Megh Neupane

RTM, Release to Manufacturing, indicates the code is now signed off and available for mass production for mass distribution, that just happened to Windows Server 2008 R2, as it happened to Windows 7, both today. Some of the new features available at this release has been highlighted at Windows Server 2008 team’s blog.

Windows Server 2008 is the most recent release of Microsoft Windows’ server line of operating systems. Released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008 and officially released on February 27, 2008, it is the successor to Windows Server 2003, released nearly five years earlier. Like Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 is built on Windows NT 6.0.

Samsung Electronics announced today to invest more than $4 billion for ‘green future’ initiative. The company has stated that over the next five years, the “PlanetFirst” project focuses on eco-management through low-carbon growth with more energy-efficient products.

It involves cutting greenhouse gas emissions from plants by 50 percent and reducing total indirect emissions from all products by 84 million tons through 2013, as well as ensuring all products exceed global eco-mark standards, AFP reports.

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Today, Microsoft contributed Linux drivers to Linux community that will enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. Although not an entirely new phenomena, Microsoft is rarely seen to embrace GNU General Public License (v2) and is very vocal about the licensing procedure although this is the first time ever of any direct code contribution (20000 lines) to GPL v2.

As a featured story inside Microsoft’s press release, Tom Hanrahan, director of Microsoft’s Open Source Technology Center, is seen through the Q&A session of this release, here’s what he has to say about the announcement –

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One of the largest supporter of the HD-DVD format, Toshiba is now planning on releasing its first Blu-ray player, which will apparently be called the BD18 and be released by the end of the year. Toshiba, the main backer of the HD-DVD format, supposedly lost $1 billion USD as a result of HD-DVD hardliner with the demise of the HD-DVD format. The format war was forcefully fought, as Toshiba and Microsoft backed HD DVD format where other major electronics vendors as Sony and Panasonic promoted Blu-ray Disc.

Verizon Wireless today, under pressure from the government, announced it would allow small wireless companies to some of the cell phones that it offers on exclusive deals of handsets after six months. Starting today, after Verizon spends six months in an exclusive deal on any handset with vendors, small wireless providers that have fewer than 500,000 customers will be allowed to sell the phones, said in a letter sent to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the letter published at Wall Street Journal’s Blog. Such a provision would allow greater competition and customer flexibility including better deals for shopaholics that would crave for any typical phone deals, analyst predict.

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Released late yesterday that fixes Just-in-Time (JIT) JavaScript compiler flaw with Firefox 3.5 that left users at risk of memory corruption and malware infection, Mozilla has been quick enough to patch the software with newest release of Firefox 3.5.1 that corrects the JavaScript flaw and also a problem that was causing the browser to take a long time to load on some Windows system. Exploit code for the vulnerability was posted to the Milw0rm.com malware site on Monday, four days after Mozilla developers had discovered the bug and began working on a fix.

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Comcast Corporation, the largest U.S. cable company in terms of subscribers, announced today of a free mobile application on Apple’s App Store that lets you read your Comcast.net email, check your Comcast voicemail, read home phone logs, browse Comcast TV programming, and watch trailer videos for Comcast On Demand features. The full experience of the Comcast mobile app is available as an added benefit to Comcast Triple Play and existing SmartZone customers with an iPhone or iPod touch.

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Even with the few people that have the service and it’s still limited to invite only users, Google Voice officially started just 3 weeks ago and is now available for BlackBerry and Android Phones, as referenced from Google Voice Blog.  It is expected to be available soon to iPhone, per NY Times, and will be expanded to other compatible phones as well. Excerpt from the Google Voice Blog –

Thanks to some great work by the Google Mobile team, we now have a Google Voice mobile app for Blackberry and Android-powered phones. The mobile application makes using Google Voice with your cell phone simpler by letting you place calls and send SMS messages directly from your Google Voice number. You can call from your phone’s address book or enter in numbers directly, and your outbound calls will display your Google Voice number as the caller ID. You can also listen to your voicemail and read transcriptions of your messages.

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