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Submission + - Vista's Lack of Driver Causing some Bad Headaches

Submitted by

AkumaKuruma

on Monday February 12, 2007 @12:45PM

AkumaKuruma writes: "Copious amounts of users who are taking the plunge into migrating to Windows Vista are still dealing with hardware manufacturers trickling out drivers. The one surprising company that is apparently ticking off a lot of its customers is Creative Labs and their support for their top of the line X-Fi series sound cards. Creative is not planning on releasing finished drivers for the cards until sometime in March. This is mostly due to the new tighter requirements if driver certification as well as the way the sound system works

Many users are seeing this as a lack of support for the gaming cards they just recently purchased for advanced audio (some as high as $300 MSRP for the elite edition). currently the only X-Fi card that has a finished driver is the Xtreme Audio Edition which it turns out doesn't even use the same chipset as the rest of the X-Fi line but instead is closer to the Audigy SE card.Because of this lack of support, many customers are hounding the developers and support forums looking for answers to fix their problems. Some as simple as getting 5.1 sound to work to as far as the card not even being detected by the drivers that creative is supplying.

On a slightly positive note, Creative has developed a solution to the issue of MS completely removing the DirectSound HAL from Vista. Creative has released a program called ALchemy (yes the AL are supposed to be capitalized) which is designed to "transmute" the DirectSound programming calls into native OpenAL calls that by their nature access the sound card directly and completely bypassing the audio stack of the Operating system, helping to regain access to EAX and full hardware acceleration.

Until the driver issues are resolved, I would highly recommend anyone with a NEED to have their high end sound cards and other hardware to be supported under vista to not upgrade to Vista. If you still want to tinker with it, make sure you set up a dual boot situation then so you can dump back to XP for full hardware support. For those that are bold enough to not wait for the drivers to come out, the audio stack in Vista has been redesigned to support much better quality independent of what audio chipset you are using, which leads normal onboard audio to actually sound better under Vista than XP."

Submission + - EU may force iTunes Store to accept returns

Submitted by Sweet Harmony on Monday February 12, 2007 @12:43PM

Sweet Harmony writes: The European Union may require online music stores to accept returns, according to Ars Technica. A review of European consumer protection laws has highlighted online sales of 'digital content services' as an area where existing consumer protection laws need to be harmonized. 'The EC would like to standardize cooling offer periods along with other aspects of the EU's consumer protection laws. One of the issues being considered is whether the rules on consumer sales should apply to "digital content services" like music.'

Submission + - Windows Vista vs. Windows XP vs. Ubuntu Linux

Submitted by

Fwankie

on Monday February 12, 2007 @12:33PM

Fwankie writes: "Viperlair compares Vista Home Premium to XP Professional as well as Ubuntu. I think those a little peeved at M$ will want to consider this distro of Linux. "Once you get Ubuntu going and you become comfortable with the interface, its actually not any harder then Windows. In fact when it comes to updating the OS you get a bonus; it updates all of your packages too (unless you tell it not to), this all with a few clicks, a password and boom, your done. Oh and no REBOOT needed..." http://www.viperlair.com/articles/editorials/vista /versus/"

Submission + - Canon to erase users' photos and start afresh

Submitted by freeAgent (Kevin Noonan) on Monday February 12, 2007 @12:14PM

freeAgent (Kevin Noonan) writes: Canon announced on January 5th that it would shut down (0) its existing photo-site (1) and launch a revamped site. Rather than automatically transfer users' existing photos (and movies) to the new site, Canon has adopted the novel approach of erasing all of their data. Canon has left it to users to save any photos they haven't backed up elsewhere and upload photos again manually to the new site. February 15th is the deadline for deletion. (0) http://www.canon.co.uk/For_Home/Canon_Image_Gatewa y/termination_announcement.asp (1) http://www.cig.canon-europe.com/

Submission + - Vista not playing nice with FPS games

Submitted by

PetManimal

on Monday February 12, 2007 @11:30AM

PetManimal writes: "Computerworld reports that gamers who have installed Vista are reporting problems with first person-shooter titles such as CounterStrike, Half-Life 2, Doom 3 and F.E.A.R. (users have compiled lists of games with Vista issues here). The complaints, which have turned up on gamers' forums, cite crashes and low FPS rates. The problems, not surprisingly, relate to graphics hardware and software:

Experts blame still-flaky software drivers, Vista's complexity and a dearth of new video cards optimized for Vista's new rendering technology, DirectX 10. That's despite promises from Microsoft that Vista is backwards-compatible with XP's graphic engine, DirectX 9, and that it will support existing games. Meanwhile, games written to take advantage of DirectX 10 have been slow to emerge. And one Nvidia executive predicts that gamers may not routinely see games optimized for DirectX 10 until mid-2008.
"

Submission + - AACS broken for all HD and Blu-ray disks

Submitted by on Monday February 12, 2007 @11:26AM

An anonymous reader writes: Two months after Muslix64 initially publicized his method for getting AACS keys, a user on Doom9 has found the processing key, which is able to decrypt all disks for both formats released thus far. The exploit can even be reused for future keys. This will allow the creation of a one-click backup utility and is a major blow against DRM.

Submission + - The state of virtualizing OS X

Submitted by seriouslywtf on Monday February 12, 2007 @11:11AM

seriouslywtf writes: There's been a lot of speculation about whether people will eventually be able to run Mac OS X in a virtual machine, either on the Mac or under Windows. Well, it seems that both Parallels and VMWare have definitively told Ars Technica that until Apple explicitly gives them the thumbs up, they're not going to be enabling users to virtualize OS X even though it may be possible to do so. From the first article, Parallels said:

"We won't enable this kind of functionality until Apple gives their blessing for a few reasons," Rudolph told Ars. "First, we're concerned about our users — we are never going to encourage illegal activity that could open our users up to compromised machines or any sort of legal action. This is the same reason why we always insist on using a fully-licensed, genuine copy of Windows in a virtual machine — it's safer, more stable, fully supported, and completely legal."
And VMWare added:

"We're very interested in running Mac OS X in a virtual machine because it opens up a ton of interesting use cases, but until Apple changes its licensing policy, we prefer to not speculate about running Mac OS X in a virtualized environment," Krishnamurti added.

Submission + - Big Pharma's Open Source Biology

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12, 2007 @10:57AM

An anonymous reader writes: Big pharmaceutical companies used to hoard genetic information to themselves. But this Forbes story says that Novartis and Pfizer are now giving genetic info they found away for free, because it is worth more to them to have lots of researchers working on it than to keep it away from competitors.

http://www.forbes.com/business/2007/02/12/novartis -genes-diabetes-research-biz-cz_mh_0212novartis.ht ml

This represents a big change from a decade ago, when companies bought up genetic databases for hundreds of millions of dollars — then found out that they couldn't really use these to invent new medicines.

Submission + - Censorship System Proposed in Norway

Submitted by Aqwis on Monday February 12, 2007 @10:53AM

Aqwis writes: A web filter system, comparable to the chinese one, has been proposed (link in Norwegian) to the Norwegian Storting. It will, if it goes through, block all web sites and servers that contain hate (racial hate, pro-nazi sites, hate towards the government, etc), most kinds of pornography (not only child pornography), foreign gambling sites or sites that share copyrighted or other material that is illegal to be shared (such as most BitTorrent sites and services such as LimeWire). Reactions have been mixed, however mostly negative.

Submission + - Machine Learning Algorithms Fight Cancer

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Monday February 12, 2007 @10:43AM

eldavojohn writes: "Artificial intelligence is being employed to fight cancer using machine learning. A new popular technique for treating cancer, Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT), is being employed to treat people with thousands of tiny doses of radiation (as opposed to older crude 'fire hose' doses). The first part of the process is a long and painstaking task of trying to decide where and how much radiation to apply to the patient so that only the cancerous cells are affected and no healthy organs are damaged. Research has now shown that this planning stage can be sped up to a matter of minutes and are working on refining the algorithms to a more robust state so that hospitals can employ them. While I doubt this will replace the human in the loop part of the analysis, it might possibly give them a good start requiring them to make a few modifications."

Submission + - Lionsgate to Open Catalogue on iTunes

Submitted by

VE3OGG

on Monday February 12, 2007 @10:42AM

VE3OGG writes: "Well, it would seem that the movie industry is finally starting to warm up to digital distribution in general, and the iTunes music service in particular. Lionsgate announced that they will be offering 150 movies from their catalogue on iTunes. Among the films are "Terminator 2," "Rambo," and "Monster's Ball". They will be debuting at the standard 9.99 price point, but sadly they will be at a mere 640x480 aspect ratio, making them far less appealing than their DVD counterparts."

Submission + - MySpace to block pirated videos

Submitted by

Vinit

on Monday February 12, 2007 @10:41AM

Vinit writes: "MySpace has finally decided to block all the pirated copy righted videos on their website. Using audio fingerprints of video clips, the users will be stopped from uploading any copy righted videos. With the help of a technology (which checks audio track of video clips to create a unique audio signature) from California-based Audible Magic, the social networking site will stop users from uploading any pirated videos. Media companies will be able to create audio fingerprints of their movies and television shows using free tools which will then be cross checked against these lists of fingerprints. Initially this process will be tested on Universal Music Group's music videos and then it'll be available to all media companies. http://www.pclaunches.com/industry_buzz/myspace_to _block_pirate_videos_with_audio_fingerprints.php"

Journal Journal: Microsoft getting taste of its own medicine.

Journal by 140Mandak262Jamuna on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @11:34AM

Apple is claiming that Vista is corrupting iPods and advising people to wait for the new release of iTunes.

Submission + - Stealing diamonds using a hacked Chip&Pin read

Submitted by biscuitfever11 on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @11:17AM

biscuitfever11 writes: ZDNet has found out from some lab reseachers at Cambridge University in the UK how to steal diamonds by rigging up a faulty Chip and Pin machine in a restaurant. Via a simple system of relays, card details are transferred not to the restaurant's point of sale system, but instead to the hacker's accomplice. The accomplice writes the stolen information to a fake bank card and within minutes can spend the contents of the victim's bank account at the jewellers' (of wherever he fancies). The researchers reckon there's little chance of being caught if the setup is sound and the whole procedure takes minutes.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,3928 5787,00.htm

NASA May Have to Buy Trips to Space 256

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @11:11AM from the hey-buddy-can-you-spare-some-change dept.

MattSparkes writes "Budget cuts could leave NASA without a Space Shuttle replacement, and leave it reliant on private firms to get payloads into space. A similar scenario happened between 1975 and 1981 when NASA made the transition from Apollo to the Space Shuttle. It seems like a strange state of affairs when a magazine can take people to space, but the USA can't."

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