(CNN) — NASA scientists revealed Friday a first-of-its-kind image from space showing reflecting sunlight from a lake on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.

It’s the first visual "smoking gun" evidence of liquid on the northern hemisphere of the moon, scientists said, and the first-ever photo from another world showing a "specular reflection" — which is reflection of light from an extremely smooth surface and in this case, a liquid one.

"This is the first time outside Earth we’ve seen specular reflection from another liquid from another body," said Ralf Jaumann, a scientist analyzing data from the Cassini unmanned space probe.

Jaumann said he was surprised when he first saw the photos transmitting from Cassini, orbiting Saturn about a billion miles from Earth.

"It was great because if you look at photos of planets, you mostly see nothing is happening. But in two hours we saw a glint of light getting brighter."

Titan’s similarities to Earth have attracted NASA’s attention for decades. It’s the only body besides our own in the solar system that is believed to have liquid on its surface. Like Earth, Titan has an atmosphere which is mostly nitrogen.

Experts believe the presence of liquid on a planet or moon improves the chances that some kind of life could develop there.

The photo comes from the spacecraft Cassini, which has been searching for this kind of reflection since it began circling Saturn in 2004.

Scientists with the University of Arizona were able to use previous data from Cassini to learn details about the reflection’s location on Titan.

The glint appears to be coming from the southern edge of a lake called Kraken Mare — a massive body of methane that covers about 150,000 square miles (400,000 square kilometers). That’s larger than the Caspian Sea, which is the largest lake on Earth.

The hunt for the specular reflection took five years, NASA said, because the moon’s northern half had been shrouded in winter darkness.

"Next, we want to find out more about Titan’s liquid," said Jaumann. "Do we have some kind of weather there? Do we have changes with seasons? Does it rain? How does the liquid methane run across the surface?"

But Jaumann sounded a note of caution regarding the prospect of life in this case.

"The temperature on Titan’s surface is something like minus-180 degrees Celsius," he said. "That means it’s very cold. But you never know."

The project is based out of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

This is not the first evidence of liquid on Titan. In 2008, project members used infrared technology to discover a large lake in the moon’s southern hemisphere.

But this recent discovery is a sure sign that liquid exists on the moon’s northern half. That region is believed to include larger basins that could hold more liquid.

The company, based in Redmond, Washington, was given until Jan. 11 to make the change or stop sales, in a decision released today by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington. Word is part of Microsoft’s Office software, used by more than 500 million people.

The court upheld a verdict that has since grown to $290 million, won by closely held I4i LP of Toronto. The dispute is over an invention related to customizing extensible markup language, or XML, a way of encoding data to exchange information among programs. Microsoft has called it an “obscure functionality.”

Microsoft said it has been working on making the change since the trial judge first ordered a halt in August and has “put the wheels in motion to remove this little-used feature from our products.”

Copies of Word 2007 and Office 2007 with the feature removed will be available for US. sale by Jan. 11, and “beta versions of Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010, which are available now for downloading, don’t contain the technology covered by the injunction,” said Kevin Kutz, a company spokesman.

Customer Testing

Microsoft is testing Office 2010 with customers and will release the completed version in the first half of next year. The unit that sells Office is Microsoft’s biggest, with $18.9 billion in sales in the year ended June 30.

Microsoft can continue to provide technical support to current Word users. It can’t instruct new users who buy Word after the deadline on how to use the custom XML editor or sell copies of Word with the feature, the court said.

The software maker said it may ask the Federal Circuit to reconsider the decision or appeal to the US. Supreme Court.

The Federal Circuit isn’t likely to grant such a request, and “there’s no issue really sexy or different for the Supreme Court to address either,” said James Kulbaski, a patent lawyer with Oblon Spivak in Alexandria, Virginia, who isn’t part of the case.

“This was a small company that appeared to be doing reasonably well, and Microsoft’s product essentially eliminated that part of the business,” Kulbaski said. “I4i could not compete with Microsoft Word incorporating their feature.

Licensing Held Unlikely

Based on the company’s statement today, it’s doubtful that Microsoft will try to reach a licensing deal with I4i, said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, based in Kirkland, Washington.

“There may be conversations going on now, but the safest thing is to not include it in 2010,” said Rosoff, whose company is a research firm focused on Microsoft’s technology and business strategy. “They have to look at this feature, see how important it is, who’s using it, and decide how much they’re willing to pay for it.”

I4i’s business was based on preserving its patent rights, and “Microsoft is not entitled to continue infringing simply because it successfully exploited its infringement,” the three- judge panel said.

“A small company was practicing its patent, only to suffer a loss of market share, brand recognition, and customer goodwill as the result of the defendant’s infringing acts,” the court said. “The district court found that Microsoft captured 80 percent of the custom XML market with its infringing Word products, forcing I4i to change its business strategy.”

Small Inventors’ Rights

The decision is “an important step in protecting the property rights of small inventors,” Michael Vulpe, I4i’s co- founder, said in an e-mail. Company Chairman Loudon Owen called it “both a vindication for I4i and a war cry for talented inventors whose patents are infringed.”

“The same guts and integrity that are needed to invent and go against the herd, are at the heart of success in patent litigation against a behemoth like Microsoft,” Owen said in a statement.

There was “sufficient evidence” for the jury to reach both its verdict and damage award, the court said. It also upheld the trial judge’s decision to add $40 million to the original $200 million verdict for intentional infringement. The remaining $50 million is for post-verdict damages and interest.

Design Deadline

Microsoft claimed the product was a small part of its Word package and the damages are inordinately high. The company also argued in court papers that it was under an unrealistic deadline to “redesign its flagship Word software to remove an obscure functionality” or be “compelled to stop distributing Word and the popular Office software suite.”

The appeals court said the scope of the order was narrow in that it wouldn’t affect existing customers. It did say Microsoft should have been given more time to implement any change to Word, based on a declaration from a Microsoft employee that it would take at least five months to do so. The judge originally allowed just 60 days.

XML is a common way of encoding data, and nothing in the order prevented Microsoft from continuing to offer that feature in Word, or for allowing customized XML when it’s used in plain text. The disputed feature is one used by large companies to add special data to Word files, such as information in forms submitted by customers. I4i’s patent was issued in 1998.

Customized XML is a key feature of the software and services sold by I4i, Owen has said. Customers including drug makers Merck & Co. and Bayer AG use I4i’s software to make sure that people get the correct and most up-to-date information on the labels of their medicine.

The case is I4i LP v. Microsoft Corp., 2009-1504, US. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Washington). The lower-court case is I4i LP v. Microsoft Corp., 07-cv-113, US. District Court, Eastern District of Texas (Tyler).

To contact the reporters on this story: Susan Decker in Washington at sdecker1@bloomberg.net; William McQuillen in Washington at bmcquillen@bloomberg.net.

By Susan Decker and William McQuillen

“I’m not saying Windows 7 is insecure, but out of the box Vista is better.”

“I was disappointed when I first used a Windows 7 machine that there was no warning that I had no anti-virus, unlike Vista. There are no file extension hidden warnings either. Even when you do install anti-virus, warnings that it has not been updated are almost invisible.”

“Windows 7 may be an improvement in terms of usability but in terms of security it’s a mistake, though one that isn’t that  surprising. When Microsoft’s developers choose between usability and security, they will always choose usability.”

Interestingly, Genes believes that the XP Mode feature present in some editions of Windows 7 actually improves security because it makes available a sandboxed OS. Other security firms (in particular Sophos) have criticized XP Mode, labeling it a security risk because it needs to be patched separately.

So, for a more secure Windows 7, Trend Micro recommends upping your UAC setting higher.

This article was originally written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes.

i think i am going to answer this question from my own experience and let you do the rest. i told myself this morning that i need to start a blog, but i asked myself why? myself answered: you need to stop think in the inside and start to share with the world. you always have ideas and thought that lets you somehow darker on the inside than you are on the outside. so as a new year’s make yourself better plan, you are going to share all your ideas good or bad so we can start cleaning out the dark inside you. one day i was out with some of my friends and we ware talking about the future and what we are going to do. i was talking about some of my ideas about the future but i kept on stating out the negative and what is going to happen to ruin this idea. one of them told me; it is good to think ahead and trying to imagine every scenario to avoid problems and failure, but just sitting and not going on doing what i was thinking of despite my imagined future failure is more destructive to the soul than avoiding heart breaking on a failed idea.he told me if i kept on thinking like that i would really have reached that ultimate state of failure..the state were you end up alone, self-hating, hated, poor guy.

so do you think blogging in another word sharing is the answer?.. do you really think that having an open dairy is that answer? i hope it is or i will be very sorry and darker than i started this morning.