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The New Pride of Karachi - The IT Tower

At last, there will be one location where you can overnight in Five Star style, shop for the most exclusive retailers, enjoy the international cuisine, relax while watching the newest movies on screen, and even arrange your business meetings . All this within the same complex: the IT Tower in Karachi.

The IT Tower is currently under construction and is expected to be finished mid 2010. This exclusive project is going to consists of 47 floors, making the IT Tower the tallest building in Pakistan. Completely equipped with hi-tech solutions the IT Tower will be unique in its kind and include underground parking, retail shops, food court, cinema, office space, 10,000 seat call center, banquet and seminar facilities, 5- star hotel and common amenity areas. Combining work and leisure will have a new meaning from now on.

For the business community the IT Tower will be the ultimate experience, as everything is being built to ensure efficiency by making use of the newest technology and infrastructure. A high standard call center, which would be amongst the largest in the region, with several floors of property available for business offices makes the IT Tower exceptionally attractive for any company looking to either Outsource or start a business in Pakistan's booming economic engine, Karachi.

ThirdEye (Private) Limited is the lead consultant for the project marketing of the High Rise IT Tower Complex.

WORK STAY PLAY
Like Never Before

Features
Number of Floors	Retail
47	4 floors - 11,065 sq mt / 119,113 sq ft
Food Court	Cinema
4th Floor - 5,730 sq mt / 61,688 sq ft	5th Floor - 5,686 sq mt / 61,204 sq ft
Banquet & Seminar	Call Center
16th floor - 5,912 sq mt / 63,636 sq ft	11th - 15th, 17th - 33rd Floor (22 Floors) 69,215 sq mt / 745,032 sq ft
Office	Hotel (Inc. BOH & Facility, Lobby & F&B)
6th - 10th Floor (5 Floors) 11,961 sq mt / 128,751 sq ft	34th - 44th Floor (11 Floors) 32,022 sq mt / 344,690 sq ft
Total
141,593 sq mt / 1,524,117 sq ft

Intel on Monday announced price cuts across a wide range of chips used in mobile and desktop PCs, including cuts of up to 40 percent for its quad-core

IDG News Service —

Intel on Monday announced price cuts across a wide range of chips used in mobile and desktop PCs, including cuts of up to 40 percent for its quad-core chips.

Intel's Core 2 Quad Q9650 processors are now priced at US$316, a 40 percent drop from December. Other Core 2 Quad chip prices were cut between 16 percent and 20 percent. The quad-core chips are used in high-end desktops like gaming systems.

Intel's move could be a response to increasing price pressure exerted by rival Advanced Micro Devices, which recently announced the Phenom II quad-core chips for high-end desktops. AMD has priced its Phenom II quad-core chips between $235 and $275.

Intel also cut prices of its Xeon chips for servers and Celeron processors for mobile devices by up to 48 percent. The quad-core Xeon 3370 is now priced at $316, a 40 percent drop from December, while the Celeron 570 chip was cut by 48 percent from $134 to $70.

Amid the price drops, Intel also introduced three power-efficient quad-core chips with the "s" moniker. The Core 2 Quad Q9550s processor includes 12MB of L2 cache, runs at 2.83GHz and draws 65 watts of power. The chips are priced at $369. The chip is power-efficient version of the Core 2 Quad Q9550 chip, which draws 95 watts of power.

Intel also introduced the Core 2 Quad Q9400s processor, which runs at 2.66GHz, and the Core 2 Quad Q8200s, which runs at 2.33GHz. This chips are priced at $320 and $245 respectively.

UAC fix in Windows 7 creates security hole

IDG News Service —

A change that Microsoft made in Windows 7 to improve its controversial User Account Control security feature has left the new OS less secure, according to a blogger who follows Microsoft closely.

Microsoft made the change to UAC, a feature that was introduced with Windows Vista, to make it more user-friendly in Windows 7. But the change has allowed for "a simple but ingenious override" that disables UAC without any action on the part of the user, according to the I Started Something blog written by longtime Microsoft watcher Long Zheng.

Microsoft added UAC to Vista in an effort to improve its security and give people who are the primary users of a PC more control over its applications and settings. UAC prevents users without administrative privileges from making unauthorized changes to a system. But because of how it was set up in Vista, UAC sometimes prevents even authorized users from being able to access applications and features they should normally have access to.

It does this through a series of screen prompts that ask the user to verify privileges, and it may require them to type in a password to perform a task. This can interrupt people's workflow, even during some mundane tasks, unless they are set as Local Administrator. The UAC prompts became so problematic that Apple even spoofed them in a television commercial, and Microsoft vowed to improve the feature in Windows 7.

Windows 7 is still in beta and not expected to ship until late this year or early next. Microsoft released the beta earlier this month and outlined the changes to UAC on the Engineering Windows 7 blog.

The changes revise the UAC's default setting, and that is where the security risk lies, according to Zheng.

As he explained in his post, UAC's default setting in Windows 7 is to “Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer” and “Don’t notify me when I make changes to Windows settings."

UAC distinguishes between a third-party program and a Windows setting with a security certification, and control-panel items are signed with this certificate so they don't issue prompts if a user changes system settings, he wrote.

However, in Windows 7, changing UAC is considered a "change to Windows settings," according to Zheng. This, coupled with the new default UAC security level, means a user will not be prompted if changes are made to UAC, including if it was disabled.

With a few keyboard shortcuts and some code, Zheng said he can disable UAC remotely without the end-user knowing.

"With the help of my developer side-kick Rafael Rivera, we came up with a fully functional proof-of-concept in VBScript (would be just as easy in C++ EXE) to do that -- emulate a few keyboard inputs -- without prompting UAC," he wrote. "You can download and try it out for yourself here, but bear in mind it actually does disable UAC."

Zheng also posted what he said is a workaround for the problem on his blog.

Microsoft said on Friday through its public relations firm that it was looking into the problem and did not have an immediate comment.

AMD to release DDR3-capable processors

IDG News Service —

Advanced Micro Devices will soon introduce processors that are capable of supporting DDR3 memory, earlier than the company had anticipated.

The company in the next few weeks will launch new processors targeted at desktops that will include DDR3-capable memory controllers, said John Taylor, an AMD spokesman.

Taylor declined comment on specific processors being launched, though a leaked road map suggests the launch of new Phenom II and triple-core processors.

The support for DDR3 memory comes earlier than anticipated. Late last year the company said it aimed to add DDR3-capable Phenom II processors by the middle of 2009, but could push that up depending on factors including pricing of the memory.

Compared to current DDR2-capable processors, the new DDR3-capable chips will allow information from the memory to be communicated to a CPU faster, which translates to better PC performance. To run DDR3-capable processors, the company will introduce the AM3 socket for motherboards.

"The people who want the latest and greatest will want to use DDR3 memory," Taylor said.

AMD's decision to switch to DDR3 memory is to make CPUs faster so it can effectively compete with Intel in the high-end PC and server markets, said Dean McCarron, president of Mercury Research, a market analysis firm.

"When we make changes in PC architecture, it is because it's either faster or cheaper," said McCarron. For AMD, the decision was technical rather than financial, but the enhanced competitiveness could yield a financial benefit to AMD in the long run, McCarron said.

Intel's Core i7 processor for gaming systems, launched in November, already supports DDR3 memory. Intel is also adding DDR3 support to chips for portable products like laptops.

However, given AMD's inherent price advantage compared to Intel's products, price-sensitive buyers may initially oppose the high prices of DDR3 memory modules, McCarron said. As of early January, a 1GB DDR3 memory module running at 1333MHz was priced at $35, versus $12 to $14 per unit for a 1GB DDR2 unit.

"This is completely normal for technology. As the volume ramps [DDR3 memory prices] will come down," McCarron said.

Motherboard companies like Asus have already announced AM3-compatible motherboards, setting the stage for AMD to launch its new DDR3-capable processors, which could include new Phenom II processors. The new CPUs will include a DDR2- and DDR3-capable memory controller, allowing it to work with older motherboards with DDR2 memory.

AMD earlier this year launched new quad-core Phenom II processors, which the company called its "highest-performing" CPUs to date. Aimed at high-end desktop PCs, the chips ran at speeds of up to 3GHz and included 8MB of cache.

However, the Phenom II chips are capable of even faster clock speeds under certain circumstances. For example, the processors have been overclocked to run at speeds of up to 6.5GHz on liquid-cooled systems and up to 4GHz on air-cooled systems.

AMD remains on track to transition to DDR3 memory support for servers with the Maranello platform in 2010, Taylor said. The Maranello platform includes the six-core Sao Paulo and 12-core Magny-Cours chips.

How to Secure a Wireless Network

Almost all of us have jumped onto someone else's unsecured Wi-Fi network. There's little harm in that if you're just an honest soul looking for an Internet connection.

But if you're the owner of an unsecured network, you should be aware that the world's not made up entirely of honest souls--and it's not hard for the dishonest ones to see exactly what you're doing on your network. Sound scary? Here's how to fix the problem.

Q. What are WEP and WPA encryption, and which should I use?

A. The first line of defense for your Wi-Fi network is encryption, which encodes the data transmitted between your PC and your wireless router. Unfortunately, most routers ship with encryption turned off, and many users don't turn it on, leaving themselves completely exposed. If you haven't already, enable your router's encryption, and use the strongest form supported by your network. The Wireless Protected Access (WPA) protocol and more recent WPA2 have supplanted the older and less-secure Wireless Encryption Protocol (WEP).

Go with WPA or WPA2 if at all possible, since WEP is relatively easy to crack. (You have to use the same form on all devices on your network; you can't mix WEP and WPA.) The keys used by WPA and WPA2 change dynamically, which make them nearly impossible to hack. Use a strong password for your encryption key, such as a combination of letters and numbers of 14 characters or more.

If you have an older router that supports WEP only, you'll be safest if you use 128-bit WEP keys--but also check the manufacturer's Web site for a firmware update that will add WPA support. If it doesn't look like an update is likely, consider replacing old adapters and routers with newer models that support WPA. Look for a router that supports the hybrid WPA + WPA2 mode, which lets you use the stronger WPA2 encryption with adapters that support it, while still maintaining compatibility with WPA adapters.

Make sure you change the default network name and password on your router. Doing so will make it much more difficult for hackers to break into your router and commandeer its settings.

Q. If my router has a firewall, why do I need these added security measures?

A. The firewall built into your router prevents hackers on the Internet from getting access to your PC. But it does nothing to stop people in range of your Wi-Fi signal from getting onto your network--and with the latest high-performance equipment, your Wi-Fi signal could reach clear down the block. Without encryption and other protective measures, anyone can use readily available tools to see all your Wi-Fi traffic.

For extra protection, you should run software firewalls on the individual PCs on your network. Some good options are Zone Labs' ZoneAlarm, available as a free download or in the ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 2006, and Agnitum's Outpost Firewall Free.

Q. How can I secure my notebook at public Wi-Fi hotspots?

A. Since public hotspots generally don't use encryption, you should assume that anyone can see your Internet traffic unless you take precautions.

• Make sure it's a legitimate hotspot: Nefarious types have been known to set up pirate routers with familiar SSID names like "wayport" or "t-mobile," and then use them to capture unsuspecting users' log-on information and other private data.
• Verify that your PC's software firewall is turned on, and that Windows' file-sharing feature is off; it's off by default in Windows XP with Service Pack 2. To check this setting, open Control Panel and choose Windows Firewall (you may have to click Security Center first in XP or Security in Vista). In XP, select the Exceptions tab, and look in the Programs and Services to make sure "File and Printer Sharing" is unchecked. In Vista, click Change settings, then select the Exceptions tab and follow the instructions for XP.
• Never send bank passwords, credit card numbers, confidential e-mail, or other sensitive data unless you're sure you're on a secure site: Look for the lock icon in the bottom-right corner of your browser, as well as a URL in the address bar that begins with https. Such sites build in their own encryption.
• Always turn your Wi-Fi radio off when you're not at a hotspot: Hackers can use it to create peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connections with your computer and access it directly.
• For better security, consider signing up for a paid subscription to a hotspot network such as Boingo or T-Mobile. Both companies provide connection software that encrypts your sessions automatically.

Q. What's a VPN, and how do I get one?

A. The best way to protect a public wireless link is by using a virtual private network, or VPN. VPNs keep your communications safe by creating secure "tunnels" through which your encrypted data travels. Many companies provide VPN service to their mobile and offsite workers, so check with your IT department for connection instructions.

You can also use a paid service such as Boingo's Personal VPN (free trial with Boingo subscription, $30 to keep), JiWire Hotspot Helper (10-day free trial, $25 per year) or Witopia personalVPN ($40 per year). All three of the services are simple to install and use.

You have one more security option: If you don't mind connecting through your home or office PC, you can log in to a public hotspot securely by using such remote-access programs as LogMeIn or GoToMyPC.

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