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It may seem that those still clinging to the fear that Windows 7 will eventually pan out to be another Windows Vista may have no choice but to take the upgrade plunge thanks to the evolution of the hard drive. This won't mean an early death of XP by any means, but more of a performance hit despite other system specs.

Here's how it will work: most hard drives sold in late 2011 may use an advanced format that will make it easier for hard drive manufacturers to produce bigger drives while making them more reliable and less power hungry. Of course, this is a good thing. Bigger games, bigger software, and our addiction to downloadable media means that hard drives need to keep up with the times. Unfortunately, this is where Windows XP comes crashing down in flames.

Current drives are formatted into blocks of 512 bytes in size - this has been standard since the days DOS ruled PCs. By the end of 2011, all new hard drives will be formatted into blocks of 4K in size. Windows XP doesn't know how to handle sectors of that magnitude. To resolve the conflict, the new drives will have the ability to "pretend" they still use sectors 512 bytes in size. Reading data via the emulation isn't expected to be a problem: it's the data writing that may impact performance.

"All other things being equal you will have a noticeable hard drive reduction in performance," said David Burks, a product marketing manager for storage firm Seagate. He also added that it could make a drive 10-percent slower in some circumstances.

With that said, Windows XP users may have some decision-making to do next year if their current drives fail: purchase a new drive and suffer a reduction in performance via Windows XP, or purchase the new drive and a fresh copy of Windows 7.

In more Marvel movie news, a synopsis for the upcoming Thor has been released. According to the description, the film will span the Marvel Universe from present day Earth to the mythical realm of Asgard.

"At the centre of the story is the mighty Thor (Chris Hemsworth), a powerful but arrogant warrior whose reckless actions reignite an ancient war. Thor is cast down to Earth by his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) and is forced to live among humans," the synopsis read.

"A beautiful, young scientist, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), has a profound effect on Thor, as she ultimately becomes his first love. It's while here on Earth that Thor learns what it takes to be a true hero when the most dangerous villain of his world sends the darkest forces of Asgard to invade Earth."

Thor is scheduled to arrive in cinemas on May 6, 2011

Director Edgar Wright's planned Ant Man movie may never see the light of day after Disney announced a plan to only make 150m-plus blockbusters and low budget productions.

Producers of Disney hit The Proposal reportedly revealed the new strategy to New York Magazine.

The news has given rise to concerns that projects featuring lesser-known characters such as Ant Man, which Wright is currently working on, will not get funding unless studio execs decide to invest huge sums to produce them - or only offer tiny budgets.

Disney has the rights to Marvel's extensive catalogue of characters following the merger of the two companies at the end of last year.

Ant Man tells the story of biochemist Hank Pym, who develops a size-altering formula and special helmet which lets him communicate with and control insects. It is currently scheduled to be released in 2012.

We all knew no good would come from Disney buying Marvel. Here's the proof

Probably not the smartest thing you could do, but say you wanted to accept all Facebook friend requests automatically, and that you are wisely using the Firefox browser. Here's what to do.

1) Install Greasemonkey addon. Greasemonkey frackin' rules! According the the developer, it "Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript." But it's actually way more powerful than that and can let you run thousands of custom scripts found at http://userscripts.org right there in your browser

2) From the previously mentioned website, install this script. Don't forget you can modify in using Greasemonkey. Now whenever you go to your friends request page, it will auto-accept them for you!

This suits a large organization or club - individuals should be a bit more careful....obviously.

Microsoft are performing well at the Winter Olympics in Canada, as all of the computers used at the event run Windows. It's not Windows 7, but rather the ever-lasting Windows XP.

Acer won the contract to provide the computers for the 2010 games and confirmed that it shipped more than 6,000 notebooks and desktops for organizers of the event – all of which pack Windows XP rather than the Windows 7 OS found on all of Acer's retail offerings today.

"It was the operating system requested by VANOC (the Olympic organizing committee) and Atos Origin" (the technology integrator managing the Olympics tech operations)", said Todd Olson, who manages Acer's tech work in Vancouver.

Olympic organizers opted to go with Windows XP because Windows 7 was "a bit too new to be used."

So far, Windows XP has been doing exactly what is asked of it, with the only notable computer trouble coming at the hands of a bowl of soup rather than software. The incident came when an Olympics worker went into an excited cheer and spilled soup all over a laptop. The worker then shut off the laptop and later found that it still worked.

Acer offered to replace the machine, but the worker declined a new one as she didn't want to part with a notebook hearty enough to survive a bowl of soup

How often have you set the permissions incorrectly on your website? Or found that you don't have the correct permissions to install an extension in Joomla, Drupal or any other CMS? I know that this happens me all the time! Today, I decided to script a quick solution, and have tested it successfully. The correct permissions for your site, btw, is 755 on all folders and 644 on all files. Only a suicidal numpty would set all file and folder to 777 (full access for ALL) permanently!

You will need 2 scripts in the root directory of your site, lock.php and unlock.php. First, here's unlock.php (don't forget your opening and closing PHP tags):


Simple, eh? Don't know why I never thought of this before. Ok, so now to lock the site back down after you have logged in and installed your extensions - here's lock.php:


Now just upload these files to your webserver, and go http://www.yoursite.com/unlock.php or http://www.yoursite.com/lock.php, depending on what you want to do.

Open Source software is free. It is free of cost to use, share or modify. It also guarantees essential freedoms for the people using it.

This software is widely used within the IT industry by professionals. It is the software behind most of what powers the Internet itself and runs for instance on around 80% of the worlds website servers. All of the major IT companies have become involved in this type of software in the past few years.

Open Source software is made not by a single company, but by a community of programmers. The process is completely transparent and open to all (including companies). This means more flexible, powerful and reliable software which can inter-operate easily.

The immediate cost savings and the long term sustainable industry opportunities are clear. A home grown industry of expertise in this field could be promoted by the government by for instance adopting free Open Source software within the public service. This would in turn stimulate SMEs in the IT arena to further develop the skills needed, stimulating training companies in this area. Companies developing Open Source software would also be able to export software services and expertise around Open Technologies. This all further strengthens the Open Source industry itself. The government insisting on Open Technologies would also guarantee long term stability as technology changes, because this type of software adheres to international standards for data-interchange and communication instead of trying to tie-in the users to one product.

How many software licenses are purchased by state bodies in Ireland? There is a free Open Source alternative to almost any major piece of software in use. Can we justify the purchase for instance of Office software when there is a free alternative. Can we justify the purchase of large email systems where the cost increases as the number of users increase, essentially placing a burden on success (more employees). Are you aware that a laptop can be securely encrypted very easily and quickly using a piece of Open Source software at no cost. When document formats, or software versions are unnecessarily made obsolete the cost to the state is simply immense.

As a quick example of the type of financial savings that can be made, consider a single area - schools. There are around 4000 primary and secondary schools in the country. If you assume an average of 15 computers in each, this would total 60,000 computers. If 100 euro is saved by using free software on each, 6 Million is saved in total. This is only one area and probably widely underestimates the number of computers in use. Add to this the entire public and semi-state sector.

A quick look on the govenments eTenders website shows around 140 tenders in the IT area with a single mention of Open Source. In fact, many of these tenders ask for a single product by name instead of outlining the requirements and allowing the professionals present the best solutions. For instance, there are many tenders for document management systems. By using cost-free software, that conforms to international standards and simply bringing in the expertise to configure and maintain the software the cost of these can be reduced drastically.

This proposal was made my Andrew Clarke on the Your Country, Your Call website. We here at altFIRE are big believers in open technologies, and have put our weight behind this proposal.

Would YOU agree? If so, you should register and support this proposal.

A new patch for popular Quake 3 clone OpenArena is released today, version 0.8.5. This release includes:

- New effects: rocket smoke, shotgun sparks, flares
- New maps
- Improved maps
- Improved CTF skins for Angelyss
- New skins for Beret and Assassin

Maps included in this release are:

- am_underworks
- am_underworks2
- blitzkrieg3
- ctf_compromise
- ctf_gate1
- ctf_inyard
- hydronex2
- oa_koth2
- oa_minia
- oa_reptctf11
- ps37ctf2
- ps9ctf

We'll patch up our server as soon as possible, and you should probably grab the new client patch here. Note that you will still need to have version 0.81 installed first.

Vodafone is set to disconnect infrequently used accounts and take any unused credit on those phones.

The move is part of Ireland's largest mobile phone operator tightening up its terms and conditions. Vodafone has said it's changing its terms from next month in an effort to recycle old mobile phone numbers that are no longer in use.

Therefore, customers who don't top up their pre-paid mobile phone within eight months will have their accounts disconnected and will lose any remaining credit on their phones. They also risk losing their numbers if it isn't reactivated within six months.

Vodafone, in a statement, said there was a regulatory requirement to recycle the pool of mobile phone numbers. It said it chose an eight-month recycling rule as the “overwhelming majority” of customers whose accounts aren’t topped-up within that time frame become completely inactive, the Irish Independent reported.

However, Vodafone said, the company "is mindful of the concerns of the very small number of customers who may consciously omit to top up their accounts for a prolonged period of time for specific reasons.

"For this reason, there is a carefully considered step-by-step contact process before disconnection which involves texts sent to customers to remind them to top up to keep their account active," Vodafone added.

"In addition, customers have the opportunity to reinstate their number for six months after disconnection. Any customer whose account falls into disuse and is disconnected with remaining credit can contact us for reactivation at any time within that six-month time frame to be reinstated with their old balance completely intact."

Vodafone has outlined its process:

Following six months, no top up: A text is sent to the customer reminding them to top up within seven days in order to keep their account active. Following seven days, if there is no top up, the phone is deactivated, however, customers can still receive incoming calls.

Following 8 months, no top up: A text is sent to the customer informing them that the account will be disconnected if it is not topped up within seven days. If the account is disconnected because it was not topped up, the customer then has six months from the disconnection date in which time they can reactivate that number.

Following 14 months, the number is recycled and reissued.