The whitelisting should of course be of the "walled garden" variety. For 99% of users, hardware based protections such as TPM is a good thing. Even having the option to whitelist arbitrary software should probably be a poweruser feature.

Groups with large resources (such as governments) can always exploit. They can either find a vulnerability that they can exploit without being detected by blacklists, or they can exploit the whitelist system. Whitelists, would not get rid of stuxnet-type attacks, but it would probably get rid of the 99% of attacks that are driving botnets around the world and so on.

You sir are a rounding error in microsofts bottom line. Next you'll say you don't want always on requirements, and after that you'll want to sell "used games". I think you need to look elsewhere for your gaming fix.

First of all they will probably sell it at zero or negative margin in the beginning meaning it may be a decent "gaming PC" for the money. Second, it has some hardware and software features that a PC doesn't, so it can probably squeeze out a bit more performance from the same dollar, than a computer running a desktop OS does. Developers also have a fixed hardware target so they can cut corners and do optimizations that aren't possible in PC games. Lastly, even though it has been theoretically possible to e.g. play a game of FIFA with 3 friends on a PC on your big screen TV, it is just so much simpler to do so on a console.

You could have had a dual titan graphics card and 32Gb of ram of course. But the price point is fixed, so you can't. For a the cost of the 500Gb mechanical you can get a, what, 64GB solid state? A (low) cap on installed games feels like a larger problem than load times. The new box will come in several iterations over the coming years, and solid state will be one of the first things that will be added. Also, it is probably user replaceable if you are adventurous. I don't see it as a big problem. That said, we haven't seen the price tag yet, so the 500GB mechanical better mean that it is priced the same as the 360 was at launch then.

Let me set you straight: the multitasking is pretty much identical to the "modern" UI in Win8. You can snap one more thing to the side. Doesn't seem to be any more in the xbox, but not less either.

The interesting bit is how they plan to do the TV integration. They gave no clues in the presentation as far as I could see. I suppose in the US there are some large providers (Comcast, DirecTV and so on), but where I'm at I use an IP-tv provider that really stinks (I cannot even physically get cable or satellite to my home), and would switch instantly if Microsoft signed a deal with something half-decent in IPTV.

Very interested to see them reveal what their "global" plan for TV/Entertainment is. A limited deal with one provider in the US (and a few select sports leagues in the US) would feel like a big meh on the rest of the planet.

Well, to be honest the gaming is the simple bit. You know that if you upgrade a gaming rig after 5 years it will be awesome. And all the gamers just want the next Halo/Fifa/CoD anyway, so what more do you want? Microsoft seem confident to take the livingroom before Sony/Samsung/LG/Apple/Google do, so this is their attempt. I think they are pretty confident in their gamer-customer base.

This would be great if it wasn't for the fact that during the last decade(s) people have been fitting multi-socket halogen fixtures instead of single bulb standard socket fixtures in their homes. I'd definitely love having an app-controlled lighting system, but it would have to be much more flexible than just a bulb or single socket solution. For light fixtures with several low power halogen lights I'd have to hide the control unit somewhere before the power is split to the individual halogens, i.e. somewhere in the fixture or as a special lightswitch (essenially then a controllable dimmner switch). All the light fixtures that already have dimmers would have to go the same way: the wheel dimmer would have to be replaced by one that can be controlled by the app.

As long as I can dim 3 out of 4 lights but still have to get off my ass to go turn down the fourth light (at the same place where I could dim them all), there is very little gain. As soon as someone offers a simple solution that is expandable to existing switches, multi-socket fixtures and so on, i.e. beyond standard bulb/socket then I'm in.

I use windows 8 and don't get what the fuss is about. I basically don't use the metro interface and don't intend to ever do so until I can do ALL my work in it. That is, I don't dislike the UI per se, but dislike having to switch back and forth. I don't really care if MS gets a share of what I pay for applications either, but here is the chicken and egg problem: I won't buy any metro apps until I use that interface. I won't use that interface until I can use it exclusively. I won't use it exclusively until all my applications are there.

They will never, ever be able to remove support for the legacy desktop apps that is what keep customers from moving away from windows. What they WILL do however, is realize that home users don't really provide as much income as they should for microsoft. Apple is a shining example of a company that makes money from consumers, not business. Microsofts cash-cow is income from people using workstations and servers in offices around the world. So the question: How can microsoft make good business from consumers, without risking their revenue stream from business? Answer: by separating the tiers further. Make desktop/legacy a "premium" product, and sell the consumer OS cheaper by forcing users to adopt apps that give MS a piece of the revenue. I predict that the desktop will live forever, but only in the higher SKU:s of windows. Meanwhile, microsofts "Home"/OEM offerings of windows will steadily become cheaper and slowly move into an apps-only ecosystem.

Assume the server has a database of hashed passwords, using one of the now vulnerable hashing algorithms. What the client is sending is for example a https encrypted password, not a hashed password? if you are the man in the middle, you are dealing with encryption not hashing? The https request is decrypted on the server, the plaintext client password is then hashed and compared to the hash in the database. I don't see how a man in the middle is related to hashes? (Then again I'm not a security guy in any shape way or form). As far as I know hash vulnerabilities are mainly a concern when the password (hash) datbase is compromised, which happens sooner or later.

Thus not only proving they didn't read the article, they didn't even properly read the title. "restore GAINS of moores law". Which is perfectly correct.

This research doesn't change that. What parallel programming is about, is currently three steps 1) find parts of code that can execute in parallel (reasonably simple), 2) make sure there is no shared mutable state (hard), 3) make correct threading implementation (tedious

The problem with todays (OO/imperative) languages and tools is that it is exceedingly hard to make sure that state isn't shared. It is also very hard to test for, and find bugs related to shared state. This research helps with step 2. You still have to figure out where these boundaries are, but you can make sure it is correct, by letting a compiler check this for you. It can also help you with step 3, but if your assumptions are correct that isn't hard in current tools, just tedious. Things like TPL and PLink have greatly simplified step 3), but what I assume MS have found out is that with such power to parallelize, developers are spending more and more time in step 2, thus gaining very little.

Maybe read the article? Maybe just the title? "Help restore the GAINS of Moores law.". That is, since these days the extra transistors we put on cpu:s just go to more cores and not faster cores, we don't gain as much as we used to until 2004. These days to actually GAIN from Moore's Law, we need code that actually use these transistors, i.e. parallel code.