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A Smart-Looking Exercise Watch With Tons of Features:
Sleek and stylish, the Sunnto T3 excersise watch helps you keep track of your workouts and makes sure you look good doing it.
The Suunto T3 is a portable exercise statistician hidden inside a highly designed black polished wristwatch. The device interacts with an included heart rate monitor to measure loads of vital information that gives instant feedback on the aerobic benefit of a workout.
The face allows you to customize what data is shown in large, easy-to-read smooth digits and has a great green back light for those evening runs. The glossy strap appears to be black polished metal but is a very comfortable plastic material that often turns heads.
The Suunto T3 is a smart-looking watch with tons of features for those who like to know their exercise is paying off or at least that they look good while thinking of working out.
The black polished Suunto T3 watch with heart monitor retails for $169.
(from abcNEWS)
(AP photo 
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Just when the iPod seems to have gotten as small and as cute as it could possibly be, Apple manages to make it smaller and cuter. This year they rolled out a new and improved Nano- in various flavors (silver, lime green, hot pink, ice blue and the traditional Model-T black) and sizes (2G, 4G and 8G). If you've been a big fan of the iPod Nano from version 1.0, there's not much different from the last update. The casing (previously in plastic), which many complained was too easily scratched is now in anodized aluminum which makes it far more resistant to nicks. The screen is brighter and clearer— a necessary update given the tiny size.
The battery life is expanded, reaching up to 24 hours (as I discovered, this is estimate is dependent on your use of the backlight), accomplished in part by the steady state memory that (unlike the traditional iPod) has no moving parts for a hard drive and is therefore more energy efficient and immune to skipping. Best of all, however, is the diminished cost. The 2G model costs only $149.00, and the 4G only $199.00 making it the perfect "cool" gift for the 4th grader on your list who is more than prone to leaving things on the bus. The downside? Only the 4G comes in the multiple colors, which is a must have for most kids and there's no video playback- which may be a godsend as trying to watch "Project Runway" on the mini-screen is liable to kill your eyes.
Price: $149.00 for 2G; $199.00 for 4G; $249.00 for 8G
(from abcNEWS)
Hackers are distributing a file that spoofs the KMS activation tool process
By Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service
December 08, 2006
Hackers are distributing a file that they say lets users of the corporate version of Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system get around the software's anti-piracy mechanisms.
Windows Vista must be "activated," or authorized by Microsoft, before it will work on a particular machine. To simplify the task of activating many copies of Vista, Microsoft offers corporate users special tools, among them Key Management Service (KMS), which allows a company to run a Microsoft-supplied authorization server on its own network and activate Vista without contacting Microsoft for each copy.
The software Microsoft.Windows.Vista.Local.Activation.Server-MelindaGates lets users spoof that KMS process, allowing them to activate copies of the enterprise editions of Vista, its creators say. The hacked download is available online on sites including The Pirate Bay and other file sharing sites.
Microsoft's official KMS offering is available to customers with 25 or more computers running Vista. The machines activate the software by connecting to the KMS server, and must reactivate every six months.
KMS is not the only option that enterprises have for volume activation of Vista: they can also call Microsoft by phone or connect over the Internet to activate the software.
The MelindaGates hack allows users to download a VMware image of a KMS server which activates Windows Vista Business/Enterprise edition, its creators claim.
Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment on the hack.
Vista is the first Windows operating system that requires volume users to activate each product. The new activation processes are aimed at reducing piracy.
While one security expert said he isn't surprised that KMS has been cracked, he said the MelindaGates hack offers some insight into piracy.
"This also shows how piracy is not just about kids swapping games," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of F-Secure. "The only parties that would need a KMS crack would be corporations with volume licensing."
