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Windows Vista – 19 Months of Usage and Counting
I downloaded my first beta of Windows Vista on July 27th 2005. Over that 19 month period I’ve been making increasing use of Vista platform. In a few weeks I hope that all the main rigs here at the PC Doc HQ will be running Vista and that XP (along with Windows 2000 will be relegated to test machines and VMware installs).
A year and a half of using Vista? That should be an included punishment for new prison terms, not something voluntary! I know I am being harsh here, but to lighten things up this article does have a lot of good to say about the new fangled OS.
Source: ZD Net
Videos Have Net Bursting At the Seams
Those amusing YouTube video clips that Internet users send to friends gobble up large chunks of bandwidth and may cause the Net to crash, some elements of the telecom industry warn. It’s an admonition many dismiss as political posturing intended to dissuade lawmakers from restricting the freedom of phone companies to manage Internet traffic as they wish.
Hah! We knew this had to catch up to us someday. The problem is, the growing popularity of these videos greatly outweighs the advance of new technology to battle it. Onward to Internet 2!
Source: Chicago Tribune
No Luck With Xbox 360
“I was clearly a fan boy,” said Rob Cassingham, 42. These days, Cassingham isn’t so sure about that. He loves playing games on the Xbox 360, but he has gone through seven defective machines in the past year and a half.
Ouch, talk about bad luck. Seven consoles in the span of a year and a few months? I picked mine up at launch and it’s still kicking. I had no idea how lucky I was to be smooth sailing so far!
Source: Mecury News
A Unique Perspective on a ‘Game-Related’ Tragedy
Penny Arcade has a letter from the stepmother of one of the kids who was recently charged with killing a homeless man. Her article is an extremely sobering tale of the problems dealing with troubled teen. She explains how, in this situation, the parents did everything they possibly could. And, in a refreshing twist, she absolves the games industry of any blame for the tragedy these kids perpetrated.
This is a great read that shows just how well of a job the media does in twisting any story to point the blame directly at video games. The womans letter is almost difficult to read without getting angry.
Source: Slashdot
Popular Apps Missing From Vistas Supported List
Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday released a list of 800 applications it has officially verified so far to run bug-free on Windows Vista. The list is notable for both its brevity and the absence of many applications popular on Windows XP, although Microsoft and analysts said that the majority of XP software can run, albeit with hiccups, on Vista.
This is a pretty comprehensive list, but there are still many applications missing. It’s even divided into two sections, for “Certified” and “Works With”. Notably missing is anything Adobe has released, in addition to Macromedia products.
Source: Computer World
ESRB Hiring Pro Content Reviewers
The ESRB’s Patricia Vance commented on the project: ‘Having full-time raters will allow for each one to have greater experience actually reviewing content and recommending ratings … this would provide each rater with a greater sense of historical parity for ratings, not to mention helping them to be more attuned to pertinent content and how it should be considered from a ratings standpoint. The full-time raters would also be responsible for play-testing final versions of the game, time permitting, which would allow for ESRB to play-test a greater number of games than it currently does.’
I personally find the ESRB to be a huge waste of time, but if you are looking for a job where you get to play games, check it out. It’s pretty easy to “guess” a rating of a game just by looking at the box art, more often than not.
Source: Slashdot
Open-Source Guru Knocks Fedora
Eric Raymond, influential developer and co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, has delivered a public rebuke to Red Hat’s Fedora project. In a message distributed to several high-profile Linux mailing lists and news organizations, Raymond said he is switching to the Ubuntu distribution after 13 years as a loyal Red Hat user, citing numerous technical and governance problems around Fedora.
I’ve thought about this a bit, but I don’t quite understand why this was the “last draw”. One show stopping problem in 13 years? That doesn’t seem so bad. When I used Windows full time I had this happen once a year.
Source: IT World
Inside the Windows Vista Kernel: Part 2
Every release of Windows improves scalability and performance, and Windows Vista is no different. The Windows Vista Memory Manager includes numerous enhancements, like more extensive use of lock-free synchronization techniques, finer-grained locking, tighter data-structure packing, larger paging I/Os, support for modern GPU memory architectures, and more efficient use of the hardware Translation Lookaside Buffer. Plus, Windows Vista memory management now offers dynamic address space allocation for the requirements of different workloads.
In this part, Mark covers memory management, startup and shutdown and also power management. Give it a read if you are a proficient Windows application developer.
Source: Tech Net Mag
Microsoft Ordered to Pay $1.52 Billion for MP3 Patent Infringement
Microsoft must pay $1.52 billion for infringing on two Alcatel-Lucent patents involving MP3, a San Diego federal jury ruled today. This is the first of six patent lawsuits brought by Paris-based telecom equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent. Microsoft intends to “seek relief from the trial court, and if necessary appeal.â€
Even for Microsoft, this fine is HUGE, not to mention needless. For once, I actually believe Microsoft is getting burned big time. The fine in no way scales with the “crime”.
Source: Daily Tech
Chimps Seen Making Weapons for Hunting
Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the tools to hunt small mammals — the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans.
Just a tad on the creepy side here. It’s noted that chimps have been known to make tools in the past, but were for eating, not killing.
Source: Washington Post
New Details on Xerox Inkless Printer
Xerox is developing a new printing technology which does not require ink of any kind. The new technology includes reusable paper which can be printed and erased dozens of times and has the potential to revolutionize printing. New details on this upcoming technology, which was first reported in September 2006, are now revealed.
This is one of the most impressive pieces of technology I have heard about for a while. If this is a success and paper can be re-used over and over, then that could really cut down on waste.
Source: Slashdot
Intel Pulls 45nm Xeon Launch Into 2007
Kirk Skaugen, general manager of Intel’s Server Platform Group, opened his statements with “We were originally in the Q1’08 timeframe. Today I’m happy to announce to report for the first time that our server 45nm Xeon products based on the Penryn core will be available into production for the second half of 2007.”
This might prove to be good news for everyone. The sooner we see 45nm server CPUs, the sooner we should be seeing the desktop equivalent. It’s still up in the air whether or not 45nm will be far superior over our current 65nm, but at least the power draw will be improved.
Source: Daily Tech
Canon Announces EOS-1D Mark III
Canon has today announced the latest generation of their EOS-1D series. The Mark III has a ten megapixel APS-H (1.3x FOV crop) CMOS sensor and can shoot at ten frames per second. It features the updated DIGIC III image processor, a new 19 area Auto Focus system, up to ISO 6400 and a 3.0″ LCD monitor (with a live view feature). The Mark III should ship in April for US$ 3999.
Canon surprised some people with this one. Despite being an amazing model, there are a few things that jump out at me. Instead of throwing in a comparable sensor to the 1Ds IIs 16.7MP wonder, the Mark III only has one capable of 10MP. However, this was obviously done to fit a live view feature onto the sensor, which seems like an odd thing to me to add to a professional camera. I’m not one to talk though, as it seems to be getting some great reception so far.
If there’s anything that will make jaw drops, it may be the 45-point AF system or even the fact that it can shoot at 10FPS.
Source: DPReview
AMD Releases ATI Catalyst 7.2
AMD has improved OpenGL performance on ATI X1000-series products with Catalyst 7.2. “Gains of up to 25% in Doom 3, 48% in Quake 4 and 21% in Prey can be seen on a variety of ATI Radeon™ X1000 cards. These performance gains are noticed under the Windows Vista operating system,†according to the ATI Catalyst 7.2 release notes.
While the drivers are on par with what you would expect in XP, the Vista version still leaves a lot to be desired. Owners of the X1950XT will be upset to know their card is not supported, along with their AIW and VIVO line-up. Vista has been out for near a month now… we really should be seeing better support by now.
Source: Daily Tech
Frankenfight: Blu-ray vs. HD DVD
But are tech specs the only way to judge DVDs? Of course not. Technology is only step one. How studios utilize the technology is equally as important. Besides, the gods gave us eyes and ears for a reason. For this week’s topic, we dug through the entire archive from the DVD critics at High-Def Digest (about 300 total reviews), averaging every rating they’ve given yet to HD DVD and Blu-Ray titles. And you know what? Not all was equal.
This is a new spin on the differences between the two, but it mainly takes into consideration both Audio and the extra content. The results may surprise you.
Source: Gizmodo
The World’s First National Internet Election
Expanding on the limited 2005 Internet voting pilot successes, the small European nation of Estonia will become the first country to allow voting in a national parliamentary election via the Internet. Fresh off the news of France’s successful primary election using Internet voting and the announcement of 12 new UK election pilots, is Europe leaving the U.S. behind?
It still impresses me that these are being picked up so quickly when they are clearly so vulnerable to inconsistencies. What’s the point of voting when you know there is a reasonable chance your vote could be “lost”?
Source: Slashdot
Vista Has Been “Incredibly Well Received”
It appears that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Ballmer haven’t had much communication on the matter recently. Reuters asked Gates about any trepidation Microsoft might have about the outlook for Vista to which he responded “I don’t know what you mean. Vista’s had an incredible reception.”
Anyone who has read my articles or our news knows that I’m not a fan of Vista, so to me, “incredible reception” could be taken a hundred different ways. Either, “Vista was incredibly well received by thousands of fanboys”, or “Vista had an incredible reception. We’ve never seen so many people pull their hair out at the same time.”
Source: Daily Tech
Microsoft Apologises For Serving Malware
With Microsoft launching Vista along with their Defender software to protect users from viruses and spyware, it seems therefore to be an oxymoron that they have started to putting paid changing banner advertisements for malware, on the popular MSN groups servers.
With things like this happening, you’d almost think they were selling Defender!
Source: APC Mag
Mono Brings VB To Linux
The Mono Project on Feb. 20 announced that it has developed a Visual Basic compiler that will enable software developers who use Microsoft Visual Basic to run their applications on any platform that supports Mono, such as Linux, without any code modifications. Though often disparaged by developers, Visual Basic remains one of the world’s most commonly used programming languages.
If you are a VB programmer and want to try your app in Linux, here is your chance. It appears that only .NET is supported, not anything earlier, such as 5 or 6.
Source: Linux Devices
SETI Finally Finds Something
SETI@home is a distributed processing client from UC Berkeley that installs on the vounteers’ home computers and harnesses their processing power in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. So far nothing noteworthy has comeout of this massive project… that is until today! One of the voluteers was able to track down his wife’s stolen laptop using the IP address that SETI@home client reports back to the server. After getting back the laptop his wife said, ‘I always knew that a geek would make a great husband.
What’s more impressive? The fact that they found the laptop through SETI, or the fact that they run SETI on a laptop to begin with?
Source: Slashdot
OCZ Unveils the PC2-8500 Reaper HPC Series with New Passive Cooling Solution
Sunnyvale, CA—February 21, 2007—OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today unveiled the OCZ PC2-8500 Reaper HPC Series. This 2GB dual channel kit features the proprietary OCZ Reaper HPC (Heat Pipe Conduit) heatspreader, engineered to deliver superior silent heat dissipation over traditional heatspreaders.
I’m not usually a fan of new memory heatspreaders, but I have to admit these look sharp. I am very curious if a fan would still be needed for max overclocks though.
Source: OCZ Press Release
Lineage II’s Chaotic Chronicle Concludes
Poised to go live in April 2007, Interlude is the next free update for Lineage II offering the chance to take part in a game that has captured the imagination and reached over 14 million gamers worldwide. Forming a bridge between the Chaotic Chronicles and the future Chaotic Throne (scheduled for later in 2007) Interlude hints at what is to come in the challenging times ahead.
Ahh, I remember when L2 was just a baby, and here it’s main storyline is about to conclude!
Sun Starts Shipping Multi-Threaded 10Gbit Ethernet Adapters
Sun’s 10GbE adapter sends data over fiber optics instead of typical Cat5 Ethernet cable used in today’s typical network environments. The adapter also has dual ports, each capable of 10Gbit/sec. transfer rates and a combined rate of 16Gbit/sec. The card will sit in an x8 PCI-Express slot and ship with a starting price of $498 USD per card.
This card looks like a true beast and puts any other high-end network card out there to shame. It would take a huge workload to have a $500 network card sound reasonable!
Source: Daily Tech
A Closer Look at World Copyright Piracy
At first inspection of the figures released by the IIPA, the $2 billion estimated trade losses due the copyright piracy in China and Russia exceed that by double of any other nation. Smith comments, “China and Russia are again this year the two countries that are of the greatest concern to the copyright industries, as they were in 2006. While there have been developments in both these key markets over the year, the bottom line is that piracy levels have not come down at all or only marginally, and some problems have grown worse.”
Canada has the worst per capita, but its actual total loss is nowhere near as bad as China or Russia. Give this article a read if you need your daily dose of piracy news.
Source: Daily Tech
Australia Outlaws Incandescent Light Bulb
The Australian Government is planning on making the incandescent light bulb a thing of the past. In three years time, standard light bulbs will no longer be available for sale in the shops in Australia (expect a roaring grey market) and everybody will be forced to switch to more energy efficient Fluorescent bulbs. In this move to try and curb emissions, the incandescent bulb — which converts the majority of used energy to heat rather then light — will be phased out.
Anything that helps conserve energy (and money) sounds like a winner all around, as long as they do as good of a job as the incandescent ones do.
Source: Slashdot