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Windows

Wait For Windows 7 SP1, Support Firm Warns Users 433

Posted by Soulskill from the sounds-familiar dept.
CWmike writes "Users should wait for Microsoft to work out the bugs in Windows 7 before jumping on the new OS, computer support company Rescuecom said on Friday. 'From the calls we're getting, as well as our own experience in the past with all Microsoft's operating systems, we're recommending that people stick with their time-tested OS and wait for the dust to settle,' said Josh Kaplan, president of Rescuecom. Citing a litany of reasons, ranging from the risk of losing data during an upgrade to tough economic times, Kaplan urged Windows users to put off upgrading to Windows 7 or buying a new PC with the operating system pre-installed. 'There are some compelling reasons for both businesses and home users to move to Windows 7,' Kaplan said, 'so we're saying "just wait for a bit."' Upgrading an existing machine — whether it's running the eight-year-old Windows XP or the much newer Vista — is particularly risky, he added, especially if users haven't taken time to make a full backup before they migrate their machines. Some users have found that out first hand. Among the top subjects on Microsoft's support forum is one that has put some PCs into an endless reboot loop when their owners tried to upgrade from Vista to Windows 7. Microsoft has not yet come up with a solution that works for all the users who have reported the problem, sparking frustration."
Microsoft

Ballmer Admits "We Screwed Up Windows Mobile" 275

Posted by kdawson from the chairs-have-been-thrown dept.
Barence writes "Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer has blasted the company's own mobile operating system at the firm's Venture Capital Summit. One tweet from an attendee claims Ballmer said the company had 'screwed up with Windows Mobile. Wishes they had already launched WM7. They completely revamped the team.' Another claims Ballmer said 'we've pumped in some new talent. This will not happen again.' It's not the first time Ballmer has attacked Windows Mobile, having publicly stated that version 6.5 was 'not the full release we wanted.'"
Windows

New Phoenix BIOS Starts Windows 7 Boot In 1 Second 437

Posted by timothy from the nice-start dept.
suraj.sun excerpts from a tantalizing Engadget post: "Phoenix is showing off a few interesting things at IDF, but the real standout is their new Instant Boot BIOS [video here], a highly optimized UEFI implementation that can start loading an OS in just under a second. Combined with Windows 7's optimized startup procedure, that means you're looking at incredibly short boot times — we saw a retrofitted Dell Adamo hit the Windows desktop in 20 seconds, while a Lenovo T400s with a fast SSD got there in under 10."
GUI

Shuttleworth Suggests 1-Way Valve For User Experience Testing 757

Posted by timothy from the why-isn't-this-intuitive? dept.
darthcamaro writes "No surprise but Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth has come out swinging in favor of the Linux desktop. Speaking at Linuxcon yesterday he detailed the things that he thinks Linux requires in order to win the desktop wars. Those include: co-ordinated software releases, better quality and design, some user experience testing and oh yeah, a dose of 'shut the f*** up' too. During his keynote, he extended an invitation to any open source application to submit their software for testing by user-experience experts. The sessions would be recorded for posterity, and the developer would not be able to interact with the user. "'If the developer is in the room, they have to say nothing. It's the shut the f*** up protocol,' Shuttleworth said. 'You sit and watch someone struggle with the software that you've so lovingly produced.'"

Comment Re:Depends on what you mean by immortality or FTL (Score 1) 903

by MasterOfDisaster (#29344093) Attached to: Which Breakthrough Is Most Likely?
It all depends on where the transporter is located. If it's located on the Enterprise from The Next Generation, The copy of you at point A will grow a goatee, assume a name similar to your own and launch several comical plots to kill you over the next few seasons. You'll be two separate people with no hope of rejoining, but ultimately it won't bother either of you that much.

If it's located on the original series Enterprise, your personality will likely be split in two, creating an "Evil" you at point B, and a "Good" you at point A. Both versions of you will successfully pass as you for a time, before it becomes obvious to the crew that there are now two of you, and they're both insane. Luckily, if you both hop in the transporter at the same time you'll come out whole again on the other side.
Handhelds

First Look At Palm's Mojo SDK 128

Posted by timothy from the commodity-bits-making-a-new-whole dept.
snydeq writes "Peter Wayner puts Palm's Mojo SDK through its paces and finds the general outline of the system solid and usable despite 'numerous rough edges and dark, undocumented corners.' The main draw, of course, is the reliance on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which lower the barriers to entry, though with Mojo, HTML and JavaScript do at times work against each other, with JavaScript occasionally 'wiping out anything you do with HTML.' But more than anything, Wayner sees the current version of Mojo as 'merely the start of access to a very fertile platform. 'Developers are actively digging into the Linux foundations of the Pre and finding they can build tools that work with the raw guts of the machine. Some are talking about writing Java services underneath,' Wayner writes, pointing to sites such as PalmOpenSource.com and PreCentral.net that are cataloging dozens of apps that come complete with the source code. 'I know people are doing similar things with the iPhone — such as selling the source to people who must install it themselves — but the entire scene emerging around Palm has a much more organic and creative vibe. It's not getting hung up on parsing and reparsing the App Store rules.'"
Communications

Illinois Bans Social Network Use By Sex Offenders 587

Posted by timothy from the good-feel-measure-vs.-bad-feel-felons dept.
RobotsDinner writes "Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has signed into law a bill that bans all registered sex offenders from using social networks. '"Obviously, the Internet has been more and more a mechanism for predators to reach out," said Sen. Bill Brady (R-Bloomington), a sponsor of the measure and a governor candidate. "The idea was, if the predator is supposed to be a registered sex offender, they should keep their Internet distance as well as their physical distance."'"
Earth

Earth's Period of Habitability Is Nearly Over 756

Posted by kdawson from the nice-while-it-lasts dept.
xp65 writes "Scientists at this year's XXVIIth General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil agree that we do not yet know how ubiquitous or how fragile life is, but that: 'The Earth's period of habitability is nearly over on a cosmological timescale. In a half to one billion years the Sun will start to be too luminous and warm for water to exist in liquid form on Earth, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect in less than 2 billion years.' Other surprising claims from this conference: that the Sun may not be the ideal kind of star to nurture life, and that the Earth may not be the ideal size."
Television

Original Futurama Cast Seals Deal With Fox 94

Posted by Soulskill from the good-news-everyone dept.
Svippy writes "As we discussed earlier, 20th Century Fox Television was attempting to recast Futurama. As it turns out, this was just part of a big negotiation ploy, and the original cast have now completed their deals to return with the show's new episodes. For those of you who did not follow the story, a chronology of the events and reactions from the cast members are available at Infosphere and Voice Actors in the News. Series creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen said, 'We are thrilled to have our incredible cast back. The call has already gone out to the animators to put the mouths back on the characters.'"

Comment Re:How soon we forget (Score 1) 493

by MasterOfDisaster (#28646197) Attached to: How Microsoft Has Changed Without Bill Gates

I'll consider through the eye of a SF reader : before the 80s computers worked. "Every computer glitch as a human origin" HAL taught us. (spoiler) it took a politician to make its perfect logic go amok. To say it in a nutshell, computers were deterministic. Now fast-forward a few years. Cyberpunk. Computers fail, a skillful hacker can enter any system. Bugs cause catastrophes, virus take epic proportions.â¦

I see no contradiction. Windows doesn't crash because your processor executed instructions out of order, or a bit flipped in ram. No, It's because a bunch of ugly bags of mostly water wrote bad code that makes the computer crash. Then, the politicians, marketers and lawyers stepped in...

Comment Re:Then it should go through. (Score 4, Insightful) 406

It's impossible to say what percentage of files on The Pirate Bay is illegal for two reasons: 1) It's subjective. What's illegal in one country might be legal in another, and what's legal before one judge might be illegal before another. 2) files are constantly being added. For example, try and determine what percentage of videos on YouTube contain cats doing something hilarious.

However, there's a surprising amount of content on TPB that is definitely legal, Linux ISOs of various vintages, books and video in the public domain, as well as content uploaded by it's author.

There's also a lot of content of questionable legality - is a No CD patch/crack legal? After all, it's just a series of instructions to change certain bits in a file matching a specific hash. How about a keygen? That's essentially a random number generator, unless you have the program it makes keys for. Probably depends on the laws in your country.

'Fake' files are likely also legal to download, as they tend to be random data and/or uploaded by (agents of) the copyright holders.

You would be right in saying that little of that has to do with the name Pirate Bay, though.

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