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Microsoft

Submission + - What to Expect From Windows 7 SP1 (infoworld.com)

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes: The first inklings of a public Windows 7 SP1 beta program are beginning to emerge, with hidden registry keys and a leaked list of post-RTM build numbers surfacing on the Web. 'Beyond the obvious bug fixes and security patches, we'll no doubt see support for the new USB 3.0 standard. Likewise, enhancements to the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi stacks will be slipstreamed in, allowing Windows 7 to retain its mantle as the most easily configured version ever,' writes InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy. 'But perhaps the most significant "update" to come out of Service Pack 1 will be the fact that it exists at all, and that by delivering it to market Microsoft will be signaling that it is now OK for IT shops to pull the trigger on their Windows 7 deployments.'
Apple

Submission + - Steve Jobs Crowned "Person of the Decade" (smartmoney.com)

Submitted by longacre
longacre writes: Apple CEO Steve Jobs won over 30% of the vote in an online poll published by personal finance and investing news site SmartMoney.com, enough to earn their "Person of the Decade" title by a solid margin over luminaries such as Warren Buffett (17%), Ben Bernanke (13%) and Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page (12%). From the article, "Certainly, Jobs accomplished more than probably any other CEO since he returned to Apple in the late 1990s: Not only did he revive sales at the failing computer company, he led the stock to a more than 700% increase in value, and forever changed the way people buy and listen to music."
Games

Submission + - Graphic Novelist Calls for Better Game Violence (elder-geek.com) 1

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: Landry Walker (alternative comics creator of X-Ray Studios) has a short little opinion piece at Elder Geek espousing that all he wants for Christmas is more realistic game violence. While he acknowledges the world probably isn't ready for it, he wishes that getting shot in a video game was a bit more like getting shot in real life. From his piece, 'that’s my problem with video game violence. Bullets are something we shrug off. Point blank fire with a machine gun is something that a tiny bit of flexible body armor and 20 seconds sitting on a magic invisibility inducing gargoyle can cure. Time and time again, I’ve heard people claim that they want to see a greater degree of realism in video games. But that’s a lie. We don’t want realism. We want fantasy. We want unlimited ammo and we want rapid respawns. We want to jump out of second story windows without a scratch. We want to dodge bullets and shake off mortal wounds without pause.' What say you, reader? Would this bring a new level of impossibility to video games or would there be a way to balance this out?

Submission + - Best filesystem to use for external drives? 1

Submitted by rufey
rufey writes: I've recently embarked on a project to rip my DVD and CD collection to a pair of external USB drives. One drive will be used on a daily basis to access the rips of music and DVDs, as well as store backups of all of my other data. The second drive will be a copy of the first drive, to be synced up on a montly basis and kept at a different location. The USB drives that I purchased for this are 1 TB in size and came pre-formatted with FAT32. While I can access this filesystem from all of my Windows and Linux machines, there are some limitations. Namely, the filesize on a FAT32 filesystem is limited to 4 Gb (4 Gb less 1 byte to be technical). I have some files that are well over that size that I want to store, mostly raw DVD video. I'll primarily be using these drives on a Linux based system, and initially, with a Western Digital Live TV media player. I can access a EXT3 filesystem from both of these, and I'm thinking about reformatting to EXT3. But on Windows, it requires a 3rd party driver to access the EXT3 filesystem. NTFS is an option, but the Linux kernel NTFS drivers (according to the kernel build documentation) only has limited NTFS write support, only being safe to overwrite existing files without changing the file size). The Linux-NTFS project (www.linux-ntfs.org) may be able to mitigate my NTFS concerns for Linux, but I haven't had enough experience with it to feel comfortable. At some point I'd like whatever filesystem I use to be accessible to Apple's OS-X.

With those constraints in mind, which filesystem would be the best to use? I realize that there will always be some compatability problems with whatever I end up with. But I'd like to minimize these issues by using a filesystem that has the best multi-OS support for both reading and writing, while at the same time supporting large files.
First Person Shooters (Games)

Infinity Ward Fights Against Modern Warfare 2 Cheaters 203

Posted by Soulskill from the be-careful-they-cheat dept.
Faithbleed writes "IW's Robert Bowling reports on his twitter account that Infinity Ward is giving 2,500 Modern Warfare 2 cheaters the boot. The news comes as the war between IW and MW2's fans rages over the decision to go with IWnet hosting instead of dedicated servers. Unhappy players were quick to come up with hacks that would allow their own servers and various other changes." Despite the dedicated-server complaints, Modern Warfare 2 has sold ridiculously well.

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