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Windows 7 Will Be Free For a Year 528

Posted by CmdrTaco from the still-to-expensive dept.
Barence writes "Microsoft is effectively giving away Windows 7 free for a year with the launch of the Release Candidate. The Release Candidate is now available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers, and will go on unlimited, general release on 5 May. The software will not expire until 1 June 2010, giving testers more than a year's free access to Windows 7. 'It's available to as many people who see fit to use it, although we wouldn't recommend it to just your average user,' John Curran, director of the Windows Client Group told PC Pro. 'We'd very strongly encourage anyone on the beta to move to the Release Candidate.'"

Comment Re:Almost, but not quite (Score 2, Insightful) 429

by 77Punker (#27764913) Attached to: Microsoft To Disable Autorun

What about someone who intentionally creates a malicious autorun and distributes a CD-R? How about a virus that adds its own autorun to every disc burned by its host system?

It's still a huge problem and the fact that they removed it from other media demonstrates that they don't understand all of the attack vectors.

One more thing: virus scanners are a joke.
Windows

Microsoft To Disable Autorun 429

Posted by timothy from the mounting-is-fine-but-opening-is-obnoxious dept.
jchrisos writes "Microsoft is planning to disable autorun in the next Release Candidate of Windows 7 and future updates to Windows XP and Vista. In order to maintain a 'balance between security and usability,' non-writable media will maintain its current behavior however. In any case, if it means no more autorun on flash drives, removable hard drives and network shares, that is definitely a step in the right direction. Will be interesting to see what malware creators do to get around this ..."

Comment Classroom interaction is valuable (Score 4, Insightful) 469

by 77Punker (#27663067) Attached to: BYU Prof. Says University Classrooms Will Be "Irrelevant" By 2020

I don't know what kind of classes he's teaching, but when I was in school asking questions and having some sort of discussion as part of the lecture was just as important as the textbook.

Hearing perspectives and having those perspectives challenged and evaluated by your professors and fellow students is an integral component of the college experience. I doubt listening to iPod lectures would be nearly as useful.

Giving out information for free is a great idea, but the electronic media can't replace human interaction.
Microsoft

First Look at Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Beta 274

Posted by Soulskill from the united-federation-of-mail dept.
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Martin Heller takes a first look at Microsoft's Exchange Server 2010 Beta, noting several usability, reliability, and compliance improvements over Exchange 2007. Top among Exchange 2010's new features are OWA support for Firefox 3 and Safari 3; improved storage reliability; conversation views; mail federation between trusted companies; and MailTips, a sort of Google Mail Goggles for the corporate environment. 'Database availability groups give you redundant mail stores with continuous replication; database-level failover gives you automatic recovery. I/O optimizations make Exchange less "bursty" and better suited to desktop-class SATA drives; JBOD support lets you concatenate disks rather than stripe them into a redundant array.' Exchange 2010 will, however, require shops to upgrade to Windows Server 2008, as support for Windows Server 2003 has been dropped. Microsoft will release technical previews of other products in the suite, including Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010, and Project 2010, in the third calendar quarter."
Math

Strings Link the Ultra-Cold With the Super-Hot 236

Posted by Soulskill from the words-of-one-syllable-please dept.
gabrlknght writes "Superstring theory claims the power to explain the universe, but critics say it can't be tested by experiment. Lately, though, string math has helped explain a couple of surprising experiments creating 'perfect liquids' at cosmic extremes of hot and cold. 'Both systems can be described as something like a shadow world sitting in a higher dimension. Strongly coupled particles are linked by ripples traveling through the extra dimension, says Steinberg, of Brookhaven. String math describing such ripples stems from an idea called the holographic principle, used by string theorists to describe certain kinds of black holes. A black hole's entropy depends on its surface area — as though all the information in its three-dimensional interior is stored on its two-dimensional surface. (The 'holographic' label is an allusion to ordinary holograms, where 3-D images are coated on a 2-D surface, like an emblem on a credit card.) The holographic principle has value because in some cases the math for a complex 3-D system (neglecting time) can be too hard to solve, but the equivalent 4-D math provides simpler equations to describe the same phenomena.'"
Businesses

Microsoft and Yahoo Discussing Search Partnership 115

Posted by Soulskill from the here-we-go-again dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian reports that Microsoft and Yahoo are talking about a search engine partnership as they desperately try to come up with something, anything, to take on Google. 'Although there is no suggestion that Microsoft's failed bid will be resurrected, the two companies are believed to be discussing ways they can link up to combat the growing power of their chief rival, Google. Quoting sources close to the discussions, the authoritative Dow Jones All Things Digital blog said that "the talks between the pair are preliminary and wide-ranging."'"
The Internet

Time Warner To Offer Unlimited Bandwidth For $150 479

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the super-size-me dept.
unr3a1 writes to tell us that Time Warner Cable has responded to the massive criticism of its new plan to cap user bandwidth with a new pricing model. Users will be given a grace period in which to assess their pricing tier. The "overages" will be noted on their bill, allowing them to change either their billing plan or their usage patterns. "On top of a 5, 10, 20, and 40-gigabyte (GB) caps, the company said this week that it would offer an additional 100GB tier for heavy users. Prices (so far) would range from $29.95 to $75.00 a month, with users charged an extra dollar for every GB more they download, although that charge is also capped at $75. An 'unlimited' bandwidth plan, therefore, tops out at $150."

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