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Microsoft

Submission + - Gates reveals majority of PCs ship without Vista 6

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system is proving far less popular with new PC buyers than Windows XP did during XP's first year on the market, if statements by company chairman Bill Gates at this week's Consumer Electronics Show are any measure. Gates boasted that Microsoft has sold more than 100 million copies of Windows Vista since the OS launched last January. Based on Gates' statement, Windows Vista was aboard just 39% of the PC's that shipped in 2007. And Vista, in terms of units shipped, only marginally outperformed first year sales of Windows XP according to Gates' numbers. Assuming Gates is using consistent measurements across time — and any failure to do so would raise questions about Microsoft's reporting tactics — first year Vista unit sales have exceeded first year XP unit sales by little more than 10%.
Privacy

Potentially Huge Legal Boost for EU File Traders 98

Posted by Zonk from the now-we-need-some-of-that-here dept.
Mishtara2001 writes "BusinessWeek reports that a high court adviser in the EU has decided that ISPs are not required to reveal information to authorities, when users are suspected of music piracy. If this is adopted across the EU then it can potentially spell doom for the IFPI's (the global RIAA) efforts to litigate against European P2P users. From the article: 'Promusicae wanted the personal data so that it could start taking legal action against the file sharers, but Telefonica claimed that it could only turn over such information as part of a criminal prosecution or in matters of public security and national defense. A Spanish court hearing the case referred the issue to the ECJ for guidance on how to interpret EU law on the subject and Ms Kokott's legal opinion is the advice for the ECJ judges who will eventually rule on a recommendation for the Spanish court to take. The final court decision is expected later this year. Once it comes out, it could form the basis for similar decisions throughout the 27-member EU bloc.'"
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Psychology, design and economics of slot-machines (boingboing.net)

Submitted by
6
6 writes: "from the article... "Stanford design prof Michael Shanks has an online course unit about the design, politics, sociology and economics of slot machines that is flat-out fascinating, especially the manipulative psychology of slot and casino design. The layout also takes advantage of the differences between slot and table players. In general, table players do not like the noise of slot machines because they find it distracting. In addition, they may sometimes play a few rounds on slot machines spontaneously, but obviously prefer table playing. At the same time, however, spouses or partners of table players will often wile away time playing at a nearby slot machine. Thus casinos are planned such that there are slot machines lining walkways around tables. However, these slots are always tight. This cuts down on the noise and distraction to table players, and makes sense because the majority of players on these machines are playing spontaneously, with little expectation of winning. This demonstrates to what degree casino layouts are optimized — in this case, to the point that a complex system is implemented simply to clean up loose change from spontaneous players. "

the article on Boing-Boing

Design Class on Slot Machines"
Space

Submission + - Northrop Grumman to own Scaled Composites

Submitted by Dolphinzilla
Dolphinzilla writes: According to Space.com and many other web sources, Northrop Grumman Corporation agreed on July 5 to increase its stake in Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites — designers of Space Ship One, Proteus, and whole lot of other unusal aircraft — from 40 percent to 100 percent

Feed Engadget: Metal nanocrystals promise to double flash memory capacity (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Storage

There's certainly no shortage of folks trying to create bigger, better flash memory, but upstart Nanosys seems to think it's found a winning formula, and it's apparently already got some big names on board. Key to its solution are so-called "self-assembled metal nanocrystals" which, when added to the flash manufacturing process, supposedly doubles the capacity of conventional chips. According to MIT's Technology Review, the crystals themselves are "grown" in a liquid solution and then spun onto silicon wafers -- not an entirely new process, but Nanosys has apparently come up with a chemical process that produces crystals that are more uniform in size and spacing than previous attempts by others. That's apparently been enough to attract the interest of Intel and Micron, who Nanosys says could be putting the technology to use as soon as 2009.

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