Can free broadband be a reality in India?

The internet has become an integral part of human life and further validation of this assertion comes from the fact that Finland has become the first country in the world to make broadband Internet access a right for every Finnish citizen.

Yes, Finland has just passed a law that makes access to broadband a legal right for its citizens. Come July 2010, every person in Finland, which has a population of around 5.3 million, will have the guaranteed right to a one-megabit broadband connection.

This law could pave the way for India to start looking at broadband connection or even basic internet connection as its citizens' legal right, just like freedom of speech and expression.

India is emerging as a hub for information technology and global companies invariably looks toward India to meet their research and development needs and software production demands. So should India go ahead and make this a legal right for its citizens?

"While the internet savvy user of India will hail this move, let's not forget that Finland's total population is 5.5 million, which is 5 per cent of ours. Our primary concern right now should not be broadband access being a legal right, but childhood (and education) being the legal right of every child in the country and tougher laws on child labour. Can we please emulate Babar Ali, the world's youngest headmaster, and ensure that children have a right to be children before they're made to be earning members of the family?" says Jayashree S, a child rights activist.

Yes, it sounds true as it would be very unfair to compare India to Finland, given the gross discrepancies.

But not all think of it in the same way. Nancy, an avid netizen, says, "Internet is a way of life in India now. It is not just the youngsters who are hooked - people from all walks of life have started using the net to their benefit and are paying high prices for the same. It would be good if the rates are lesser, and yes, if it's free in Finland, even if it's 1mbps, why not here too?"

A vast majority in India feels that making a broadband connection a legal right is too farfetched a dream. "Broadband connection should not be a legal right as we have more important issues to deal with. We are lagging in providing even the basic amenities like water or electricity, thinking of legalising broadband is still very far," says Tarun, who works with a leading media house.

It might be too early to start a debate on whether broadband internet can be a natural extension to our legal rights in India. But kudos to the Finnish government for this landmark law. Who knows, this might just be the beginning of a new fight for our rights.

Lets hope for the best.....

BTW we Indians love free things..:)

Features new to Windows 7

Now as we all know its been a long time after the launch of Windows vista that windows has launched a new Operating System. As the gap between the two was too long so we hope that the new OS will be much better than Vista which didn’t proved to be that effective for us.

Let’s have a look at the new features in detail.

Some of the new features to be included in Windows 7 include advancements in touch, speech , and handwriting recognition , support for virtual hard disks, support for additional file formats , improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, and kernel improvements.

Shell and user interface

Windows 7 retains the Windows Aero user interface and visual style first introduced with its predecessor, Windows Vista, but many areas have seen enhancements.

Desktop

Windows 7's Desktop

Support for themes has been extended in Windows 7. In addition to setting the colors of the window chrome and desktop background, themes in Windows 7 include a sound set, and desktop slideshow settings. A new control panel interface, accessible through the "Personalize" content menu item on the desktop, has been introduced which provides the ability to customize and switch between themes, as well as download more themes from Microsoft's web site. Support for "theme packs" is included; theme packs are cabinet files with an extension of .themepack, and consist of a .theme as well as any number of image, sound, icon, and mouse cursor files. Windows 7 recognizes this file format and will switch the user's theme to the theme contained inside when opened. A Windows 7 theme can also specify an RSS feed from which new desktop background images can be downloaded.

The default theme is titled "Windows 7", which consists of a single desktop background codenamed "Harmony" and the same sound set as Windows Vista. Six new "Aero Themes" are included: Architecture, Characters, Landscapes, Nature, Scenes, and an additional country-specific theme that is determined based on the defined locale when the operating system is installed. The Windows 7 Beta includes themes for the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Japan, South Africa and Australia, and while the theme for the user's home country is the only one displayed in the user interface, the files for all these themes are included in the operating system installation. Each of the themes included with Windows 7 consists of six desktop backgrounds each at 1920x1200 resolution; none of the desktop backgrounds included with Windows Vista are present in Windows 7. The country-specific desktop backgrounds depict both famous places in those countries as well as country scenes. A number of sound schemes are included, each associated with an included theme: Afternoon, Calligraphy, Characters, Cityscape, Delta, Festival, Garden, Heritage, Landscape, Quirky, Raga, Savanna, and Sonata.

Additional theme packs are available as free downloads from Microsoft's web site.

Desktop Slideshow

Windows Explorer now includes a desktop slideshow that changes the desktop background in a designated amount of time. This feature supports pre-downloaded sets of wallpapers and also supports photo RSS feed.

Gadgets

Windows Vista introduced Gadgets and a sidebar which provides the ability to anchor Gadgets to the side of the user's desktop. In Windows 7, the sidebar has been removed, while gadgets can still be placed on the desktop. Windows 7 adds a Windows Media Center gadget to the default collection while removing the Contacts and Notes gadgets.

Managing gadgets is more closely integrated with Windows Explorer, but the gadgets themselves continue to operate in a separate sidebar.exe process. The Desktop context menu includes a new "Gadgets" menu option to access the gadget gallery, and a "View" sub-menu option to show or hide gadgets. Hiding gadgets results in the sidebar.exe process being unloaded, which Microsoft says is a power-saving practice. Unlike Windows Vista, all gadgets run in a single process, which saves memory, and the process is not run at all if the user has no gadgets on the desktop.

Branding and customization

OEMs and enterprises are able to customize the log in screen wallpaper of Windows 7 that is displayed before a user logs on.

Windows Explorer

Windows Explorer's revised user interface.

Libraries

Windows Explorer in Windows 7 supports Libraries, virtual folders described in a .library-ms file that aggregates content from various locations - including shared folders on networked systems - and present them in a unified view. Searching in a library automatically federates the query to the remote systems, in addition to searching on the local system, so that files on the remote systems are also searched. Unlike search folders, Libraries are backed by a physical location which allows files to be saved in the Libraries. Such files are transparently saved in the backing physical folder. The default save location for a library may be configured by the user, as can the default view layout for each library. Libraries are generally stored in the Libraries special folder, which allows them to be displayed on the navigation pane.

By default, a new user account in Windows 7 contains four libraries, for different file types: Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos. They are configured to include the user's profile folders for these respective file types, as well as the computer's corresponding Public folders.

In addition to aggregating multiple storage locations, Libraries enable Arrangement Views and Search Filter Suggestions. Arrangement Views allow you to pivot your view of the library's contents based on metadata. For example, selecting the "By Month" view in the Pictures library will display photos in stacks, where each stack represents a month of photos based on the date they were taken. In the Music library, the "By Artist" view will display stacks of albums from the artists in your collection, and browsing into an artist stack will then display the relevant albums.

Search Filter Suggestions are a new feature of the Windows 7 Explorer's search box. When the user clicks in the search box, a menu shows up below it showing recent searches as well as suggested Advanced Query Syntax filters that the user can type. When one is selected (or typed in manually), the menu will update to show the possible values to filter by for that property, and this list is based on the current location and other parts of the query already typed. For example, selecting the "tags" filter or typing "tags:" into the search box will display the list of possible tag values which will return search results.

Arrangement Views and Search Filter Suggestions are database-backed features which require that all locations in the Library be indexed by the Windows Search service. Local disk locations must be indexed by the local indexer, and Windows Explorer will automatically add locations to the indexing scope when they are included in a library. Remote locations can be indexed by the indexer on another Windows 7 machine, on a Windows machine running Windows Search 4 (such as Windows Vista or Windows Home Server), or on another device that implements the MS-WSP remote query protocol.

Federated search

Windows Explorer also supports federating search to external data sources, such as custom databases or web services, that are exposed over the web and described via an OpenSearch definition. The federated location description (called a Search Connector) is provided as a .osdx file. Once installed, the data source becomes queryable directly from Windows Explorer. Windows Explorer features, such as previews and thumbnails, work with the results of a federated search as well.

Start menu

The start orb now has a fade-in highlight effect when the user moves the mouse over it.

The search results pane in Windows 7, demonstrating a search for the word "wireless".

Windows 7's Start Menu retains the two-column layout of its predecessors, with several functional changes:

• The "Documents", "Pictures" and "Music" buttons now link to the Libraries of the same name.
• A "Devices and Printers" option has been added that displays a new device manager.
• The "shut down" icon in Windows Vista has been replaced with a text link indicating what action will be taken when the icon is clicked. The default action to take is now configurable through the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties window.
• Taskbar Jump Lists are presented in the Start Menu via a guillemet; when the user moves his or her mouse over the guillemet, or presses the right-arrow key, the right-hand side of the Start menu is widened and replaced with the application's Jump List.

The search box, first introduced with Windows Vista, has been extended to support searching Control Panel items. For example, clicking the Start button then typing "wireless" will show Control Panel options related to configuring and connecting to wireless network, adding Bluetooth devices, and troubleshooting. Group Policy settings for Windows Explorer provide the ability for administrators of an Active Directory domain, or an expert user to add up to five Internet web sites and five additional "search connectors" to the Search Results view in the Start menu. The links, which appear at the bottom of the pane, allow the search to be executed again on the selected web site or search connector. Microsoft suggests that network administrators could use this feature to enable searching of corporate Intranets or an internal SharePoint server.

Taskbar

The Windows Taskbar has seen its most significant revision since its introduction in Windows 95. The taskbar is 10 pixels taller than in Windows Vista to accommodate touch screen input and a new larger default icon size, though a smaller taskbar size is available. Running applications are denoted by a border frame around the icon, while applications can be pinned to the taskbar, so that shortcuts to them appear when they are not running. Within this border, a color effect (dependent on the predominant RGB value of the icon) that follows the mouse also indicates the opened status of the application. The glass taskbar is also more transparent. Taskbar buttons show icons by default, not application titles, unless they are set to not combine. Only icons are shown when the application is not running.

The Windows 7 taskbar, with the Desktop Window Manager disabled.

Pinned applications

The Quick Launch toolbar has been removed. The Windows 7 taskbar is more application-oriented than window-oriented, and therefore doesn't show window titles (these are instead shown when an icon is clicked if there are multiple windows, or hovered over). Applications can now be pinned to the taskbar allowing the user instant access to the applications they commonly use. There are a few ways to pin applications to the taskbar. One can drag and drop the icon onto the taskbar. The other way to do so is by right-clicking the application’s icon and pinning the icon to the taskbar.

Windows 7's taskbar shows user a preview of the window.

Thumbnail previews

Thumbnail previews which were introduced in Windows Vista have been expanded to not only preview the windows opened by the application in a small-sized thumbnail view, but to also interact with them. The user can close any windows opened by clicking the X on the corresponding thumbnail preview. The name of the window is also shown in the thumbnail previews. Another new feature added is the ability to get a "peek" of the window by hovering over the thumbnail preview. Peeking brings up only the window of the thumbnail preview over which the mouse hovers and turns any other windows on the desktop transparent. This also works for tabs in Internet Explorer; individual tabs may be peeked at in the thumbnail previews. In addition to these features, thumbnail previews give access to basic features of an application by integrating them into the previews themselves. For example, if Windows Media Player is opened and the mouse is hovering on the application icon, the thumbnail preview will allow the user the ability to Play, Stop, and Play Next/Previous track without having to actually open Windows Media Player.

Windows Media Player Jump List.

Jump list

These are menu options available from right-clicking any of the icons on the taskbar or by holding the left mouse button and sliding up on an icon. Each application will have unique jump lists which will correspond to the features unique to the application whether it be recent files opened or common tasks. For example, a Microsoft Word jump list might display all the recent documents opened. The Windows Media Player jump list, for example, displays recently played tracks and playlists that have been played. Internet Explorer's jump bar displays recent history of websites. Windows Live Messenger's jump list displays select common tasks such as instant messaging, signing off, and changing online status.

The redesigned notification area and a balloon notification showing the Action Center messages.

Notification area

The notification area has been redesigned; the standard Volume, Network, Power and Action Center (now renamed "Action") status icons are present, but no other application icons are shown unless the user has chosen for them to be shown. A new "Notification Area Icons" control panel has been added which replaces the "Customize Notification Icons" dialog box in the "Taskbar and Start Menu Properties" window first introduced in Windows XP . In addition to being able to configure whether the application icons are shown, the ability to hide each application's notification balloons has been added. The user can then view the notifications at a later time.

A triangle to the left of the visible notification icons displays the hidden notification icons to the user. Unlike Windows Vista and Windows XP, the hidden icons are displayed in a window above the taskbar, instead of on the taskbar. Icons can be dragged between this window and the notification area.

Windows 7 desktop displayed through Peek.

Aero Peek

In past versions of Windows, the taskbar ended with the notification area on the right side. However, there is now the Aero Peek button, which, when clicked or hovered over with the mouse, displays the desktop and gadgets by turning all windows transparent. This replaces the Show Desktop shortcut in the Quick Launch bar in previous versions of Windows. Aero Peek exhibits the same features used by the thumbnail previews, except it applies them to the desktop. If the mouse hovers over it, all windows are transparent, as shown in the picture. If the button is clicked, all applications are minimized, and when clicked again, they are restored.

Window management mouse gestures

Aero Snap; Window maximizing and tiling

Windows can be dragged to the top of the screen to maximize them and dragged away to restore them. Dragging a window to the left or right of the screen makes it take up half the screen allowing the user to tile two windows next to each other. Also resizing the window to the bottom of the screen or top will extend the window full but retain the width of the window. These features can be disabled via the Ease of Access Center if users do not wish the windows to automatically resize.

Aero Shake

Aero Shake allows users to clear up any clutter on their screen by shaking (dragging back and forth) a window of their choice with the mouse. All other windows will minimize, while the window the user shook stays active on the screen. When the window is shaken again, they are all restored, similar to desktop preview.

Keyboard shortcuts

A variety of new keyboard shortcuts have been introduced.

Global keyboard shortcuts:

• Win+Space operates as a keyboard shortcut for Aero Peek.
• Win+Up and Win+Down are new shortcuts for Maximize and Restore/Minimize.
• Win+Shift+Up vertically maximises the current window
• Win+Left and Win+Right snap the current window to the left or right half of the current display; successive keypresses will move the window to other monitors in a multi-monitor configuration.
• Win+Left and Win+Right move the current window to the left or right display.
• Win+ + and Win+ − (minus sign) zoom the desktop in and out.
• Win+Home operates as a keyboard shortcut for Aero Shake.
• Win+P shows an "external display options" selector that gives the user the choice of showing the desktop on only the computer's screen, only the external display, on both at the same time (mirroring), or on both displays with independent desktops (extending).

Taskbar:

• Shift + Click, or Middle click starts a new instance of the application, regardless of whether it's already running.
• Ctrl + Shift + Click starts a new instance with Administrator privileges; by default, a User Account Control prompt will be displayed.
• Shift + Right-click shows the classic Window menu (Restore / Minimize / Move / etc); right-clicking on the application's thumbnail image will also show this menu. If the icon being clicked on is a grouped icon, the classic menu with Restore All / Minimize All / Close All menu is shown.
• Ctrl + Click on a grouped icon cycles between the windows (or tabs) in the group.

Font management

The user interface for font management has been overhauled. As with Windows Vista, the collection of installed fonts is shown in a Windows Explorer window, but fonts from the same font family appear as "stacks" instead of as individual icons. A user can then double-click on the font stack and see the individual font. A preview of the font is displayed as part of the icon as well. New options for hiding installed fonts are included; a hidden font remains installed, but is not enumerated when an application asks for a list of available fonts. Windows Vista had received considerable criticism for including the same "Add Font" dialog that had existed as far back as Windows NT 3:1, this dialog has been removed.

The Font dialog box has also been updated to show previews of the font selection in the selection lists.

The fontview.exe default font viewing application has replaced the "Properties" button with a "Install" button.

Devices

There are two major new user interface components for device management in Windows 7, "Devices and Printers" and "Device Stage". Both of these are integrated with Windows Explorer, and together provide a simplified view of what devices are connected to the computer, and what capabilities they support.

Devices and Printers

The new Devices and Printers Control Panel.

Devices and Printers is a new Control Panel interface that is directly accessible from the Start menu. Unlike the Device Manager Control Panel applet, which is still present, the icons shown on the Devices and Printers screen is limited to components of the system that a non-expert user will recognize as plug-in devices. For example, an external monitor connected to the system will be displayed as a device, but the internal monitor on a laptop will not. Device-specific features are available through the context menu for each device; an external monitor's context menu, for example, provides a link to the "Display Settings" control panel.

This new Control Panel applet also replaces the "Printers" window in prior versions of Windows; common printer operations such as setting the default printer, installing or removing printers, and configuring properties such as paper size are done through this control panel.

A Device Stage window showing available options for a Sansa e250 portable music player .

Device Stage provides a centralized location for an externally-connected multi-function device to present its functionality to the user. When a device such as a portable music player is connected to the system, the device appears as an icon on the task bar, as well as in Windows Explorer.

Windows 7 ships with high-resolution images of a number of popular devices, and is capable of connecting to the Internet to download images of devices it doesn't recognize. Opening the icon presents a window that displays actions relevant to that device. Screenshots of the technology presented by Microsoft suggest that a mobile phone could offer options for two-way synchronization, configuring ring-tones, copying pictures and videos, managing the device in Windows Media Palyer , and using Windows Explorer to navigate through the device. Other device status information such as free memory and battery life can also be shown. The actual per-device functionality is defined via XML files that are downloaded when the device is first connected to the computer, or are provided by the manufacturer on an installation disc.

Methods of input

Hilton Locke, who worked on the Tablet PC team at Microsoft, reported on December 11, 2007 that Windows 7 will have new touch features. An overview of the multi-touch capabilities, including a virtual piano program, a mapping and directions program and a touch-aware version of Paint, was demonstrated at the All Things Digital Conference on May 27, 2008. A video demonstrating the multi-touch capabilities was later made available on the web on the same day.

Bill Gates has said that Windows 7 is also "a big step forward" for speech technology and handwriting recognition.

Graphics

DirectX

• TheDirectX version has been updated to 11.
• Direct3D 11 will be included with Windows 7. It is a strict super-set of Direct3D 10.1, which was introduced in Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008, and will also be available for those platforms.
• Direct 2D and DirectWrite , new hardware accelerated vector graphics and font rendering APIs built on top of Direct3D 10 that are intended to replace GDI /GDI+ for native-code graphics and text drawing.
• WARP, a software rasterizer component for DirectX that provides all of the capabilities of Direct3D 10.0 and 10.1 in software.
• DXVA-HD

Desktop Window Manager

First introduced in Windows Vista, the DWM in Windows 7 has been updated to use version 10.1 of Direct3D API, and its performance has been improved significantly.

The Desktop Window Manager still requires at least a Direct3D 9-capable video card (realized with D3D10_FEATURE_LEVEL device type introduced with the Direct3D 11 runtime), though it can use lower specification hardware that wasn't able to display Aero's 3D Desktop in Windows Vista, including the older Intel GMA chips.

With a video driver conforming a Windows Display Driver Model v1.1 (a feature that requires a Direct3D 10-capable video card), DWM uses significantly less system memory, and the amount of system memory used will remain constant regardless of how many windows are opened. Systems equipped with a WDDM 1.0 video card (including those only capable of Direct3D 9 features) will operate in the same fashion as in Windows Vista.

The Desktop Window Manager in Windows 7 also adds support for systems using multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors.

File system

Solid state drives

In order to take advantage of the capabilities and unique performance characteristics of solid state drives, Windows 7 will turn off Windows Disk Defragmenter , and will make use of the new SSD TRIM command to physically erase logically deleted data more aggressively, so that it won't need to be done later when new data is written to the same block. Windows 7 will also format a partition on a SSD differently from a mechanical hard disk drive. Microsoft explained in a WinHEC 2008 presentation that in prior releases of Microsoft Windows, the alignment of the start of a partition would place it in the middle of a single page on an SSD drive, which can reduce performance by 50%.

Virtual hard disks

The Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows 7 incorporate support for the Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) file format. VHD files can be mounted as drives, created, and booted from, in the same way as WIM files. Furthermore, an installed version of Windows 7 can be booted and run from a VHD drive, even on non-virtual hardware , thereby providing a new way to multi-boot Windows. Some features such as hibernation are not available when booting from VHD.

Disk partitioning

The default disk partitioning structure is to create two partitions : the first for booting, Bitlocker and running the Windows Recovery Environment and second to install the operating system.

Removable Media

Windows 7 has also seen improvements to the Safely Remove Hardware menu, including the ability to eject just one camera card at the same time (from a single hub) and retain the ports for future use without reboot; and removable media is now also listed under its label, rather than just its drive letter like it was from Windows ME/2000 - Vista. Also, Windows Explorer now (by default) only shows ports from a card reader in the My Computer menu which actually have a card present.

BitLocker to Go

BitLocker brings encryption support to removable disks such as USB drives. Such devices can be protected by a passphrase, a recovery key, or be automatically unlocked on a computer

Boot performance

According to data gathered from the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program, 35% of Vista SP1 installations boot up in 30 seconds or less. The more lengthy boot times on the remainder of the machines are mainly due to some services or programs that are loaded but are not required when the system is first started. Microsoft's Mike Fortin, a Distinguished Engineer on the Windows team, noted in August 2008 that Microsoft has set aside a team to work solely on the issue, and that team aims to "significantly increase the number of systems that experience very good boot times." They "focused very hard on increasing parallelism of driver initialization." Also, it aims to "dramatically reduce" the number of system services, along with their processor, storage, and memory demands.

Multimedia

Windows Media Center

Windows Media Center in Windows 7

Windows Media Center in Windows 7 has retained much of the design and feel of its predecessor, but with a variety of user interface shortcuts and browsing capabilities. Playback of H 264 Video both locally and through a Media Center Extender (including the Xbox 360) is supported.

Some notable enhancements in Windows 7 Media Center include: a new mini guide, a new scrub bar, the option to color code the guide by show type, internet content is more tightly integrated with regular TV via the guide. All Windows 7 versions now support up to four tuners of each type (QAM, ATSC, CableCARD, NTSC, etc).

When browsing the media library, items that don't have album art are shown in a range of foreground and background color combinations instead of using white text on a blue background. When the left or right remote control buttons are held down to browse the library quickly, a two-letter prefix of the current album name is prominently shown as a visual aid. The Picture Library includes new slideshow capabilities, and individual pictures can be rated.

For television support, the Windows Media Center "TV Pack" released by Microsoft in 2008 is incorporated into Windows Media Center. This includes support for CableCARD and North American (ATSC) clear QAM tuners, as well as creating lists of favorite stations.

A Windows Media Cente gadget is included as well.

Security

The Windows Security Center has been renamed to Windows Action Center (Windows Health Center and Windows Solution Center in earlier builds) which encompasses both security and maintenance of the computer.

A new User Account Control user interface has been introduced, which provides the ability to select four different levels of notifications. Geo-tracking will also be available in Windows 7. The feature will be disabled by default. When enabled the user will only have limited control as to which applications can track their location.

In Windows Vista, the Protected User-Mode Audio (PUMA) content protection facilities are only available to applications that are running in a Protected Media Path environment. Because only the Media Foundation application Foundation programming interface could interact with this environment, a media player application had to be designed to use Media Foundation. In Windows 7, this restriction is lifted. PUMA also incorporates stricter enforcement of "Copy Never" bits when using Serial Copy Management System (SCMS) copy protection over a S/PIDF connection, as well as with HDCP over HDMI connections.

Biometrics

Windows 7 includes the new Windows Biometric Framework. This framework consists of a set of components that standardizes the use of fingerprint biometric devices. In prior releases of Microsoft Windows, biometric hardware device manufacturers are required to provide a complete stack of software to support their device, including device drivers, software development kits, and support applications. Microsoft noted in a whitepaper on the Windows Biometric Framework that the proliferation of these proprietary stacks resulted in incompatibility issues, compromised the quality and reliability of the system, and made servicing and maintenance more difficult. By incorporating the core biometric functionality into the operating system, Microsoft aims to bring biometric device support on par with other classes of devices.

A new Control Panel called Biometric Device Control Panel is included which provides an interface for deleting stored biometrics information, troubleshooting, and enabling or disabling the types of logins that are allowed using biometrics. Biometrics configuration can also be configured using Group Policysettings.

DNSSEC

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 introduce support for Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC), a set of specifications for securing certain kinds of information provided by the Domain Name Systems (DNS) as used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks. DNSSEC employs digital signatures to ensure the authenticity of DNS data received from a DNS server, which protect against DNS cache poisoning attacks.

Calculator has also be re-written :)

I’ll also be providing you with the link to check out the new features very soon.