Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 on Wednesday, the first major update to Internet Explorer to appear in many years.

While IE 7 has many great new features such as support for RSS feeds, tabbed browsing and improved security it appears to be playing catch up to Firefox which has had these features for a long time.

IE 7 is only available for Windows XP.

Internet Explorer Website

There is evidence that the climate of Mars has changed dramatically over the last 100,000 years. Images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal a dust layer sandwiched between layers of ice near Mars's north pole.

The image was made with the spacecraft's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) and shows part of a valley called Chasma Boreale that cuts into Mars's north polar ice cap.

Three layers are visible in the cap. The one on top corresponds to the most recent period in Mars's climate history, during which ice has built up around the north pole. The bottom layer is also made of ice and appears to represent a period with a similar climate.

In between is a layer of dust. Its presence suggests an era with a very different climate, when ice was no longer being deposited in the north polar region.

With no cars or farting cows you would expect climate change on Mars to occur over millions of years or hardly at all. Could this suggest that the Sun has a greater role in affecting the climate of the planets of this solar system?

Source: New Scientist Space

The Hubble Telescope has spotted 16 new planets. These planets are anything but earthlike with one 10 times as massive as Jupiter and others with very short orbits of less than a day.

Five of the worlds have tiny, tight orbits with periods of just 10 to 23 hours. Sahu says that viewed from the planets, their parent stars could appear some 60 times wider than the Sun looks from Earth.

All the planets found before now, mainly circling nearby Sun-like stars, have periods longer than 1.2 days. “Locally, we have found a surplus of planets in orbits with periods of less than three or four days, but suddenly at one day, they stopped – there was nothing below one day,” says Sahu.

Source: New Scientist

With the cost of each blockbuster movie getting more outrageous each year many in the industry are questioning the value of spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on a movie. And for someone such as Lucus to be asking these questions then it is certain a change is coming.

"We don't want to make movies. We're about to get into television. As far as Lucasfilm is concerned, we've moved away from the feature film thing because it's too expensive and it's too risky.

"I think the secret to the future is quantity," Lucas said. -

I have certainly noticed a trend lately not only towards movies with much lower budgets but of TV shows with big budget special effects that seem to rival big budget movies. One thing is for certain a big budget can no longer guarantee that a movie will be a success.

Doctor Who has entered the Guiness Book of World Records as the world's longest running science fiction show after 43 years and 723 episodes.

Source: BBC

Here is a video collage of all the Dr Whos from the past to the present:

Source: youtube

Official Site: Dr Who

Seems there is some truth in music stereotypes. Psychologists from the U.K. surveyed 2000 people about their musical tastes as well as about their jobs, relationships, beliefs, and consumer habits.

Their findings confirmed what many have already suspected:

• those with the most education were also the main fans of opera, classical music, and jazz
• 8.5% of the classical music lovers had Ph.D.s, compared with 1.4% of those who favored disco music
• classical music lovers' incomes averaged $66,000 compared to $44,000 for lovers of popular dance music
• Classical music buffs were also inclined toward intellectual fare, such as current-affairs magazines, whereas the rap/pop crowd favored magazines about cars, women, or celebrities
• 53% of hip-hop fans admitted to having committed a criminal act, compared to 18% of fans of musicals
• Opera buffs were least likely to take showers and wash their hair, for example, whereas fans of "DJ-based music" were frequent shampooers

Source: ScienceNow

The European Space Agency's Mars Express has obtained amazing images of the Cydonia region, that should once and for all end the conspiracy about the 'Face on Mars.

"These images of the Cydonia region on Mars are truly spectacular," said Dr Agustin Chicarro, ESA Mars Express Project Scientist. "They not only provide a completely fresh and detailed view of an area famous to fans of space myths worldwide, but also provide an impressive close-up over an area of great interest for planetary geologists, and show once more the high capability of the Mars Express camera."

Source: ESA

The Hard Drive is about to turn 50 years old on the 13th of September. In 1956 the first hard drive called RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control) was shipped by IBM.

The drive weighed a full ton, and to lease it you'd pay about $250,000 a year in today's dollars. Since it required a separate air compressor to protect the two moving "heads" that read and wrote information, it was noisy. The total amount of information stored on its 50 spinning iron-oxide-coated disks—each of them a pizza-size 24 inches—was 5 megabytes. ...

Yet those who beheld the RAMAC were astonished. "It was about the size of two large refrigerators, about as tall as a person stands, and though it used vacuum tubes, it was always running," recalls Jim Porter, ...

Source: The Hard Disk That Changed the World - Newsweek

Microsoft is ending support for Windows 98 SE and Windows Me from today.

July 11, 2006 will bring a close to Extended Support for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Me as part of the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy. Microsoft will retire public and technical support, including security updates, by this date.

Support for XP SP1 will end on October 10, 2006.

Source: End of support for Windows 98, Windows Me, and Windows XP Service Pack 1 - microsoft.com

The name Revolution has been dropped. Nintendo will call their next console Wii.

INTRODUCING ... Wii.

As in “we.”

While the code-name “Revolution” expressed our direction, Wii represents the answer.

Wii will break down that wall that separates video game players from everybody else.
Wii will put people more in touch with their games … and each other. But you’re probably asking: What does the name mean?

Wii sounds like “we,” which emphasizes this console is for everyone.

Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. Just Wii.

Wii has a distinctive “ii” spelling that symbolizes both the unique controllers and the image of people gathering to play.

And Wii, as a name and a console, brings something revolutionary to the world of video games that sets it apart from the crowd.

So that’s Wii. But now Nintendo needs you.
Because, it’s really not about you or me.
It’s about Wii.

And together, Wii will change everything.

Source: http://revolution.nintendo.com/