Windows 8 Sales Below Projections 663

Posted by samzenpus on Monday November 19, 2012 @03:21PM from the cold-cakes dept.

harrymcc writes "With early reports on Windows 8 sales indicating that the new operating system is off to a slow start, it's worth pondering what Microsoft could have done differently. Over at TIME.com, I considered several different scenarios, ranging from one in which it released a much more conventional Windows upgrade to one which would have been much like like the Windows 8 we got — except with the ability to boot directly into the desktop, complete with Start button."

Patent Markings May Spell Trouble For Activision 82

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday February 23, 2010 @07:41AM from the almost-rocket-docket dept.

eldavojohn writes "If you pick up your copy of Guitar Hero and read the literature, you'll notice it says 'patent pending' and cites a number of patents. A group alleges no such patent pends nor are some of the patents applicable. If a judge finds Activision guilty of misleading the public in this manner, they could become liable for up to $500 per product sold under false patent marking. The patents in question seem to be legitimately Guitar Hero-oriented, and little is to be found about the mysterious group. The final piece of the puzzle puts the filing in Texas Northern District Court, which might be close enough to Texas Eastern District Court to write this off as a new kind of 'false patent marking troll' targeting big fish with deep coffers."

IBM Researchers Working Toward Cheap, Fast DNA Reader 90

Posted by timothy on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @11:54AM from the reminds-me-of-creepy-ibm-ads dept.

nk497 writes "IBM scientists are working on ambitious research where nano-sized holes will be drilled into computer chips and DNA passed through to create a 'genetic code reader.' A DNA molecule would be passed through a hole just three nanometers wide, while an electrical sensor 'reads' the DNA. The challenge of the silicon-based 'DNA Transistor' would be to slow and control the motion of the DNA through the hole so the reader could decode what is inside it. IBM claimed that if the project was successful it could make personalised genome analysis as cheap as $100 to $1,000, and compared it to the first-ever sequencing done for the Human Genome Project, which cost $3 billion."

"Father of Fiber Optics" Wins Nobel Prize 74

Posted by timothy on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @11:10AM from the you-must-be-very-proud dept.

alphadogg writes "Charles Kao, whose work in the 1960s laid the foundation for today's long-distance fiber-optic networks, has won a share of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics (PDF). Kao, sometimes referred to as the 'father of fiber-optic communications,' was formally honored by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden 'for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication.' Kao's breakthrough discovery in 1966 was to determine how to transmit light over long distances using ultrapure optical glass fibers. This would extend the distance of such transmissions to 62 miles vs. the mere 65 feet allowed under previous technology held back by impurities. The first ultrapure fiber was created in 1970."

FBI Investigates Liberator of Court Records 445

Posted by timothy on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @10:24AM from the stop-doing-our-job-better-than-we-can dept.

eldavojohn writes "Federal court documents aren't free to the public, they cost $0.08/page through a system called PACER. During a period when the US Government Printing Office was trying out free access at a number of courthouses around the US, a 22-year-old programmer named Aaron Swartz installed a small PERL script at the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals library in Chicago — a script that uploaded a public document every three seconds to Amazon's EC2 cloud computing service. Swartz then donated over 19 million documents to public.resource.org. That's when the FBI took interest in the programmer responsible for this effort and ran his name through government databases. How did he discover this? His FOIA was approved, of course, and he received the FBI's partially redacted report on himself. The public.resource.org database was later merged with that of the RECAP Firefox extension, which we discussed a couple of months back." Update: 10/06 18:22 GMT by KD: Timothy Lee pointed out that the summary as originally posted garbled the Swartz / RECAP connection. Improved now.

De Icaza Responds To Stallman 747

Posted by timothy on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @09:37AM from the strong-personalities dept.

ndogg writes "It's no secret that Stallman doesn't like Mono. Miguel, however, has been pretty quiet about those criticisms, until now. It seems he'll no longer be quiet. He's responded strongly to an article by Stallman that criticizes Codeplex about its aims due to its origin at Microsoft. Miguel says Stallman is fearmongering, and is missing an opportunity by his criticism."

Windows Mobile 6.5 Launched, Panned 202

Posted by timothy on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @08:50AM from the what-about-the-grassroots-support dept.

Barence writes "It's not Windows Mobile 7, but at least it's here. PC Pro has posted its full review of Windows Mobile 6.5, as found on the new HTC Touch2 handset, which is also reviewed. If you're expecting something to challenge Apple OS and Android, prepare for a very large let-down. The damning quote: 'Business users, as much as consumers, deserve a phone that's quick and intuitive to operate as well as one that hooks in neatly to Exchange and Outlook and is easy to manage centrally. If this is the best [Microsoft] can muster in the year-and-a-half's worth of development time since Windows Mobile 6.1 appeared, we'll be dramatically lowering our hopes for Windows Mobile 7.'"

Thawte Will End "Web of Trust" On November 16 127

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @08:11AM from the fencing-of-the-commons dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Thawte is ending their Web of Trust, including their free Personal Email Certificates, in less than 2 weeks' time. This hasn't been picked up by the media yet. Seems to me a lot of people, including myself, are hurt by this." Thawte is offering a 1-year free VeriSign cert to those holding valid Personal Email Certificates; after that you pay.

Why the Sony PSP Had To "Go" 261

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @06:42AM from the it-was-getting-late-and-the-dog-had-been-inside-all-day dept.

We recently discussed the release of the PSP Go, which drew criticism for many design choices that were of dubious value to consumers. Now, Phaethon360 sends in a story about why Sony felt the need to improve upon the old PSP. "As a format, the UMD was holding the entire platform back. Few people (if anyone) bought into the UMD movie hype Sony attempted to thrust back in 2005. Very soon after that, people realized they could rip their DVDs to a memory stick with the same quality. It's ironic how, as the price of Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo dropped and size increased, PSP UMD sales decreased along with it. It doesn't take too many Howard Stringers to figure out what the problem was." Indeed, Sony was complaining of rampant PSP piracy for quite some time. They cited "legal and technical issues" for not supporting the transfer of UMD games onto the PSP Go; undoubtedly they couldn't find a way to keep pirated games from being copied.

Comment Why we dropped pagers in favor of text messaging (Score 1) 584

by 23$kidoo on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @12:26PM (#25721765) Attached to: Where Have All the Pagers Gone?

I'm a volunteer search and rescue k-9 handler in Virginia. Two years ago, my team got rid of pagers and went to text message alerts via cell phones for a number of reasons:

1. Pager coverage had gotten really crappy. Most of us live in the country. We would frequently miss pages because we were out of range when at home. No pager service provided the rural coverage that we require. Shoot, I would miss pages when I was in the server room at work in town.

2. Pagers are an all-or-nothing medium. By that, I mean that you either get the page or you don't. Pages would frequently come through garbled and you would have no clue what the message was. With a cell phone, if you happen to be out of range when a message is sent, you will get it when you get back in coverage. With pagers, you don't ever get the message if you are not in coverage.

3. Dispatch has become much more streamlined by using cell phones. We can send out much more info in fewer messages with text messaging. The group members can reply to the text message instead of having to call dispatch. This has been a huge win as we can now tell the Department of Emergency Management how many dogs we have responding within 15 minutes or so compared to 30 - 45 minutes with the pagers. This is due to the dispatchers' phones not being tied up with everyone calling at once. And since VDEM can now request us by sending an email to a mail list, we know immediately what type of dogs are needed and where the search is. No more waiting on dispatch to call DEM and then page us with the info.

4. I have a WinMo phone and I have a specific ring tone (an mp3 of an old submarine klaxon) set up for text messages that come from group members and VDEM. If I happen to sleep through it (it's pretty damn loud), the dog knows that sound means she is likely going to work and she will wake me up.

Pagers definitely still have their place, but text messaging offers much better coverage and more versatility.