"Games fail to portray gender and ethnic diversity"? Really?

Alyx Vance - African American/Asian female
Eli Vance - African American male with a physical disability
Father Grigori - A Russian priest
Judith Mossman - A Caucasian female

For those of you not familiar with K's Choice and didn't get the parent comment...

I concur. The AS-3112 power socket connector is easy to connect in the dark. Just keep your finger on the bottom (earth) prong and stay away from the top 2!!!

You forgot ironic. The big brother connotations on this scandal makes the whole story somewhat funny even.

I own a copy of BetaField 2 and have tried to run it on 3 completely different, but entirely compatible PC's with XP and Vista. I have found it's a good game to play if you can fluke getting it running. I had it working for about 10 minutes total. The biggest disappointment is when it didn't work on my gaming PC (AMD Athlon X2 6000, 2Gb Corsair Dominator 1066MHz, 2x 8800GT 512Mb in SLI) using XP or Vista. Maybe MS will release an OS that works with games really well. Then maybe EA will release a game that works well with Windows.

I have been using Win7 in a VM on my Vista laptop and it does run faster than the host OS. That I'm impressed with. I might try and install some games and see what happens. After the debacle that was Vista, MS may well just be on a winner with 7. My fingers are crossed.

I see what you were trying to start there....

This is not a smart move on the part of those companies which want to stick with Windows XP. Here's my take on the situation. Many will disagree, but there are some valid points.

1. Support: Sure, Microsoft has extended support but what about third parties? What about buying new hardware which will have Vista/Windows 7 drivers, but no XP support. It will come soon enough. And you could even stretch it to the point where hardware upgrades will become a nightmare. With 8Gb of RAM becoming common in high end computers NOW, think about where we'll be in 12 months time. Even low end bargain PC's will have 4Gb, which XP won't support properly right now. And don't bother talking about XP-64bit, there is even less support for that then there is 32bit.

2. Training: Windows has evolved over the past decade. The user interface and structure of how things are done has changed too. Consider this. Say you have an employee starting who's job requires some basic skills with MS Windows. If that employee has a relatively new computer and hasn't had experience with XP, you would have to take the time/spend the money on training them to use an old operating system. That's just stupid.

3. Why not?: From all the reports I've read, Windows 7 is going to be the LEAST crappy version of Windows yet. Even hardened anti-microsoft people (me included) are impressed with 7. Vista was a mistake, granted. And there would be no sane business on the planet that would have upgraded to Vista unless they had to. But c'mon people. XP was good, but it's also 8 years old.

My next computer I'm building in the next month or so will have a dual boot Sabayon Linux/Windows 7 setup. I run XP/Vista/Ubuntu on my current PC and at the moment, only XP works ;). That being said, Microsoft seems to have finally done something right on the OS front with 7. What's next? "We're not upgrading to Windows 8, We're sticking with XP"? FFS. Let's just all go back to MSDOS and be done with it.

Goonix anyone?

More importantly, at 2.1 million dollars, will it blend?

Just today, we read on /. that Zango sued Kaspersky and lost, setting a precedent that will no doubt have an effect on malware vendors. I posted a reply which fits perfectly with THIS story in THAT thread!

For those who don't want to click, the gist of it was that Zango gained money via deceit (changing software to gain profits) and was classed as malware. MS are doing the same as Zango!!!!!! Any business obtaining money by deceit is trading ILLEGALLY. Tsk tsk Microsoft. In this climate of spyware/malware becoming a larger target in the public eye, I can't believe this could turn out rosy for Redmond.

Zango sues Kaspersky for interfering with their business model. This is a legitimate move on Zango's part (and yes, I know they're scum but go with me here).

Kaspersky blocked Zango in the first place for being malware. What is malware? There is software out there that installs on a computer for the purpose of using customer data to make money for the software company or some related company. However to be classed as malware it has to be either installed via deceit or be non compliant when a user is performing an uninstall.

If Zango's business practices are intended to obtain money by deceit, and the courts have just agreed to that fact via the verdict in the Zango vs Kaspersky case, then it seems that not only is Zango scum, but also practicing in ILLEGAL BUSINESS PRACTICES.

Let me just reiterate that. It is entirely plausible to think that Zango is running an illegal business and can be sued/shut down. Therefore, any company that is involved in malware activities could be operating illegally too. This win for Kaspersky could open the floodgates and rid the internet (partially) of spyware.

Am I going crazy here, or did what I just type make complete sense?

It wouldn't have mattered. Most commercial anti-virus packages didn't remove Hotbar and its ilk. That is the entire point of the article. Someone (Kaspersky) had the balls to block this scumware and got sued for the trouble. They won, which is great for the anti-viruses of the world, but it's only at this point the malware is being exposed for what it is.

By simply having anti-virus software before, it wouldn't stop this crap from happening. I truly believe that having an antivirus package is only going to give you 50% security on a Windows based system. You'll get 30% more protection with a full internet security package incorporating an antivirus/antispyware/firewall. You'll get 10% more security by not using Internet Exploiter. That leaves 10% that you just can't protect yourself from. I think it's a fair assessment, though many would disagree.

Hey, that was a cheap trick...

The first grant offer was 20,000 pounds. The artist wasn't happy.

They had to UUH, double up, UUH UUH!

C'mon. Everyone knows that Michael Jackson is a radio personality. Right?