Comment Re:Released to public after delay? (Score 1) 848

by ngth82 on Sunday January 11, 2009 @04:40AM (#26406003) Attached to: Windows 7 Beta Released To Public After Delay

Amusingly, as long as you get a key (and assuming the pirate bay .iso you get isn't some virus-laden hack job) the torrent method will be faster.

AND assuming you're not on Comcast (or any ISP) that sends torrent reset packets. :(

Comment Re:Downloading now (Score 1) 848

by ngth82 on Sunday January 11, 2009 @04:38AM (#26405997) Attached to: Windows 7 Beta Released To Public After Delay

The download requires the use of some activeX control. Firefox didn't do anything (no surprise there), nor did the 64-bit version of IE. I got it to work on my third try with the 32-bit version of IE.

Comment Re:Wide? (Score 1) 249

by ngth82 on Wednesday January 07, 2009 @02:30AM (#26354505) Attached to: Oprah Sued For Infringing "Touch and Feel" Patent

No, that's just sick. :-D

The Wackiest Technology Tales of 2008 97

Posted by timothy on Sunday December 14, 2008 @11:11PM from the hindsight-is-much-better-than-20/20 dept.

coondoggie writes "Despite the daily drumbeat of new and improved hardware or software, the tech industry isn't all bits and bytes. Some interesting things happen along the way too. Like floating data centers, space geekonauts, shape shifting robots and weird bedfellows (like Microsoft and Jerry Seinfeld). What we include here is an example of what we thought were the best, slightly off-center stories of 2008."

Wine Goes 64-Bit With Wine64 385

Posted by timothy on Sunday December 14, 2008 @06:50PM from the leathery-but-not-presumptuous dept.

G3ckoG33k writes "Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is a popular way to run Windows programs on Linux, and it has an impressive compatibility list. After 15 years of development it reached version 1.0 a few months ago. Now, Wine developer Maarten Lankhorst has succeeded in running 'Hello World' in 64-bit, natively! The 64-bit variety is unexpectedly named Wine64."

Vista To XP Upgrade Triples In Price, Now $150 907

Posted by timothy on Sunday December 14, 2008 @05:31PM from the don't-forget-special-reserve-windows-xp dept.

ozmanjusri writes "Dell has tripled the charge to upgrade Vista PCs to XP. Under current licensing 'downgrade' agreements, system builders can install XP Pro instead of Vista Business or Vista Ultimate; however, Dell has opted for a surcharge of $150 over the price of Vista for the older but more popular XP Professional operating system. Rob Enderle says the downgrade fees could potentially be disastrous for Microsoft: 'The fix for this should be to focus like lasers on demand generation for Vista but instead Microsoft is focusing aggressively on financial penalties," says Enderle. 'Forcing customers to go someplace they don't want to go by raising prices is a Christmas present for Apple and those that are positioning Linux on the desktop.'"

A Sixth Region In the Magnetosphere 69

Posted by timothy on Sunday December 14, 2008 @03:19PM from the difracting-imposed-distinctions dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "As you probably know, Earth's magnetosphere, 'the invisible bubble of magnetic fields and electrically charged particles that surrounds and protects the planet from the periodically lethal radiation of the solar wind,' was discovered in 1958. Until now, it was believed to comprise five regions, including the ionosphere or the Van Allen radiation belts. Now, a US research team has discovered a sixth region, called the warm plasma cloak."

BitTorrent For Enterprise File Distribution? 291

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday December 14, 2008 @01:01PM from the make-it-so dept.

HotTuna writes "I'm responsible for a closed, private network of retail stores connected to our corporate office (and to each other) with IPsec over DSL, and no access to the public internet. We have about 4GB of disaster recovery files that need to be replicated at each site, and updated monthly. The challenge is that all the enterprise file replication tools out there seem to be client/server and not peer-to-peer. This crushes our bandwidth at the corporate office and leaves hundreds of 7Mb DSL connections (at the stores) virtually idle. I am dreaming of a tool which can 'seed' different parts of a file to different peers, and then have those peers exchange those parts, rapidly replicating the file across the entire network. Sounds like BitTorrent you say? Sure, except I would need to 'push' the files out, and not rely on users to click a torrent file at each site. I could imagine a homebrew tracker, with uTorrent and an RSS feed at each site, but that sounds a little too patchwork to fly by the CIO. What do you think? Is BitTorrent an appropriate protocol for file distribution in the business sector? If not, why not? If so, how would you implement it?"

Comment Re:Are they nuts? (Score 2, Interesting) 603

by ngth82 on Friday November 28, 2008 @12:55AM (#25913565) Attached to: 18% of Consumers Can't Tell HD From SD

While the opposite is also true: some of the lower priced "cheaper" antennas actually work better than the higher priced ones. It depends on your location, and where the anntenna is installed relative to other large objects inside your house that may be blocking the signal or causing a great interference pattern due to reflections.