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Comment Re:why is this surprising? (Score 1) 898

by aftk2 (#26250687) Attached to: First Look At Windows 7 Beta 1
There is still more difference between Windows7 and Vista than there is between OS X 10.0 and OS X 10.5

Heh. Please substantiate this claim. Perhaps you meant 10.4 and 10.5 (debatable) or 10.5 and the upcoming 10.6 (more debatable) but I think I would take umbrage with your initial assertion. UMBRAGE!
Input Devices

"BlueTrack" Mouse More Advanced Than Laser, Optical 191

Posted by Soulskill from the perfect-for-my-granite-workstation dept.
ThinSkin writes "Just when you thought laser and optical mice were enjoying their reign on mousepads worldwide, Microsoft has to come along and introduces their 'BlueTrack Technology,' a mouse tracking system that aims to work on virtually any terrain short of mirrored and reflective surfaces. ExtremeTech reviews the Explorer Mouse and Explorer Mini Mouse, both of which are powered by Microsoft's newest sensor, to see just how well this technology works. Testing on granite, carpet, marble, and other surfaces, the reviewers were impressed with the responsiveness of BlueTrack, but they also noted that laser mice were competitive on these surfaces as well. Even though the mice didn't get a recommendation from the reviewers (price being a major concern), they did admit that this BlueTrack is the best tracking system available today. MaximumPC has some pictures and a brief technical interview."
Power

10 IT Power-Saving Myths Debunked 359

Posted by timothy from the replace-all-leds-with-cfls dept.
snydeq writes "InfoWorld examines 10 power-saving assumptions IT has been operating under in its quest to rein in energy costs vs. the permanent energy crisis. Under scrutiny, most such assumptions wither. From true CPU efficiency, to the life span effect of power-down frequency on servers, to SSD power consumption, to switching to DC in the datacenter, get the facts before setting your IT energy strategy."
Transportation

Keeping Older Drivers Behind the Wheel 260

Posted by timothy from the my-dad-should-just-not-drive-ever dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "A new study shows the key role technology can play in extending the age at which people can drive safely and highlights the important psychological role that driving plays in older people's lives in contributing to feelings of independence and freedom and maintaining their quality of life. The study identified ideas for in-car information systems to help compensate for the reduction in reaction time that affects many older drivers. Specific recommendations included a head-up display on the windshield that displays road sign information based on GPS position so the driver doesn't have to keep watching the road side for information and a system to provide the driver with audible feedback on their current speed so the driver doesn't have to look at the dashboard so often. 'Our research highlights issues that have been overlooked by car designers and those advising older people on lifestyles,' says Dr Charles Musselwhite, who led the study. 'The current emphasis on developing technologies which take over part of the driving task may actually end up deterring older drivers. By contrast, better in-car information systems could help them drive safely and ensure they want to keep driving.'"
It's funny. Laugh.

Today Is International Talk Like a Pirate Day! 287

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr dept.
lucabrasi999 writes "Ahoy! Drink up the Grog, me hearties! Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Grab yer wenches and stop being a bilge-rat." Cap'n Slappy and Ol' Chumbucket have even provided a short YouTube video to help those who might be a bit more pirate-speak challenged. Even Google is getting in on the action, those swarthy dogs.
Games

Manhunt 2 Could Beat Ban With Digital Download 59

Posted by Zonk from the sneaky-like-that dept.
GamePolitics notes that the Register has a theory as to how Rockstar can get around Britain's Manhunt 2 ban: make it available as a digital download. "Downloaded games ... do not need an age-suitability classification, such as 15 or 18, because the Act, which mandates the BBFC's certification programme and forces retailers to obey the classifications, only covers physical products. A BBFC spokeswoman confirmed that if Manhunt 2 publisher Take-Two Interactive chose to sell the game online as a download then 'that would be legal and not contravening the Video Recordings Act'. She added that some games are already sold this way without a BBFC rating, but that most developers choose to have their games classified because selling a physical product is more profitable."
Encryption

Australia Cracked US Combat Aircraft Codes 280

Posted by kdawson from the end-run-around-the-bureaucracy dept.
SpamSlapper writes "Former defense minister Kim Beazley has told how Australia cracked top-secret American combat aircraft codes in the 1980s to enable the shooting down of enemy aircraft. The radar on Australia's US-made Hornets could not identify most potentially hostile aircraft in the region — they were set up for European threats — but despite many requests, the codes were not provided, so 'In the end we spied on them and we extracted the codes ourselves.' The Americans knew what the Australians were doing and were intrigued by the progress they made."
Programming

Submission + - Getting paid for the same development twice

Submitted by
aftk2
aftk2 writes: "I'm a freelance web programmer, and a little less than a year ago I found myself confronted with a fairly encapsulated but non-trivial problem. Solving this problem involved writing a suite of test scripts that validated data submitted to an external database, and processed the various responses correctly. This was all necessary to be "certified" by the authority controlling the external service. Due to the nature of the API and the fairly rigorous certification process, this took a little bit of time, and a bit of skill (and patience!)

However, now I find myself in a conundrum. Another client with which I am only tangentially affiliated is interacting with the same external service, and I've been asked if I will provide these test scripts to another developer. If I provide these, what's the proper way to obtain compensation for them? An additional line item on my invoice? How would any of you handle this particular situation? This is a great working relationship that I don't really want to damage, but at the same time I would really prefer not being taken advantage of.

(If anyone needs or wants a little more information about the exact nature of the problem, feel free to ask questions — I just wanted to be brief in my question.)"
Security

Microsoft Says Other OSes Should Imitate UAC 493

Posted by kdawson from the bring-'em-down-to-our-level dept.
COA writes "Many Vista adopters find User Account Control irritating, but Microsoft thinks it's an approach other OSes should emulate. Microsoft Australia's Chief Security Adviser Peter Watson calls UAC a great idea and 'strategically a direction that all operating systems and all technologies should be heading down.' He also believes Microsoft is charting new territory with UAC. 'The most controversial aspect of Watson's comments all center around the idea that Microsoft is a leader with UAC, and that other OSes should follow suit. UAC is a cousin of myriad "superuser" process elevation strategies, of which Mac OS X and all flavors of Linux already enjoy. The fact is that Microsoft is late to the party with their Microsoftized version of sudo. That's really what UAC is, after all: sudo with a fancy display mechanism (to make it hard to spoof) and extra monitoring to pick up on "suspicious" behavior.'"
Software

Submission + - Co-Processors Used for Bloatware

Submitted by
RX8
RX8 writes: "Velocity Micro Director of Product Development, Chris Morley says that system builders are taking advantage of the new Dual-Core processors and "load down their systems with extraneous software that you do not need and only chew up clock cycles. Microsoft has dubbed this bloatware "craplets," and they're worried it's going to ruin Vista's reception by the public. These craplets of course are revenue streams for the Tier 1s." Some of the worst manufacturers to do this include Dell and Hp. Microsoft is worried that this bloatware will lead consumers to blame Vista for the slowdown."
Games

Submission + - Will Vista make it cheaper to be a gamer ?

Submitted by
rathalian
rathalian writes: "After spending many a year wrestling home built PCs and working through the inevitable issues seen with increasing performance including heat and noise reduction, I decided to investigate purchasing a 'gaming' laptop. As the salary sacrificing options I have make it very appealing, particulary as I have an IT business that requires some mobility, it was interesting to see how over the last 4 months the online specifications available for laptops is changing fairly rapidly as we have approached Vista's release. Notably the premium that was charged for a laptop containing a 'decent' GPU to play games has dropped sharply. You can now get laptops with Core 2 Duo's, ATI X1700 GPUs and 1 gig of memory for under $2000 (Australian) as these chips are now more mainstream. And why are they more mainstream ? — see Vista GPU requirements for one... A classic example of this has been Dell's site. Previously their 6400 and 9400 Inspiron series of laptops offered the Intel 950, ATI X1400 and in the case of the 9400, the Nvidia 9700GS. Just over a month ago the Intel line was dropped from both the 6400 and the 9400's catalogue and it is standard on the 6400 to get an X1400 at a much lower price than Dell was offering around the end of October 2006. You can now get Toshiba's laptop that includes an Nvidia 7900GTX for $3400 (Australian) which was previously unheard of in a laptop re bang for buck. Now I know that prices change, however there has been a clear surge in the amount of laptops running higher performance GPU's and for a lower cost. So, does this mean that 2007 will mark the year where there is an across the board drop in GPU prices as the higher performance GPU cards become the standard cards in the 'average' PC or laptop due to Vista requirements? What are your thoughts?"

Notebook with Huge 20 Inch Screen Reviewed 307

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the desktop-replacement-not-laptop dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Trusted reviews has a look at the Acer Aspire 9800. This massive machine has a 20.1" screen, two 120GB hard drives in a RAID 0 array, super-multi DVD burner, analogue and digital TV tuners and an Intel Core Duo dual core CPU. And at over 17lb you can even use it for weight training!"
User Journal

Journal Journal: Your-Wishlist.com Launches

Journal by aftk2
After a grueling two weeks of work, your-wishlist.com has launched. Your-Wishlist.com uses the Amazon API to grab product data, and lets members organize these products, rate them, comment on them, and share their wishlists with others.

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