The social networking phenomenon started as a way of American college students to keep in touch. It is rapidly catching up with MySpace, and has left others like Bebo in its wake.

But there is a dark side to the success story that’s been spreading across the blogosphere. A complex but riveting Big Brother-type conspiracy theory which links Facebook to the CIA and the US Department of Defence.

The CIA is, though, using a Facebook group to recruit staff for its very sexy sounding National Clandestine Service.

Checking out the job ads does require a Facebook login, so if you haven’t joined the site – or are worried that CIA spooks will start following you home from work -check them out on the agency’s own site.

The story starts once Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had launched, after the dorm room drama that’s led to the current court case.

Facebook’s first round of venture capital funding ($US500,000) came from former Paypal CEO Peter Thiel. Author of anti-multicultural tome ‘The Diversity Myth’, he is also on the board of radical conservative group VanguardPAC.

The second round of funding into Facebook ($US12.7 million) came from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Its manager James Breyer was formerly chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, and served on the board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. One of the company’s key areas of expertise are in “data mining technologies”.

Breyer also served on the board of R&D firm BBN Technologies, which was one of those companies responsible for the rise of the internet.

Dr Anita Jones joined the firm, which included Gilman Louie. She had also served on the In-Q-Tel’s board, and had been director of Defence Research and Engineering for the US Department of Defence.

She was also an adviser to the Secretary of Defence and overseeing the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is responsible for high-tech, high-end development.

It was when a journalist lifted the lid on the DARPA’s Information Awareness Office that the public began to show concern at its information mining projects.

Wikipedia’s IAO page says: “the IAO has the stated mission to gather as much information as possible about everyone, in a centralised location, for easy perusal by the United States government, including (though not limited to) internet activity, credit card purchase histories, airline ticket purchases, car rentals, medical records, educational transcripts, driver’s licenses, utility bills, tax returns, and any other available data.”.

Not surprisingly, the backlash from civil libertarians led to a Congressional investigation into DARPA’s activity, the Information Awareness Office lost its funding.

Now the internet conspiracy theorists are citing Facebook as the IAO’s new mask.

Parts of the IAO’s technology round-up included ‘human network analysis and behaviour model building engines’, which Facebook’s massive volume of neatly-targeted data gathering allows for.

Facebook’s own Terms of use state: “by posting Member Content to any part of the Web site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, reformat, translate, excerpt and distribute such information and content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorpoate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorise sublicenses of the foregoing.

And in its equally interesting privacy policy: “Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (eg. photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalised experience. By using Facebook, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States.”

Is the CIA really providing the impetus and the funding behind the monster growth of this year’s biggest dot com success story? Maybe only the men with the nice suits and ear pieces can answer that.

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Manufacturer: Apple
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Apple IPod Nano With Multi-Touch 16GB (New)

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Manufacturer: Apple
Model Number: IPod Nano 16GB (New
Apple September 2010 Music Event-The iPod Nano Touch

iPod Nano (2011) Review!

Apple iPod Nano (Sixth Generation)

It uses flash memory for storage. The iPod Nano has gone through six models, or generations, since its introduction. The current “sixth generation” iPod Nano supports FM radio, a pedometer, and a 39.1 millimetres (1.54 in) square 240×240 display with a multitouch interface.

Supported audio formats

AAC (16 to 320 kbps)
Protected AAC (from the iTunes Store)
MP3 (16 to 320 Kib/s, including variable bitrate files)
Audible (formats 2, 3 and 4)
Apple Lossless
AIFF
WAV
MP4
History

Development work on the design of the iPod Nano started only nine months before its launch date. The Nano was launched in two colors (black and white) with two available sizes: 2 GB (roughly 500 songs) and 4 GB (1000 songs). On February 7, 2006, Apple updated the lineup with the 1 GB model (240 songs). Apple also released some accessories, including armbands and silicone “tubes” designed to bring color to the Nano and protect it from scratches, as well as a combination lanyard-earphone accessory that hangs around the neck, and avoids the problem of tangled earphone cords.
Electronics

The iPod Nano uses general-purpose integrated circuits (IC) instead of smaller, low-cost custom-developed chips, possibly to reduce time-to-market. This design, however, increases the number of electronic components and increases the cost. Japanese engineers estimated the component cost of the 2 GB Nano as between JP¥ 22,000 and JP¥ 27,000 (US$ 185-US$ 227), which was high compared to the retail price of JP¥21,800 (US$183) at the time.[citation needed] The cost of 2 GB Nano flash memory was about JP¥14,000 (US$118).[citation needed] Apple also opted for the 0603 (1.6×0.8 mm) surface mount technology which was just beginning widespread use in mobile phones in 2005.The iPod Nano uses a PortalPlayer PP5021C “system on a chip” with dual embedded 80 MHz ARM 7TDMI processors.
Reception
The first generation iPod Nano packaging.

The size of the package was reduced 50 percent with the introduction of the second generation.The fourth and fifth generation packaging mimics this packaging, while the third generation used a larger but otherwise similar version of it.
The initial consumer response to the iPod Nano was overwhelmingly positive and sales were heavy. The Nano sold its first million units in only 17 days, helping Apple Inc. to a record billion-dollar profit in 2005.
Apple’s release of the iPod Nano as a replacement for the iPod Mini was viewed by many as a risky move.Steve Jobs has argued that the iPod Nano was a necessary risk since competitors were beginning to catch up to the iPod Mini in terms of design and features, and believed the iPod Nano would prove to be even more popular and successful than the iPod Mini.
Within days of the Nano’s release, some users reported damage to the Nano, suggesting that the LCD screen had become so scratched that it was unreadable, even when the backlight was on. Many have reported fine scratches on their Nano caused by microfiber cloths. Other owners reported that their Nano’s screen cracked with no provocation. On 27 September 2005, Apple confirmed a small percentage (“less than 1/10 of 1 percent”) of iPod Nanos shipped with a faulty screen and agreed to replace any Nanos with cracked screens, but denied the iPod Nano was more susceptible to scratching than prior iPods.Apple started shipping iPod Nanos with a protective sleeve to protect them from scratches. In October 2005 a class action lawsuit was filed against Apple, with the plaintiffs seeking reimbursement for the device, legal fees, and “unlawful or illegal profits” from sales of the iPod Nano. Lawyers for the plaintiffs claim that the devices “scratch excessively during normal usage, rendering the screen on the Nanos unreadable, and violating state consumer protection statutes”. Similar lawsuits were later filed in Mexico and the United Kingdom. As of early 2009, Apple is in the process of settling a court case over the scratched iPod Nano screens, it has been suggested for Apple to set aside $22 million to refund users. A Judge will need to sign off the terms by 28 April 2009.[14] Some commentators such as BusinessWeek’s Arik Hesseldahl have criticized the lawsuits. Hesseldahl dismissed them as “stupid” and suggested that they benefitted “no one but the trial lawyers,” but also suggested that Apple could have avoided litigation by offering “full refunds on unwanted Nanos” instead of charging a re-stocking fee and lengthening the return period from 14 days (when purchased through Apple retail or online) to 30 or 60 days.
Incidents

In Australia, an iPod Nano caught fire while being charged on a PC. Since the limited warranty was over, the consumer was not able to get a replacement right away.
Another iPod incident happened in the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport while a man was working in the airport.His iPod Nano set his pants on fire. Apple Inc., refused to release a statement regarding this issue.
In addition, an iPod Nano sparked in Japan in January while it was recharging.Although no one was injured during the incident, Apple Inc. investigated the incident.It was reported on 19 August 2008 that 17 incidents of abnormal overheating with first-generation iPod Nano units while recharging had been reported in Japan, including cases in which tatami mats had been charred. On August 10, 2010, Apple Japan released a statement saying that it would replace any iPod Nanos that overheated.

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A diverse cast of cosmic characters is showcased in the first survey images NASA released Wednesday from its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

Copy Righted Pictures By Nasa.gov

Since WISE began its scan of the entire sky in infrared light on Jan. 14, the space telescope has beamed back more than a quarter of a million raw, infrared images. Four new, processed pictures illustrate a sampling of the mission’s targets — a wispy comet, a bursting star-forming cloud, the grand Andromeda galaxy and a faraway cluster of hundreds of galaxies. The images are online at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features…

“WISE has worked superbly,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “These first images are proving the spacecraft’s secondary mission of helping to track asteroids, comets and other stellar objects will be just as critically important as its primary mission of surveying the entire sky in infrared.”

One image shows the beauty of a comet called Siding Spring. As the comet parades toward the sun, it sheds dust that glows in infrared light visible to WISE. The comet’s tail, which stretches about 10 million miles, looks like a streak of red paint. A bright star appears below it in blue.

“We’ve got a candy store of images coming down from space,” said Edward (Ned) Wright of UCLA, the principal investigator for WISE. “Everyone has their favorite flavors, and we’ve got them all.”

During its survey, the mission is expected to find perhaps dozens of comets, including some that ride along in orbits that take them somewhat close to Earth’s path around the sun. WISE will help unravel clues locked inside comets about how our solar system came to be.

Another image shows a bright and choppy star-forming region called NGC 3603, lying 20,000 light-years away in the Carina spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. This star-forming factory is churning out batches of new stars, some of which are monstrously massive and hotter than the sun. The hot stars warm the surrounding dust clouds, causing them to glow at infrared wavelengths.

WISE will see hundreds of similar star-making regions in our galaxy, helping astronomers piece together a picture of how stars are born. The observations also provide an important link to understanding violent episodes of star formation in distant galaxies. Because NGC 3603 is much closer, astronomers use it as a lab to probe the same type of action that is taking place billions of light-years away.

Traveling farther out from our Milky Way, the third new image shows our nearest large neighbor, the Andromeda spiral galaxy. Andromeda is a bit bigger than our Milky Way and about 2.5 million light-years away. The new picture highlights WISE’s wide field of view — it covers an area larger than 100 full moons and even shows other smaller galaxies near Andromeda, all belonging to our “local group” of more than about 50 galaxies. WISE will capture the entire local group.

The fourth WISE picture is even farther out, in a region of hundreds of galaxies all bound together into one family. Called the Fornax cluster, these galaxies are 60 million light-years from Earth. The mission’s infrared views reveal both stagnant and active galaxies, providing a census of data on an entire galactic community.

“All these pictures tell a story about our dusty origins and destiny,” said Peter Eisenhardt, the WISE project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “WISE sees dusty comets and rocky asteroids tracing the formation and evolution of our solar system. We can map thousands of forming and dying solar systems across our entire galaxy. We can see patterns of star formation across other galaxies, and waves of star-bursting galaxies in clusters millions of light years away.”

Other mission targets include comets, asteroids and cool stars called brown dwarfs. WISE discovered its first near-Earth asteroid on Jan. 12, and first comet on Jan. 22. The mission will scan the sky one-and-a-half times by October. At that point, the frozen coolant needed to chill its instruments will be depleted.

JPL manages WISE for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The mission was competitively selected under NASA’s Explorers Program, which NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages. The Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, built the science instrument, and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., built the spacecraft. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about WISE, visit http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://wise.astro.ucla.edu and http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wise.

Test Drive Unlimited 2 Review

Test Drive Unlimited 2 (TDU2) is an upcoming racing video game developed by Eden Games and published by Atari. It will be the sequel to Test Drive Unlimited and the tenth game in the series. The release date is planned to be 8 February 2011 for North America and 11 February for Europe.

Gameplay

There will be a storyline in Test Drive Unlimited 2 to follow for the player. To progress through the game, the player has to earn experience points to level up through the 60 levels. These points can be earned via 4 categories:
Competition (racing, completing challenges)
Social (making friends in the game, race against other people, joining clubs)
Discovery (discover all roads, take photographs of specific locations, find all car wrecks)
Collection (buy cars, houses, furniture, clothing/basic need’s)
There are an additional 10 Levels available to those who acquire the TDU2 Casino Online DLC/Pre-order Bonus, these levels are achieved within the casino itself.

The player can earn extra money depending with how the player drives. Driving like a daredevil and performing stunts, drifting through turns at high speed’s and evading crashes and the traffic will earn the player extra cash. Exploring the island lets the player find vehicle wrecks which will unlock exclusive vehicles at the dealerships on the island. The player can also walk out of the car in certain areas. The player’s avatar can be altered by changing hair, clothes, physical appearance and their attitude and facial feature’s, and they can also buy houses. Co-op will also make an appearance in the game including a Follow-the-Leader mode. In this mode, players will have to complete a route by driving through checkpoints. When a checkpoint is passed by the leader, the game promotes one of the other drivers as leader. Working together properly is made even more important as only the leader can see the route on his GPS display.

Arrestation de Wael GHANIM – Directeur marke ting Google – لحظة اعتقال وائل غنيم

The government has cut off Internet services in the country in an attempt to restrict contact among the protesters. The statement said that Google’s “safety of our employees is very important for Google .. so we hope everyone has the contact information phone 00442070313008 in the UK.”

He added that Google has temporarily closed its office in Cairo to ensure public safety for its employees. And killed at least 140 people since the start of the protests against President Hosni Mubarak on Tuesday. Most of those killed in clashes between protesters and police.
نسيسكو: أكدت شركة غوغل إن مدير التسويق في الشرق الاوسط وشمال أفريقيا مفقود في مصر. واضافت أن وائل غنيم شوهد اخر مرة يوم الخميس في وسط القاهرة التي تهزها احتجاجات مناهضة للحكومة.

وقطعت الحكومة خدمات الانترنت في البلاد في محاولة لتقييد الاتصال بين المحتجين. وأفاد بيان لغوغل أن “سلامة موظفينا مهمة جدا بالنسبة لغوغل.. لذا نرجو كل من لديه معلومات الاتصال بالهاتف 00442070313008 في المملكة المتحدة.”

وأضاف أن غوغل أغلقت مؤقتا مكتبها في القاهرة لضمان السلامة العامة لموظفيها. وقتل ما لا يقل عن 140 شخصا منذ بدء الاحتجاجات المناهضة للرئيس حسني مبارك يوم الثلاثاء الماضي. ومعظم هؤلاء قتلوا في اشتباكات بين المحتجين والشرطة.

Click Below to Download

Firefox 4 Beta 9  >> Download

Firefox 4 Beta 8  >> Download

_________________________________________________________________________

Wallpapers:

Firefox 4 Beta 9 Features Video:

Features:

Mozilla Firefox 4 includes many new features since version 3.6.

User Interface

Firefox 4 will bring a new, “faster” user interface. Early mockups of the new interface on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux were first made available in July 2009.

New features include improved “doorhanger” notifications, Firefox Panorama, application tabs, a redesigned extension manager, Jetpack extensions support, integration with Firefox Sync, and support for multitouch displays.

Many changes were made to the user interface. By default, tabs are now on the top of the window. The “stop” “refresh” and “go” buttons have been combined into a single button, placed on the right side of the address bar. The button dynamically changes based on the current state of the page. On Windows Vista and Windows 7, the menu bar is hidden by default with the most common actions moved to a new “Firefox” menu in the upper left hand corner of the browser (similar to the menu button found in Opera). Users can create persistent “app tabs”, and customize the tab bar, as well as the bookmark and navigation bars.

Engine:

Firefox 4 is based on the Gecko 2.0 engine, which adds and improves support for HTML5, CSS3, WebM, and WebGL. Also, it includes a new JavaScript engine (JägerMonkey) and better XPCOM APIs.

JägerMonkey is a new JavaScript engine, designed to work alongside the TraceMonkey engine introduced with Firefox 3.5. It improves performance by compiling “non-traceable” JavaScript into machine language for faster execution.

Firefox 4 is the first version of Firefox to drop native support of the Gopher protocol; however, continued support is available through an add-on.

Firefox 4 introduces an audio API, which supports many effects for presenting sound data in HTML5 pages. It allows, for example, to visualise raw sound data, to use filters or to show the audio spectrum. Both reading and writing audio data is possible.

Performance:

Firefox 4 has marked a major change in performance in comparison to former versions 3.6 and 3.5. The browser has made significant progress in Sunspider JavaScript tests as well as improvements in supporting HTML5.

Since Firefox 4.0 Beta 5, hardware acceleration is enabled by default on Windows Vista and Windows 7 machines using Direct2D. Using hardware acceleration allows the browser to tap into the computer’s graphics processing unit, lifting the burden from the CPU. This allows pages to be rendered much faster.

Soon, it may help NASA scientists teleconference in three dimensions.
CES 2011: Xbox 360 Kinect Demo Pods

GAME REVIEW – Kinect vs. PS Move

Xbox 360 Kinect – Kinectimals Gameplay

Researchers at the NASA Astrobiology Institute outside Mountain View are considering the purchase of several Kinects to enable scientists to cheaply teleconference and share 3-D data, using nothing more than Microsoft’s gaming peripheral and some software developed at UC Davis.

It’s all because of a $150 device that hackers, hobbyists and even government scientists are using in ways it was never intended: the Kinect, a motion-tracking peripheral for the Xbox console that is packed with an irresistible blend of cameras and sensors.

Microsoft reportedly spent hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the Kinect, which has been a runaway hit. The company has sold 8 million of the devices since it was released, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

While Kinect hacking became a popular pastime worldwide shortly after the device’s Nov. 4 release, much of the most prominent work has taken place in and around Silicon Valley.

This month, Menlo Park technology incubator Willow Garage is sponsoring a contest for the most interesting new use of the Kinect’s depth sensor with a robot. The top prize is $3,000, and entries are beginning to roll in. Early entries have shown inventors controlling robots with their arms, making the robots do pushups and other tasks.

“We’ve always had sensors like these available, but they were very expensive,” said Tim Conley, the contest’s senior software engineer at Willow Garage. “As soon as the Kinect came out, everyone in the office could buy one. When something is cheap and almost disposable, you can play with it in ways you wouldn’t with something that’s much more expensive. You can endanger it.”

Much of the hacking to date has involved a 3-D camera, built by the Israeli company PrimeSense, which Microsoft licensed for the Kinect. When attached to a robot, the camera allows its host to perceive depth accurately – an ability essential to robots being able to navigate.

That’s important if your robot, like Patrick Bouffard’s, is airborne.

Late at night, after his children have gone to bed, Bouffard enters his laboratory at UC Berkeley and begins working with his small Kinect-enhanced helicopter.

Project Natal

Bouffard, 33, is a graduate student working on ways to help computer-guided vehicles avoid collisions. Last year, he began to hear chatter around the lab about the technology embedded in Project Natal, Microsoft’s codename for the product that became Kinect.

When the device came out, Bouffard read a posting on a Web forum challenging developers to take data from the Kinect and integrate it with Robot Operating System, the open-source software Bouffard and others use to create smarter robots.

Shortly afterward, following a meeting with his adviser, Bouffard and a fellow student both requested to speak with her. Both wanted to ask the same question: Can we buy some Kinects for the lab?

The adviser, Claire Tomlin, said yes, and Bouffard got his Kinect. With the Kinect attached, Bouffard’s 4-pound helicopter, called a quadrotor, could suddenly perceive objects in its path. He posted a video to YouTube of the quadrotor detecting an object in front of it and then stopping. The video was a viral hit; to date it has attracted nearly 800,000 views.

The project started off as something of a lark, Bouffard said, but he expects the Kinect will play a role in his research as he continues his work in robotics and collision avoidance.

The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft’s first foray into the gaming console market, and competed with Sony’s PlayStation 2, Sega’s Dreamcast, and Nintendo’s GameCube. The integrated Xbox Live service allowed players to compete online.
The Xbox was discontinued in late 2006, although the final Xbox game, Madden NFL 09 was released in August 2008. Support for out-of-warranty Xbox consoles was discontinued on March 2, 2009; any in-warranty repair now needed will not be undertaken and faulty consoles will be replaced with an Xbox 360 instead. Xbox Live support was discontinued on April 15, 2010

Xbox 360
Main articles: Xbox 360 and List of Xbox games compatible with Xbox 360
Nvidia ceased production of the Xbox’s GPU in August 2005, which marked the end of Xbox production and the quick release of the Xbox 360 on November 22, 2005. The Xbox 360 had superior storage, audio and video capabilities compared to the original Xbox.
When equipped with a removable hard drive add-on, the Xbox 360 supports a limited number of the Xbox’s game library through emulation. Emulation adds support for anti-aliasing as well as upscaling of the still standard definition image. These emulators are periodically updated to add compatibility for older games and are available free through Xbox Live or as a file download to be burned to a DVD-R from the Xbox web site. These updates are also available monthly as part of the demo disc that comes with each issue of Official Xbox Magazine. As the architectures are different between Xbox and Xbox 360, software emulation is the only way to have compatibility without including hardware from the original Xbox. According to Mircosoft the Xbox 360′s life span will last until 2015. More than doubling the life span of the original Xbox.

Controllers & Accessories

Original Xbox controller (left) with Controller S
The Xbox controller features two analog sticks, a pressure sensitive directional pad, two analog triggers, a Back button, a Start button, two accessory slots and six 8-bit analog action buttons (A/Green, B/Red, X/Blue, Y/Yellow, and Black and White buttons).[13] The standard Xbox controller (also known by many nicknames, such as the “Duke”, the “Fatty”, and the “Alarm Clock”)[who?] was originally the Xbox controller for all territories except Japan. The controller has been criticized for being bulky compared to other video game controllers (it was awarded “Blunder of the Year” by Game Informer in 2001[14] and a Guinness World Record for the biggest controller in Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition 2008, as well as being ranked the second worst video game controller ever by IGN editor Craig Harris.). The “Controller S”, a smaller, lighter Xbox controller, was originally the standard Xbox controller only in Japan (codenamed “Akebono”),[16] designed for users with smaller hands.The “Controller S” was released in other territories by popular demand and eventually replaced the standard controller in the Xbox’s retail package, with the larger original controller available as an accessory. An 8 MB removable solid state memory card can be plugged into the controllers, onto which game saves can either be copied from the hard drive when in the Xbox dashboard’s memory manager or saved during a game. Most Xbox games can be copied to the memory unit and to another console but some Xbox saves are digitally signed, each console has a unique signing key, and some games (e.g., Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball) will not load saved games signed by a different Xbox, limiting the utility of the memory card. Some game saves can be tagged as uncopyable or simply padded to over 8 MB (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic). The signing mechanism has been reverse-engineered by the Xbox hacking community, who have developed tools to modify savegames to work in a different console, though the signing key of the recipient Xbox (the “HDkey”) and the ramped-up title key of the game (the “authkey”) must be known. It is also possible to save an Xbox Live account on a memory unit, to simplify its use on more than one Xbox. The Xbox includes a standard AV cable which provides composite video and monaural or stereo audio to TVs equipped with RCA inputs. European Xboxes also included an RCA jack to SCART converter block as well as the standard AV cable.
Operating system

The Xbox runs a custom operating system which was once believed to be a modified version of the Windows 2000 kernel.[19] It exposes APIs similar to APIs found in Microsoft Windows, such as DirectX 8.1. The system software may have been based on the Windows NT architecture that powered Windows 2000; it is not a modified version of either.
The user interface for the Xbox is called the Xbox Dashboard. It features a media player that can be used to play music CDs, rip CDs to the Xbox’s built-in hard drive and play music that has been ripped to the hard drive; let users manage game saves, music and downloaded content from Xbox LIVE; and lets Xbox LIVE users sign in and manage their account. the dashboard is only available when the user is not watching a movie or playing a game. It uses many shades of green and black for the user interface, to be consistent with the physical Xbox color scheme. When the Xbox was released in 2001 the LIVE service was not online yet, so the dashboard’s LIVE feature was unusable.
Xbox LIVE was released in 2002, but in order to access it users had to buy the Xbox LIVE starter kit containing a headset, a subscription, and supplemental. While the Xbox was still being supported by Microsoft, the Xbox Dashboard was updated via Xbox LIVE several times to reduce cheating and add features.
Xbox Live

Xbox Live logo since 2005
Main article: Xbox Live
On November 15, 2002, Microsoft launched its Xbox Live online gaming service, allowing subscribers to play online Xbox games with other subscribers around the world and download new content directly to the system’s hard drive. The online service works only with a broadband Internet connection. Approximately 250,000 subscribers signed up within two months of Xbox Live’s launch.[20] In July 2004, Microsoft announced that Xbox Live had reached one million subscribers; in July 2005, membership reached two million, and by July 2007 there were more than 3 million subscribers. By May 2009, the number had ballooned to 20 million current subscribers.[21] On February 5, 2010, Marc Whitten posted on gamerscoreblog that Xbox Live support for the original Xbox games would be discontinued as of April 15, 2010.[4] Services were discontinued on schedule, but a group of 20 gamers continued to play for almost a month afterwards by simply leaving their consoles on connected to Halo 2.[22] APACHE N4SIR was the final user to play on the original Xbox’s Live Service and was finally disconnected on May 11, 2010 at 01:58 EDT (UTC-4).