It was bound to happen eventually. On April 8, 2014, all extended support for Windows XP will stop. This includes hotfixes and security patches. Some of you might be thinking well that’s years away. That’s less than 1000 days away. Not so far when you look at it like that.

Most people that opted to stay with XP are still waiting for the hardware and software compatibility issues in Windows 7 to be resolved before making the switch. Don’t worry folks. Who knows, Windows 8 might be out before then.

Here’s how IBM’s logo evolved:

Here are some of the company’s earlier products:

[Images courtesy of Wikipedia]

(1958) The IBM 632 Electronic Typing Calculator

The IBM 1130

(1980) The IBM 5120

(1983) The IBM Personal Computer XT

Makes you appreciate your computer doesn’t it?

Microsoft has just released the first service pack for Windows 7 and it’s available for download. Interested users can get it by downloading it from the official site, through Windows Update, or by ordering the installation DVD.

From the official site, here’s what’s included:

“Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is an important update that includes previously released security, performance, and stability updates for Windows 7. SP1 also includes new improvements to features and services in Windows 7, such as improved reliability when connecting to HDMI audio devices, printing using the XPS Viewer, and restoring previous folders in Windows Explorer after restarting.”

Installation takes less than an hour and you’ll have to reboot your computer.

[Image courtesy of Blizzard]

According to the official Demon Hunter Class Page:

“There is something in all demon hunters that gives them the strength to resist the demonic corruption that would drive lesser men to madness. They hone this power, for their resistance to this taint enables them to use the demons’ power as a weapon.

Here’s the official Demon Hunter trailer:

Not bad. I think I might be able to refrain from complaining about the lack of a knight/paladin class. For now. What do you think?

[High five to Jason Shreier]

Google will be working with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) to scan the entire Dead Sea Scrolls and bring them online. While Google will not do the actual photographing and scanning, it will add the search component to the Dead Sea Scrolls in different languages.

[High Five to Chloe Albanesius]

If you look closely at the list, you’ll notice that Answers.com and the Creative Commons search engine have been removed.

Mozilla’s official statement about the removal from their blog:

“Answers.com is a good service but we have found and we have heard from our users that Wikipedia is more useful as an included reference search engine. The Creative Commons search engine has changed over the years from one focused on locating CC licensed materials to one focused on providing a general search from Google, Yahoo! and others.”

Adding Bing seems like a good idea. We’ll see what else changes as the release date draws near.

It seems that the fight with the Stuxnet worm isn’t over as new variants of the worm were discovered and reported by the ESET blog.

The post by Pierre-Marc Bureau goes on to say:

“We have identified a new family that exploits this unpatched vulnerability in order to spread, which we have labelled Win32/TrojanDownloader.Chymine.A. At the time of analysis, this threat downloads and install a key stroke logger which we detect as Win32/Spy.Agent.NSO trojan. The server used to deliver the components used in this attack is presently located in the US, but the IP is assigned to a customer in China.

Minutes after identifying this new attack, we observed a known threat, Win32/Autorun.VB.RP, which has been updated to include the CVE-2010-2568 exploit as a new propagation vector. Win32/Autorun.VB.RP seems to download and install additional components on infected machines.”

While Microsoft has yet to release an official patch to address the problem, it has released a workaround solution on its support site. The workaround will disable .LNK and .PIF file functionality on most Windows machines. Microsoft also offers an undo option for the workaround should users change their minds after implementation.

If you want the old menu layout, just click on “alt” or click on the Firefox button -> Customize. Users of older versions of Windows will see the old menu layout by default.

Another thing testers will notice right away, is the placement of the tabs on top.

The tabs can be brought back to their old spot with ease if you decide you like the old placement better.

Talking about tabs, you can switch to your open tabs through the awesome bar as well.

Firefox 4 supports CSS3 and HTML5 in case you were wondering. The added crash protection prevents the whole browser from crashing when a problem is encountered with Flash, Silverlight, or Quicktime plugins. You’ll only need to reload the page.

Only a Windows version of the Firefox 4 beta is available for now but Mozilla has said that Mac and Linux versions are coming soon. For those interested in keeping up with the latest developments, head over to the dev blog.

Keep in mind that this is first beta and that a lot of features haven’t been added yet. This is the time when the developers want your feedback.

Internet Exporer 9 Fish Tank Demo Rendered By The Canvass Element

Internet Exporer 9 Asteroid Belt Tank Demo Rendered By The Canvass Element

According to the IE Blog:

“The third Platform Preview of Internet Explorer 9, available now, continues the deep work around hardware acceleration to enable the same standards-based markup to run faster. This is the latest installment of the rhythm we started in March, delivering platform preview releases approximately every eight weeks and listening to developers. You’ll see more performance, same markup, and hardware accelerated HTML5.”

Fair is fair. It does look good. The question is, will it be adopted by next versions of other browsers as well? We’ll see.

Image taken from Google Blog

Here’s an excerpt from Google Blog’s announcement:

“With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.”

This should be good news for publishers who’ve wanted their content indexed faster than the way the old system worked. Still, we’re waiting to see if the new index will give lesser sites a better chance of showing up on the first few pages of search results.