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Comment Re:GOG discovers DOSBOX works on Linux (Score 5, Insightful) 81

by Tough Love (#47524197) Attached to: GOG.com Announces Linux Support

One of the big complaints that modern publishers have about releasing their games on Linux is that they can't do the same things with DRM on Linux that they can with Windows, therefore no one will pay for their games and everyone will pirate instead.

Which just demonstrates how clueless and out of touch modern game publishers really are. DRM does not stop piracy on Windows or even slow it down. As a rule, Windows game DRM is cracked and DRM-free copies are widely available for download within hours of release, sometimes even before release.

Comment Re:OK MS bashers. (Score 2) 322

by Tough Love (#47520771) Attached to: Microsoft's CEO Says He Wants to Unify Windows

This may actually be a killer OS. It is the next version after a bad one!

Actually, all versions of Windows are bad, if you have ever experienced something decent. It's just amazing the crap that Windows users put up with, because they have never known anything else and think that computers are supposed to be flaky with fiddly controls. You have bad versions of Windows and really bad versions of Windows, that is the range, there is no such thing as a good version of Windows. So maybe a bad version of Windows will follow this really bad version, and maybe that will be enough to slow down Microsoft's slide into irrelevance for a while.
Microsoft

Microsoft's CEO Says He Wants to Unify Windows 322

Posted by samzenpus from the by-your-powers-combined dept.
Deathspawner writes A lot of people have never been able to understand the logic behind Microsoft's Windows RT, with many urging the company to kill it off so that it can focus on more important products, like the mainline Windows. Well, this is probably not going to come as a huge surprise, especially in light of mass layoffs announced last week, but Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said that his company will be working to combine all Windows versions into a unified release by next year.

Comment Re:Who would still want to work there? (Score 1) 66

by Tough Love (#47517989) Attached to: Microsoft FY2014 Q4 Earnings: Revenues Up, Profits Down Slightly

There is sure to be a Dead Sea effect and MS's long-term prospects cannot be great if they have lost / will lose their best people

Having lost control of the mobile market to Apple and Google, Microsoft can now look forward to its sunset years, slowly rotting away. Microsoft employees can look forward to more cuts, sooner rather than later. The one constant will be the backlbiting culture, which will increase as the concentration of rats on the ship increases.
Communications

'Optical Fiber' Made Out of Thin Air 115

Posted by Soulskill from the sufficiently-advanced-technology dept.
Dave Knott writes: Scientists from the University of Maryland say they have turned thin air into an "optical fiber" that can transmit and amplify light signals without the need for any cables. As described in the research, this was accomplished by generating a laser with its light split into a ring of multiple beams forming a pipe. Very short and powerful pulses from the laser are used to heat the air molecules along the beam extremely quickly. Such rapid heating produces sound waves that take about a microsecond to converge to the center of the pipe, creating a high-density area surrounded by a low-density area left behind in the wake of the laser beams. The lower density region of air surrounding the center of the air waveguide has a lower refractive index, keeping the light focused, and allowing the higher-density region (with its correspondingly higher index of refraction) to act like an optical fiber. The findings, reported in the journal Optica, have applications in long range laser communications, high-resolution topographic mapping, air pollution and climate change research, and could also be used by the military to make laser weapons.
Microsoft

Microsoft FY2014 Q4 Earnings: Revenues Up, Profits Down Slightly 66

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the still-enough-to-fill-money-pool dept.
Microsoft has released their latest earnings report, and it's not as bleak as last week's news might have you suspect. Quoting Forbes: Microsoft reported $23.38 billion of revenue for the fourth quarter, up 17.5% from the same period last year. Net income, however, came in at $4.6 billion, down from last year and behind Wall Street analysts' consensus estimate, both about $5 billion. At 55 cents earnings per share were down 4 cents and a nickel short of the Street’s call. For the full year, revenue clocked in at $86.8 billion an 11.5% increase from a year earlier. Net income was $22.1 billion and earnings per share were $2.63. They took a hit from finalizing the acquisition of Nokia's handset division (not unexpected). The cloud services side of the business appears to be growing, while traditional software sales have stagnated. The layoffs will cost Microsoft between $1.1 and $1.6 billion over the first half of next year.

Submission + - Four-winged dinosaur is biggest ever (bbc.com)

Submitted by JonnaDelacruz
JonnaDelacruz writes: A new four-winged dinosaur has been discovered, with exceptionally long feathers on its tail and "hindwings".

Changyuraptor yangi was a gliding predator which lived in the Cretaceous period in what is now Liaoning, China.

Its remarkable tail feathers — measuring up to 30cm — are the longest in any non-avian dinosaur.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote

The tail would have acted as a pitch control structure reducing descent speed... which could be critical to a safe landing or precise attack on prey”

Lizhuo Han
Bohai University, China
This unusual plumage helped the creature to slow down during flight and land safely, say scientists writing in Nature Communications.

C. yangi is a new species of microraptorine, a group related to early avians.

These ancient creatures offer clues to the origin of flight — and the transition from feathered dinosaurs to birds.

Palaeontologists once thought that four-winged gliders were a stepping stone in the path to two-winged flight.

But recent fossil discoveries suggest that microraptorines were an evolutionary side-branch.

Flight probably evolved many times in different feathered species — not only the lineage which ultimately became birds.

Submission + - China plans particle colliders that would dwarf CERN's LHC (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: For decades, Europe and the United States have led the way when it comes to high-energy particle colliders. But a proposal by China that is quietly gathering momentum has raised the possibility that the country could soon position itself at the forefront of particle physics.
Scientists at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) in Beijing, working with international collaborators, are planning to build a ‘Higgs factory’ by 2028 — a 52-kilometre underground ring that would smash together electrons and positrons. Collisions of these fundamental particles would allow the Higgs boson to be studied with greater precision than at the much smaller Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.
Physicists say that the proposed US$3-billion machine is within technological grasp and is considered conservative in scope and cost. But China hopes that it would also be a stepping stone to a next-generation collider — a super proton–proton collider — in the same tunnel.
The machine would be a big leap for China. The country’s biggest current collider is just 240 metres in circumference.

Comment Re:Why ODF? (Score 4, Informative) 164

For what it's worth, ODF is XML, which nominally human readable. So is Microsoft's OOXML, a perversion that demonstrates clearly that "human readable" doesn't always mean what it says. The main difference between ODF and OOXML is that ODF actually is a credible attempt to be open and portable whereas OOXML is designed to achieve the opposite.

Comment Re:Why ODF? (Score 4, Insightful) 164

The vast majority of their users aren't especially smart when it comes to technology. They're essentially office workers - they don't give a stuff about the underlying format, they only care about being able to do their job.

So true. And therefore we should be thankful that some knowledgeable people who do care about such important matters are willing to step forward to do the right thing.
Education

How One School District Handled Rolling Out 20,000 iPads 285

Posted by samzenpus from the accident-waiting-to-happen dept.
First time accepted submitter Gamoid writes This past school year, the Coachella Valley Unified School District gave out iPads to every single student. The good news is that kids love them, and only 6 of them got stolen or went missing. The bad news is, these iPads are sucking so much bandwidth that it's keeping neighboring school districts from getting online. Here's why the CVUSD is considering becoming its own ISP.

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