Comment Re:Cut YouCut (Score 1) 760
Goddammit, for the last time, Al Gore did NOT invent the Internet, he invented Global Warming.
Comment Re:About as surprising (Score 1) 628
I think you are spot on. We often empathize with other species without any real idea of how they perceive the world. I'm reminded of the phenomenon of 'blindsight' where a sufferer perceives no visual stimuli yet can still react to it. One study indicated that the brains of sufferers had activated a secondary visual pathway where visual information is still processed, but an image is never perceived. This pathway was found to be similar to the visual pathway of pigeons (probably other birds as well) which would suggest that they may walk around, reacting to things in their environments, but may not actually 'see' anything.
Volt Asks Temps To 'Vote" For Microsoft Pay Cut 412
theodp writes "In an email sent Friday evening to its Microsoft temp workers, Volt Workforce Solutions asked the techies to 'vote' to agree to a 10% pay cut. From the email: 'We want to support you in continuing your assignment at Microsoft and respectfully ask that you respond by going to the upper left hand corner of this email under the "Vote" response option and select, "Accept'" by close of business Tuesday, March 3, 2009. By accepting you agree to the [-10%] pay adjustment in your pay rate.' Microsoft managed to keep the Feb. 20 email detailing plans to slash rates from leaking while it pitched its Elevate America initiative at the 2009 Winter Meeting of the National Governors Association, touting Microsoft skills as just the ticket to economic recovery."
Microsoft Unveils "Elevate America" 325
nandemoari writes "In response to the current economic crisis, Microsoft Corp. has come out with a stimulus plan of their own. Their goal is to help a large group of individuals use their computers to land employment in ways other than to generate a compelling resume. The new online initiative, Elevate America, is set to equip close to 2 million people (over the next three years) with the skills needed to succeed in the field of technology."
Moonlight 1.0 Brings Silverlight Content To Linux 346
An anonymous reader writes "Novell has unveiled some of the fruits of its technical collaboration with Microsoft in the form of Moonlight 1.0, a Firefox plug-in which will allow Linux users to access Microsoft Silverlight content. Officially created by the Mono project, it is available for all Linux distributions, including openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Fedora, Red Hat and Ubuntu. Also included in Moonlight is the Windows Media pack, with support for Windows Media Video, Windows Media Audio and MP3 files."
Comment Re:Congratulations! (Score 1) 345
And congratulations to Sony! Now the Blu-ray format should become much more attractive and take off with consumers.
Submission + - Origin of Antimatter Cloud Discovered
Active Seti writes: "Scientists have proposed a wide range of explanations for the origin of antimatter, which is exceedingly rare in the cosmos. For years, many theories centered around radioactive elements produced in supernovae. Now four years of observations from the European Space Agency's Integral satellite may have cleared up one of the most vexing mysteries in our Milky Way: the origin of a giant cloud of antimatter surrounding the galactic center. Integral found that the cloud extends farther on the western side of the galactic center than it does on the eastern side. This imbalance matches the distribution of a population of binary star systems that contain black holes or neutron stars, strongly suggesting that these binaries are churning out at least half of the antimatter, and perhaps all of it. The antimatter is probably produced in a region near the neutron stars and black holes, where powerful magnetic fields launch jets of particles that rip through space at near-light speed. "We expected something unexpected, but we did not expect this," says Gerry Skinner, co-investigator for Integral's Spectrometer which made the discovery."
Submission + - Stealthy Windows update raises serious concerns
UniversalVM writes: What is the single biggest issue that bothers open source advocates about proprietary software? It is probably the ability of the vendor to pull stunts like this.
Windows has stealthily updated components of the operating system using its update service. The update will not be flagged even if you have set up your update to notify you and only execute if permitted.
The weak explanation seems to be a great exercise in circular logic "Had we failed to update the service automatically, users would not have been able to successfully check for updates and, in turn, users would not have had updates installed automatically or received expected notifications." News.com is reporting that all of the updated files on both XP and Vista appears to be in windows update itself. This is information that was independently uncovered by users and still not released by Microsoft.
More interestingly could this be construed as a hacking of Windows users' systems? Does the EULA specify that Microsoft has the right to silently break into my machine, change components of the operating system and ignore any settings that explicitly prohibit this sort of behavior? Seems like a good argument could be made for Microsoft breaking into a system without the users' permission.
The weak explanation seems to be a great exercise in circular logic "Had we failed to update the service automatically, users would not have been able to successfully check for updates and, in turn, users would not have had updates installed automatically or received expected notifications." News.com is reporting that all of the updated files on both XP and Vista appears to be in windows update itself. This is information that was independently uncovered by users and still not released by Microsoft.
More interestingly could this be construed as a hacking of Windows users' systems? Does the EULA specify that Microsoft has the right to silently break into my machine, change components of the operating system and ignore any settings that explicitly prohibit this sort of behavior? Seems like a good argument could be made for Microsoft breaking into a system without the users' permission.
Submission + - New Linux desktop environment built on Firefox (pyrodesktop.org)
IL-CSIXTY4 writes: "
This looks like an interesting marriage of the web and the desktop. In Pyro, Web apps run in windows on the desktop, right alongside desktop apps (through compositing). Features expected in a desktop environment, like task/window selection and an Expose-like function, are written in Javascript."Pyro is a new kind of desktop environment for Linux built on Mozilla Firefox. Its goal is to enable true integration between the Web and modern desktop computing.
Submission + - Microsoft Sees Stronger XP Sales in FY08 (pcworld.com) 1
Rude Awakening writes: Microsoft Corp. Thursday said that it expects Windows XP, the operating system supposedly made moot by Windows Vista, to make up a significantly larger part of sales in the coming year.
I thought this was a misprint and they really meant Vista sales would be stronger in '08 instead of XP, but it is no misprint. Is Vista bad enough to breathe new life into XP sales, or is this part of an insidious plot by Microsoft to sell two OS licenses for each new PC shipped?
I thought this was a misprint and they really meant Vista sales would be stronger in '08 instead of XP, but it is no misprint. Is Vista bad enough to breathe new life into XP sales, or is this part of an insidious plot by Microsoft to sell two OS licenses for each new PC shipped?
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