Software Alliance estimates that some 35 percent of all PC software used worldwide is counterfeit. In addition, a recent IDC study predicted that reducing piracy by 10 percent over the next four years could add 2.4 million new jobs and $400 billion in economic growth to the global economy.

While these figures might be alarming, at least one expert is concerned about a massive antipiracy initiative. Rob Ayoub, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, said that Microsoft's increasingly severe crackdown on piracy might actually serve to further the spread of viruses and other malicious software.

"The more of this cracking down on piracy that they do, the more they will keep people who have pirated copies from updating," he said. "That increases proliferation of security problems and, to my mind, that is the biggest problem."

Ayoub said that, once users turn off the automatic-update feature in Windows -- no matter the reason -- there will be more and more unpatched machines vulnerable to malicious attack. "As much as I respect Microsoft's stand on piracy," Ayoub said, "I don't think this is the right way to handle it."