diego001 - Slashdot User

Microsoft To Switch Focus To Windows 8 In July 2010 374

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @10:41AM from the someday-they'll-fix-xp dept.

An anonymous reader noted a bit from Ars saying Microsoft will be switching internal focus from Windows 7 to Windows 8 in fiscal year 2010. Microsoft's fiscal year starts in July, which is only eight months away. According to Microsoft's roadmaps, the release of Windows 8 is scheduled for 2012."

Proton Beams Sent Around the LHC 115

Posted by kdawson on Friday November 20, 2009 @05:40PM from the going-in-circles dept.

feldhaus writes "The BBC reports that the first beams for over one year have been successfully sent around the complete circumference of the Large Hadron Collider. Engineers do not yet have a stable circulating beam but they hope to by 0600 GMT on Saturday."

Submission + - Internet Helps Iran Silence Activists

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Thursday June 25, 2009 @11:37PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "Over the last couple of weeks, those who believe in the transformative powers of technology to battle an oppressive state have pointed to Iran as a test case but as Farhad Manjoo writes on Slate the real conclusion of news now coming out of Iran is that for regimes bent on survival, electronic dissent is easier to suppress than organizing methods of the past. Using a system installed last year built, in part, by Nokia and Siemens, the government routes all digital traffic in the country through a single choke point and through "deep packet inspection," the regime achieves omniscience with the technical capability to monitor every e-mail, tweet, blog post, and possibly even every phone call placed in Iran. "Compare that with East Germany, in which the Stasi managed to tap, at most, about 100,000 phone lines--a gargantuan task that required 2,000 full-time technicians to monitor the calls," writes Manjoo. The effects of this control have been seen over the past couple days with only a few harrowing pictures and videos getting through Iran's closed net. For most citizens, posting videos and even tweeting eyewitness accounts remains fraught with peril and the same tools that activists use can be used by the government to spread disinformation. The government is also using crowdsourcing by posting pictures of protesters and asking citizens for help in identifying the activists. "If you think about it, that's no surprise," writes Manjoo. "Who said that only the good guys get to use the power of the Web to their advantage?""

Submission + - WSJ: Microsoft Says IBM is Anticompetitive

Submitted by BBCWatcher on Thursday June 25, 2009 @10:21PM

BBCWatcher writes: Microsoft has long claimed that the mainframe is dead, slain by the company's Windows monopoly. Yet, apparently without any mirror nearby, Microsoft is now complaining through the Microsoft-funded Computer & Communications Industry Association that not only are mainframes not dead, but IBM is so anticompetitive that governments should intervene in the hyper-competitive server market. The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft is worried that the trend toward cloud computing is introducing competition to the Windows franchise, favoring better positioned companies including IBM and Cisco. HP now talks about almost nothing but the IBM mainframe, with no Tukwila CPUs to sell until 2010. The global recession is encouraging more mainframe adoption as businesses slash IT costs, dominated by labor costs, and improve business execution. In 2008, IBM mainframe revenues rose 12.5% even whilst mainframe prices fell. (IBM shipped 25% more mainframe capacity than in 2007. Other server sales reports are not so good.) IBM mainframes can run multiple operating systems concurrently including Linux and, more recently, OpenSolaris.

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