IBM Corporation is going to endorse Firefox as the alternative to Internet Explorer for its massive employee base according to source.

I’m so glad finally I saw a big company is willing to give a better browser a try.

IBM said it had formally endorsed the use of the Mozilla Foundation’s Latest News about Mozilla Foundation browser, which had already found its way onto the desktops of some 10 percent of IBM’s 300,000-strong user base.

IBM is taking a very good step, which will make the software available for download from internal servers starting next week, hence, eliminating the need for users to go online to download it themselves. Besides, Their technical support department will start offering help desk support for the browser software. I believe this will be a massive boost for Firefox in gaining more market share, while the next version of Internet Explorer (IE 7.0) will only be available later this year.

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As mentioned is the previous post about Windows Mobile 5.0 upgrade on Dell X50, we know very soon Microsoft will release their next Operating System for handheld devices. This handheld devices OS evolution started out as “Pocket PC 2000” evolved into “Pocket PC 2002,” then “Windows Mobile 2003,” and more recently “Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition.”

Now let’s have a glance on the screen shots of what basically do we have in Windows Mobile 5.0.

Smartphone User Interface:

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A Glance On Windows Mobile 5.0

Good news for Dell X50 series PDA current and future owners,

Dell has just announced that it will offer a Windows Mobile 5.0 upgrade for the Dell Axim X50 series later this year. Currently, all Dell X50 series PDA are using Windows Mobile 2003. The next version of Windows for handheld devices does not follow the same naming system, like Windows Mobile 2003, which is widely used in PDA and smartphone today. Hence Windows Mobile 5.0 will be named instead of Windows Mobile 2005.

The following are some of the new features found in Windows Mobile 5.0 :-

• New mobile versions of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
• Improved one-handed navigation.
• Better WiFi support for Smartphones.
• Support for “persistent memory”, which means that you won’t lose all your data when your battery dies.

For those who are considering getting Dell X50 series PDA, now do not have to worry about the lack of support for latest mobile operating system anymore. What a nice attempt done by Dell, again. :)

However, Dell did not say what the Windows Mobile 5.0 upgrade will cost yet.

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Well, robot dog soccer is one of five games that teams of scholars competed in during the 2005 RoboCup U.S. Open. RoboCup is a three-day competition, which ends Tuesday, May 10, 2005, is to develop software for better robots with the long-term goal of fielding a robot soccer team good enough to play a human team by 2050. Hahaha … I wonder how painful will it be when the human football player smack into the robot. :D

Anyway, in this robot dog soccer, the robot dogs by default are programmed to act like pets, but when programmers insert their own programs into it, the robot dogs search for the ball with the cameras in their noses, chase it, silently communicate with each other over a wireless network and ultimately try to put the apple-sized ball into the goal. One dog is programmed to be goalkeeper.

“RoboCup is primarily organized to drive software that will make really aware robots possible,” RoboCup U.S. Open Chairman Tucker Balch said. “Soccer provides a really nice testing environment. Everyone understands soccer so we don’t have to explain what they’re trying to do.”

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AnandTech has written a an article about the launch of AMD’s Dual Core Athlon64 X2, which will be taken place this coming May 31.

There will a total of 4 models of this dual core desktop processors, the details are as follows:-

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
(2.4GHz w/ 1MB L2 cache-per-core) = $1,001 each
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+
(2.4GHz w/ 512KB L2 cache-per-core) = $803 each
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
(2.2GHz w/ 1MB L2 cache-per-core) = $581 each
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
(2.2GHz w/ 512KB L2 cache-per-core) = $537 each

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Recently, two dangerous unpatched Javascript flaws have been found. Furthermore, the unpatched extremely critical security holes and exploit code has already been circulating on the Internet, according to sources.

The exploit, discovered by Paul of Greyhats Security Group and Michael “mikx” Krax, makes use of two separate vulnerabilities. An attacker could create a malicious page using frames and a JavaScript history flaw to make software installations appear to be coming from a “trusted” site. By default, Firefox allows software installations from update.mozilla.org and addons.mozilla.org, but users can add their own sites to this whitelist.

Mozilla Foundation confirmed that users may be vulnerable if they have added other sites to the whitelist. In other words, if you did not add in any site into the software installation whitelist, you are safe from this issue.

Anyway, firefox user can save yourself while waiting for the patch to be released by Mozilla Foundation, by switching off JavaScript in the meantime.

The following are steps to swich off JavaScript:-

1. Go to Tools, then click Options….
2. Select Web Features on the left panel.
3. Deselect the Enable JavaScript box.

[Source]