The call has gone out to smokers to use World No Tobacco Day as the ideal time to quit the habit.

The smoking rates on the North Coast are higher than the state average, with 28.5 per cent of males and 20.6 per cent of females still smoking.

Today is World No Tobacco Day.

North Coast Area Health Service smoke free coordinator Annie Kia said quitting smoking was the most important thing a person could do to improve their health.

“Many people do not understand that addicted smokers are seeking to keep their levels of nicotine steady in their blood,” she said.

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Source: Port Macquarie News

Microsoft’s next version of Internet Explorer will tackle many of the criticisms levelled at the current version, especially over security, says the head of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer division. Internet Explorer 7 is currently out in its second beta version, with the final version due for release in the second half of this year. It’s the first significant update of the browser since version 6 was released in 2001.

Microsoft’s group program manager for Internet Explorer, Tony Chor, detailed the browser’s new features during the Webstock web design conference in Wellington last week. Most importantly, Mr Chor says the new version improves the browser’s security, one of the main complaints with version 6. In Vista, the browser will run in “protected mode”, writing only to a temporary cache. Mr Chor says this will stop attacks that use the browsers’ default administrator privileges to install spyware.

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Source: Stuff via MSFN

A senior Google engineer has told how he was “wowed” by an Australian search engine tool developed at the University of New South Wales.

“I think it’s pretty special,” said Mr Rob Pike, a principal engineer at the world’s leading internet search company, speaking about the Orion search engine process.

Earlier this year, Google bought the rights to the advanced text search algorithm for an undisclosed sum and hired the doctoral student who developed it, Mr Ori Allon.

Mr Pike, who splits his year between Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California and the Sydney office, says he often visits universities and checks out research projects.

“[But] this is the first time I’ve walked out and said: ‘Wow! We should buy this stuff’. So it’s pretty unique,” Mr Pike said in an interview.

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Source: SMH

Symantec disclosed this week that researchers have discovered a software vulnerability that could allow hackers to take remote control of a PC and that it is working to verify the hole and provide a patch.

Symantec was at pains to point out that its mass market Norton products are not affected. More importantly, it said no customers had been affected and there is no known exploit.

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Source: The Register via Flexbeta

This product update improves code generated by Dreamweaver for server behaviors and for active content such as Flash. If you haven’t installed the 8.0.1 updater yet, simply install the 8.0.2 updater to get all the fixes for both updates.

Download: Dreamweaver 8.0.2 Update
View: Adobe Homepage

Old IT timer Silicon Graphics has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a move that will hurt Intel. SGI is a major Itanium customer.

The sad news comes after the firm lost both its CFO, its COO and its CEO earlier this year. In November last year, its shares were suspended on the New York Stock Exchange.

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Source: The Inquirer via Wall Street Journal

New security features in Windows Vista will largely eliminate the need to run separate antispyware or firewall software, according to a new analyst report. Due out early next year, the next major release of Microsoft’s flagship operating system promises not only to increase security for consumers, it will also dramatically affect the $3.6 billion market for Windows security products, according to a Yankee Group report scheduled to be published Monday.

“Yankee Group expects Vista to significantly shrink the aftermarket for antispyware and desktop firewalls,” analyst Andrew Jaquith wrote in the report. Additionally, Microsoft’s first new operating system release in five years may reduce the need for disk encryption, device control and certain types of host intrusion prevention software, Jaquith wrote.

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Source: C|Net News via MSFN

Intel plans to unveil a single brand name for a new generation of chips for laptop PCs and desktop machines, calling them the Core 2 Duo.

The company is counting on the chips, which are based on a new design, to regain market share lost to several high-performing chips made by competitor Advanced Micro Devices. Intel’s new architecture, dubbed “Core,” delivers two processors on a single chip, driving better performance while consuming less power.

Core 2 Duo will phase out the Pentium 4 brand for desktop processors and the Core Duo for laptop chips. The older brands were based on two different designs. The chips, code-named Conroe for desktops and Merom for laptops, are scheduled to start shipping in the third quarter.

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Source: SMH

Submitted by Albert119
Magic Utilities is a cute program designed to make your computer clean and more
stable.These utilities include Uninstller Plus,StartUp Organizer,Process
Killer.Magic Utilities enables you to easily and safely uninstall programs;inspect
and manage the programs that automatically start when your turn on or logon to your
computer;lists and controls all currently running processes(system and hidden
processes are also shown).With a cool and user-friendly interface makes it easy for
anyone to use Magic Utilities.

New feature include:
Add option to Disable Uninstall/Delete with Magic Utilities in context menu.
Other small bug fixed.

Download: Magic Utilities 2006
View: Magic Utilities Homepage

CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) is a freeware system optimisation tool. That removes unused and temporary files from your system - allowing it to run faster, more efficiently and giving you more hard disk space. The best part is that it’s fast! (normally taking less that a second to run) and Free.

Download: CCleaner 1.29.295 Standard (1,442KB) | Basic (558KB - No Toolbar) | Slim (416KB - English Only, No Toolbar)
View: Changelog | Screenshots
Source: MSFN