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Oops, I guess not....

Because WPF is largely written in managed code on the common language runtime, it never ran in kernel mode. There are elements of WPF (called the MIL) that are written in unmanaged code, but that code also largely runs (and always has run) in user mode. Insofar as WPF needs to touch kernel mode stuff (e.g., drivers), it interacts with them through the existing DirectX APIs. The user mode and kernel mode aspects of the WPF architecture haven't changed.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051216-5788 .html

So what did Microsoft gain with the Vista GDI changes?

Enjoy,

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051226-5842 .html

That's from 2005! Did they just never follow through? What happened?

What is this, a joke? FTA:

Sounds like a plain old web browser to me. This was filed in 2003 and granted in 2006/2007? I guess nobody had ever heard of web browsers by then. This is just too stupid.

And the final insult is you are stuck paying for a crappies online experience with Microsoft's weak online service that can't handle dedicated servers and free modding like the PS3 and PC online does.
Actually XboxLive can handle third party dedicated servers, EA for instance runs their own servers on Live. And here lies the problem...
EA have actually shutdown online support for a few of their xbox360, (and a lot of xbox), titles whereas Microsoft continue supporting all Live titles on their servers.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2007/08 /03/ea-shuts-the-door-on-online-play-for-even-more -catalog-games

I am not a Nintendo fanboy, however you don't seem to understand the full lack of challenge ANYONE has brought to the Nintendo on the portable front. I heard at the peak of the last console wars they still sold a Gameboy for every PS2, Gamecube and Xbox sold, and that Pokemon accounted for 50% of all video games sales. But even if that weren't true, it's pretty clear that the DS currently is the most successful console, by a wide margin. I doubt anything but the most concentrated effort could take on Nintendo.

However Mac does sell about 10 million iPods a quarter lately, far outstripping DS sales. I started out sure that you were crazy to think Apple could do something dangerous to Nintendo with iPhone/Pod... but given the numbers... anything could happen if they release a touch screen iPod.

Luckily gmail keeps the entire session in https opposed to other sides that also are hackable the same way, where only the logon is secure. After that they switch to http and are susceptible (e.g. facebook) to this attack.

There is more on this on Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070801-repo rt-sidejacking-session-information-over-wifi-easy- as-pie.html

I'll just refer to this comment by Troy Unrau: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f /174096756/m/261009765831?r=291001865831#291001865 831

something as complex as one of these here deep packet inspection thingys, and even that will fail against determined content providers. http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/Deep-packe t-inspection-meets-net-neutrality.ars

Wherever there's a person going through puberty, there you will most likely find prurient material.

MICROSOFT was the company that paid big $$$ for exclusive content in GTA4.

Please cite.

How about here, here, or directly from Take-Two.

You left out

4. Joe's company gets bad press for selling CDs that don't work in many cd players
5. Joe's customers go online to download copies of the CDs they bought but now can't play on their computers, rip to their iPods, etc
6. A percentage of the customers mentioned in 5 decide that since they are downloading songs from the CD they bought (which Joe's propaganda campaign has been telling them is illegal anyway) they might as well download music from other CDs (which they haven't bought) too
7. Retailers get sick of having to deal with Joe's CDs being returned at a much higher rate than anything else since people consider discs that won't play on their particular hardware defective.
8. Sales of Joe's CDs plummet while his competitors cash in by promoting the fact that their music is DRM free

I think the grandparent post was referring to how the MLB tried to convince the courts that player stats are under copyright.

It actually is a two-button mouse in addition to the side buttons, it's just defaulted by OS X to both left and right click having the same action. Although the entire mouse body physically clicks, there are sensors underneath each side of the little scroll ball that determine a right or left click based on where your fingers are (pictures here, near the bottom of the page). That means that if you have your fingers over both buttons when clicking, it registers as a left click - you need to remove your fingers from the left side of the mouse to perform a right click.

It's annoying, but I love the little scroll ball so much that i've been training myself to lift my fingers from the left side for a right click. Although I hear the scroll ball goes wonky after a while from getting dirty...
 
Maybe someone knows of a mouse with a similar scroll ball, that has distinct buttons? I had a "horizontal scroll" mouse before that was just awful, had to tilt the mouse wheel to the sides, which due to the degree of force required invariably led to a vertical scroll as well.

I have read that FCC has set rules on bidding, and one of the rules is that the bids are anonymous (click here for Ars Technica story). So, telecoms won't know if they are bidding against Google or someone else. My bet is that Google will still bid. It is possible the telecoms could sort of unite and communicate who has the high bid, but that seems a little paranoid. Regardless, I think it will be really interesting to see how this plays out.

Looks like that's changing (the first part, I almost modded informative) not the trollish second part. See this.

Vasquez believes that the RIAA could be vulnerable to charges of malicious prosecution, but even that would be difficult. "It would likely take someone on the inside testifying that the RIAA pursued people that it knew were innocent," Vasquez explained. "Then there would be a serious risk of malicious prosecution. But you've got to have them cold."

The article goes into why a RICO prosecution is really just good PR and probably wouldn't work in court.

Ford and Microsoft had all ready hit the news circus with the story of Sync. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070108-8568 .html

I wonder if this new auto OS will tie in to Sync? I'd hate to have different parts of the car fighting with a different OS'es in the dash.

The problem with OLPC is that they currently have no plans to sell to the public. If you're not a government buying them for weapons^W poor children in lot sizes in the millions, they're not interested.

Quanta, the company manufacturing the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project's XO laptops, plans to begin selling low-cost budget mobile computers for $200 later this year. According to Quanta president Michael Wang, the company plans to leverage the underlying technologies associated with OLPC's XO laptop to produce laptop computers that are significantly less expensive than conventional laptops.

I dont understand how Sun can be seen as innovative anymore. They just lurch this way and that, never following any kind of coherant strategy.

No need to try to reverse engineer their strategy, it's openly published:

http://media.arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.me dia/sunstrategy1.gif

I'm normally not one to do this, but the article linked is nearly identical to the coverage over at Ars Technica. It seems that only a few words were changed and without even a link to the original ars article.

That said, having read this in-depth review of the iPhone as well as others, my list of iPhone deficiencies includes:

• the iPhone should be decoupled from AT&T/Cingular; users should have the ability to use sims from any GSM provider; and the ability to purchase unlocked
• it needs a faster connection e.g., UMTS or better (though the fact that its existing EDGE connection is deemed acceptable to some is largely another reflections of the non-free non-competetive market for cells and broadband, evident in all surveys showing the US bypassed by nearly every other major country on the planet)
• more storage, perhaps an 80G disk. A great movie-watching screen with just 8G (most of which would be occupied by a typical music collection) is a waste
• 802.11n support in the hardware/software
• landscape keyboard available for all apps, not just safari
• period, comma, question mark on the main keyboard
• much better email client: faster load, easier deletion, spam filtering, one-click trash emptying
• MMS
• non-SMS chat clients!!!
• ability to send full-sized photos over email; iPhone only sends half-sized
• video recording capability
• uncrippled bluetooth (DUN, file transfer)
• open dev platform!!!
• officially supported self-battery-replaceability

The drive is at 48C right now, with worst ever being 55C. (according to the SMART data, if I read it right)

55C is actually just at the edge of the operating temperature range

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f /24609792/m/857003655731?r=274009295731#2740092957 31

I suspect that the running drives hot reduces the life - I got a new machine a few years ago with crap cooling, and installed two 7200rpm drives I've had two drives fail in two years. One was a Deathtar admittedly but the other was a Maxtor and they are supposed to be ok. I actually added a WD SATA drive, and had the same symptoms as the above poster and the drive was easily over 55C. On the old machine I never saw a single fail, and after I put more fans in the new one to keep the drive temperature at around 35C I've never had a problem.

So I can't prove it, but I think the increased hard drive fail rate I and a lot of other people saw around the move to 7200rpm was because the drives cooked themselves to death. It's not entirely the drives fault of course, modern PCs have a load of high power components packed very close together. Look at the trend in CPU and GPU power consumption over the last ten years. Oddly enough PATA cables make it worse by obstructing the air flow. I think the crap way most PCs are assembled with a tangled mass of cables, poor airflow and no chassis fans, combined with all components increased power consumption means it's now very easy to build a PC where the hard disk will cook.

they have only tested with japanese and english. (see ars technica's coverage here). while they do present some intriguing results, the authors themselves admit that their methodology is flawed. btw, when did slashdot become ars redux?

Criticism from the music industry has come fast and furious in the wake of the government's decision. "Thousands of musicians have no pensions and rely on royalties to support themselves," said Roger Daltry, lead singer of The Who. "These people helped to create one of Britain's most successful industries, poured money into the British economy and enriched people's lives. They are not asking for a handout, just a fair reward for their creative endeavors."

You fool! There is nothing else worth talking about in the entire industry!

You might think people are obsessed.

if you had read the arstechnica take on this story you'd see that yahoo missed a great quote out from the head of the committee that decided not to increase the total length of copyright.

Former Financial Times head Andrew Gowers, who led the committee that produced the report, said earlier this year that his committee's work actually led them to conclude that the length of music copyrights should be reduced, not increased. Political realities made arguments for reducing copyright terms unworkable, he said. "I could have made a case for reducing it based on the economic arguments," said Gowers. "As it is, we left it in place rather than increasing it to 95 years as some of the music industry wanted and again, I think we steered a happy middle course rather than siding with one or other of the opposite poles of this debate." This is great that someone in power and who has the influence to change things is seeing the real facts about the case

Good, it's not extended.
Bad, it was too long anyway. I read an article (here) that said the optimum length is ~14 years!

IMO, it should be life of the author and that's it. Oh, and it should also be non-transferable---stop (most) record companies forcing the songwriters to give up the rights to their own songs in their contracts...

It was more of a statement pertaining to the cost of transistors, the number of transistors was just one part of the concept. Ars Technica has a great article on it by Jon Stokes: http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/moore.a rs/1

Moores law was about number of transistors in a given space. It was calculated to double ~18-24 months. So the 100 dollar laptop takes 10 chips. In 18-24 months it probably will probably have half that number of chips. That is where the REAL cost savings comes in of moores law. Power and speed were just along for the ride.

Eventually moores law will 'run out' as there will be no more external components to bring into the chip. As that is where they were achiving the cost savings. At about 10-20nm you are talking whole system on a chip with gigs of memory. At about that point it price will sink VERY quickly.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/moore.a rs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

Gordon Moore: The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year. Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years.

Quanta -- the company making the OLPC XO -- is planning to sell a consumer version of the XO, licensing the important technologies (display, etc.) from the OLPC project (effectively funding OLPC development, I assume). At least, that's what I get from this Ars Technica article:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070329-olpc -xo-manufacturer-to-sell-budget-portables-in-devel oped-countries.html

Good for Alfresco. They've gotten loads of publicity over a non-scientific survey, a poorly written eWeek article and now, the Slashdot front page. And way to go Slashdot, maybe an editor will dupe the false story about FreeType and the MS/Novell patent agreement as well. Apparently, neither eWeek or Slashdot employ editors.

So, why would trash like this get published on Slashdot instead of something actually interesting, like http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/novell-hac k-week-an-experiment-in-innovation.ars ?

> See here for the gory details.

And see here for a rebuttal.

I wonder if this actually means that WebKit will become a standard Qt (and not just KDE) component.

But it has a larger screen than the iPod.

My point: screen size is important for viewing images and videos on these devices. They both have a 320x240 resolution, but the Zune's 3-inch screen is 44% larger (in area) than the iPod's 2.5" screen. View the same image/video on both devices and you'll see a big frickin' difference. Ars's review has some nice photos that show just how much bigger the Zune's screen is (as well as the device itself): http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/zune.ars/2

I'm not claiming the Zune is better than the iPod (I think they both suck). I'm just claiming that screen size does matter when viewing images and videos.

IIRC M$ said it was not going to produce a 32-bit version of server software after W2008.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070517-wind ows-vista-declared-32-bits-last-hurrah.html

I really hope they do not produce any more 32-bit client O/S either. It is time to move on.

You can get close to you are looking for today:

HP 17" Pavilion Widescreen WXGA+ Laptop PC w/ Intel 2 GHz Core 2 Duo Processor

Vista Ultimate
ExpressCard ATSC/NTSC tuner
HD-DVD ROM/Multilayer DVD burner
2 GB RAM. 240 GB HDD.
Intel WiFi and Bluetooth
NVIDIA DX10 GeForce 8600 GS 256 MB/1 GB shared
GiB Ethernet. 3 USB 2 ports. S-Video. SP/DIF audio. Firewire.
Media card reader. Fingerprint reader. Integrated webcam.
$2000

A footnote:

Windows Home Server has gone gold {RTM] and there are some impressive add-ins available now. Have it your way with Windows Home Server add-ins, We Got Served

Note they aren't mandating 2nd-generation broadband that is a DEFINITION. And it's good they did that, because oftentimes I see advertisements for "broadband" internet that is just a few touches better than a 56k. That's why House Democrats called for a higher definition, right now, that definition includes any connection over 200Kbps, which Markey wants to boost more than 10 times. I doubt anyone on /. would consider 200kbps as "broadband."

Here are some potential alternative workarounds based on suggestions at Ars Technica:

% sudo chmod 000 /usr/sbin/mDNSResponder

The above is supposed to disable Bonjour entirely (at least until you reset the mode to 555 or, presumably, repair permissions). Another alternate workaround is supposed to temporarily disable Bonjour until you restart:

% sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSRespon der.plist

Remove the space from mDNSResponder. To enable Bonjour again without restarting, change "unload" to "load".

Please note that I haven't tested these. Use at your own risk.

Frankly, though, I wouldn't try any system hacks just yet, for a number of reasons. First and foremost, there's no exploit code known to be in the wild right now. Second, I think it's kind of funny that all this hype surrounds one anonymous blog post. What reason do we have to believe that Mr./Ms. Anonymous is telling the truth, anyway? Everyone's so ready to jump on a Mac virus story that they don't even care what the source is. Correct me if I'm wrong.

We're going to be discussing the alleged new worm on the Tech Pulse podcast tonight around 8 PM Pacific, if anyone wants to listen live at talkshoe.com, or you can subscribe to the podcast at techpulsepodcast.com.

That said, if I'm going to get a new Tivo, I have to deal with a lot of new issues:

1. $$$: A new HDTV-compatible receiver and display
2. $$: Cost of upgraded Cable services
3. $: Cost of cable-card rental fee (x2 if I want to record 2 channels at a time)-or- dealing with the channel blaster again (yukk!)

So in addition to the upgrade to HDTV, I will have to shell out probably another $30-$50 a month, which I really don't see as being necessary, and for what? HDTV? Forget it.

On the other hand, this newsseems promising, if Comcast doesn't f$ck it all to hell.

Actually, someone tried, and the iPhone can't walk on water.

Microsoft has been funding a SourceForge project developing an ODF plugin and converter for Office. You can read a bit more about it from Ars Technica (notice the date - this thing has been out for over half a year). It's stable and quite functional, produces small files, and includes a batch converter. Downloads here.

I've lost count of the number of times I've posted this...

Does it come with a get-out-of-jail free card?

Does it automatically pick up any open hotspot, or do they have to be pre-configured?

Besides the fact that the "fancy-schmancy" MS Surface looked a lot more functional than this MPX thing.

Except the most compelling feature of the Surface, the ability to recognize objects placed on it, was faked for the purpose of demonstration. All the objects placed on the surface had large barcode stickers (called "domioes") placed on the side facing toward the Surface (and conveniently away from the camera.)

One also hastens to add that the Surface ran no form of operating system Microsoft sells (or would ever), while the "MPX" project is built on X and you could install it on GNU/Linux or BSD tomorrow.

The Surface belongs with Nuveena in the Kitchen of Tomorrow.

Linden Lab has long maintained that virtual "property" owned by its residents in Second Life belongs to the players. Therefore, things like virtual clothing, buildings, and land all legitimately belong to the residents who created or purchased them, and the burgeoning trade of such is legitimate. Linden Lab sells "land" to residents directly--which translates in real life to server space for the land and things that are built on it--and does so through online auctions. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070603-seco nd-life-land-dispute-moves-offline-to-federal-cour troom.html