Comment Re:I wonder (Score 1) 315
Here is the official press release with the answer: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/dec09/12-15statement.mspx
Comment Re:Google (Score 1) 527
Responding to a Subpoena is not "volunteering".
DX11 Tested Against DX9 With Dirt 2 Demo 201
MojoKid writes "The PC demo for Codemasters' upcoming DirectX 11 racing title, Dirt 2, has just hit the web and is available for download. Dirt 2 is a highly-anticipated racing sim that also happens to feature leading-edge graphic effects. In addition to a DirectX 9 code path, Dirt 2 also utilizes a number of DirectX 11 features, like hardware-tessellated dynamic water, an animated crowd and dynamic cloth effects, in addition to DirectCompute 11-accelerated high-definition ambient occlusion (HADO), full floating-point high dynamic range (HDR) lighting, and full-screen resolution post processing. Performance-wise, DX11 didn't take its toll as much as you'd expect this early on in its adoption cycle."
Bit-tech also took a look at the graphical differences, arriving at this conclusion: "You'd need a seriously keen eye and brown paper envelope full of cash from one of the creators of Dirt 2 to notice any real difference between textures in the two versions of DirectX."
Facebook Photos Lead To Cancellation of Quebec Woman's Insurance 645
No. 24601 writes "A Quebec woman on long-term sick leave, due to a diagnosis of depression, lost her health benefits after her insurance provider found photos of her on Facebook smiling and looking cheerful at parties and out on the beach. Besides all the obvious questions, how did the insurance company access her locked Facebook profile?"
Comment Re:First sale doctrine (Score 1) 545
From the linked article in the summary:
To get them on board, studios probably would have to offer them a lower wholesale price than that paid by retailers, currently $18 for most standard DVDs and $25 for high-definition Blu-ray discs.
Comment Re:Can someone explain.. (Score 1) 545
From the linked article:
To get them on board, studios probably would have to offer them a lower wholesale price than that paid by retailers, currently $18 for most standard DVDs and $25 for high-definition Blu-ray discs.
Comment Re:Not for desktop pc's, but (Score 1) 344
In Windows 7 (not sure about Vista), as long as you keep holding ALT after pressing ALT+TAB, you can use the mouse or keyboard to select the window you want.
Comment Re:This is great news if (Score 1) 275
I'm not sure if the parent is being sarcastic, but I can pay for gmail by paying for Google Apps. Something that's being advertised very heavily recently.
Comment Re:We DO need another desktop OS. (Score 2, Informative) 757
For corporate networks, the network administrator can make programs available for download from the network. That interface is what one would use to install them.
In Vista, now there is a seperate icon to "Install programs from the network."
Comment Re:Microsoft Is the Epitome of Evil (Score 1) 681
Leaving the whole argument of whether the bridge benefits the city aside, Microsoft is paying 17 million of the 30 million cost of that bridge. Considering that this road is a public road, that seems quite generous to me.
Comment Re:Almost competing (Score 2, Insightful) 706
Windows has a handicap here in that sometimes it doesn't matter how experienced you are, the only way of fixing some stuff is with magic voodoo steps or a complete reinstall (under Linux, you usually can dig around enough to find the root cause and fix it).
I think the problem is that there is a big difference between "experienced" Linux users, and "experienced" Windows users. If people who think they were an "experienced" Windows user really were, they would know how to use various tools available to diagnose problems on Windows.
Mark Russinovich's blog contains many examples of how one can find the root cause of those odd problems using free tools.
Submission + - Human sperm produced in the laboratory (bbc.co.uk) 1
duh P3rf3ss3r writes: The BBC is carrying a report from a team of researchers at Newcastle University who claim to have developed the first "artificial" human sperm from stem cells. The research, reported in the journal Stem Cells and Development involved selecting meristematic germ cells from a human embryonic stem cell culture and inducing meiosis, thus producing a haploid gamete. The authors claim that the resulting sperm are fully formed, mature, human sperm cells but the announcement has been greeted with mixed reaction from colleagues who claim the procedure is ethically questionable and that the gametes produced are of inferior levels of maturation.
Submission + - Pandora no longer completely free
AbyssWyrm writes: Today, I received an email (alternatively, see the blog) from Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, informing me that Pandora will no longer free for all users. Instead, it will be really cheap — for those with a free account, there will be a cap of 40 hours per month, and a user may pay a one-time fee of $0.99 to resume listening to music unlimited for a month. According to the blog entry, this will affect the top 10% of listeners.
Certainly not a bad deal considering the price, and I suspect that Pandora is one of few free internet resources whose users are loyal enough to pay a small fee to keep it afloat. Hopefully this does not become a slippery slope.
Certainly not a bad deal considering the price, and I suspect that Pandora is one of few free internet resources whose users are loyal enough to pay a small fee to keep it afloat. Hopefully this does not become a slippery slope.
Submission + - Is there a zero-day OpenSSH exploit in the wild? (dshield.org)
eefsee writes: sans.org reports 'Over the past 24 hours we've had a number of readers tell us that there is an OpenSSH exploit in active use.' It is not clear if this is a real exploit or sysadmin CYA masquerading as exploit, but some web hosts have already turned of SSH in response. On 7/5 HostGator shut down SSH on all its shared servers. Site5 did the same thing the next day. The loss of SSH, of course, kills SFTP on these hosts as well, forcing customers to fall back on FTP. Now that is security!
Submission + - Microsoft promises no patent prosecution of Mono (theregister.co.uk)
Mortlath writes: The Register is reporting that Microsoft is promising not to pursue patent claims against Linux and open-source software using the open-source implementation of .NET, Project Mono.
The company has said that third party implementations of its C# and the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) — a language runtime — will be made available under its Community Promise. The promise will cover ECMA specifications 334 and 335 — C# and CLI respectively.
