http://www.grammy.org/recording-academy/producers-and-engineers/awards indicates that Sony/Philips (1998), Georg Neumann GmbH (1999), AMS Neve plc (2000) and Digidesign (2001) won technical grammies as companies, before Apple. Also, as individuals, Thomas Stockham (1994 - really "the first technical Grammy"), Ray Dolby (1995), Rupert Neve (1997), George Massenburg (1998), Bill Putnam (2000), and Les Paul (2001).

(Wikipedia links provided just in case anyone hasn't heard of some of those winners, or doesn't know what they won for.)

Actually, there's a type of Special Merit Award in the Producers/Engineers area, the "Technical Grammy," that's been given out since 1994 to "individuals and/or companies who have made contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording field." I'm not sure how many of the people and companies listed are on the software side of things specifically - pretty sure 2012 winner Celemony is, and of course 2002 winner Apple, but a lot of the other names are unfamiliar.

See: http://www.grammy.org/recording-academy/producers-and-engineers/awards

Fair enough - I have Crossover Games (Wine-based) on my Mac for similar reasons. There are, of course, tradeoffs to this approach; you need space for the libraries, and you need to load them, and so on. Sure, it doesn't matter much on a laptop with 8GB of RAM, but on a phone... hmm. Might run the risk of slowing things down.

I think Keck's got near-IR interfometry working. I very strongly suspect VLT is doing near-IR as well, but the article doesn't say. And this use of an optical chip instead of mirrors... dunno.

I'm still waiting for the "Ohana" project that's supposed to link Keck 1+2, Subaru, Gemini, and maybe some of the 3-meter-class scopes near them through single-mode fiber. Maximum baseline if they build that? 800 meters, if I recall.

It's not the equivalent of a 130-meter diameter mirror; it's the equivalent of that mirror with all but four 8.2-meter diameter pieces of it blacked out. Yes, you can get a sharper image using interferometry, but your total light-gathering area is 211 square meters, not 13,273 square meters. That's going to affect exposure times. But still, it's cool. :)

Three questions:
1. Are we talking about mobile devices here?
2. Are we talking about the same Microsoft?
3. How many Windows Mobile 6.x devices were upgradeable to Windows Phone 7?

That appears to have been a response to "rumors" that WP8 would use a different kernel than WP7. So, since we're in a Slashdot story where a different kernel is being reported as fact, I'm going to guess that the .net and CLR bits described in other answers are the real reason for this to work.

Or forward. Or sideways. WP8 won't be binary compatible with WinCE-based WP7 (which itself wasn't compatible with WinCE-based WM6), nor with desktop Windows 8, nor with, apparently, any other OS that's ever existed. Sure hope they make it real easy for developers to build their existing code for WP8.

Oh, and it'll also be real interesting to see whether any WP7 devices can be upgraded to WP8.

I work for one of the 5 bodies under Japan's National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS), which in turn is under the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). It doesn't look like any of the bodies being consolidated are under NINS, but topically, it seems like they'd fall under MEXT, so I'm curious how they're currently organized.

So, let's see it defend.