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Perhaps this will help you understand a little about what Microsoft's afraid of.

And if you look at news from 2003 or 2004, and then fast forward to 2008 you need not be too good at math to realize that Microsoft just ain't what they used to be.

From their initial press release: In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song. and "iTunes will also offer customers a simple, one-click option to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free format for 30 cents a song. Sorry, can't get the url to show.

Here is some money that NASA could "invest" in another x-prize like compitition. Get some innovation back into the space game. Maybe once China starts blasting some people towards Mars the US will get off its ass again.

Why, when the best scientists on the issue are in academia, and they could easily just make... oh, wait, they already did

With possible patent abuse, and substandard sound cards, no thanks.

Honestly, I probably couldn't explain it well enough for you to understand it, because I'm not sure I fully understand it myself.

I found this which does an ok job of explaining it: http://www.d-silence.com/feature.php?id=255

I do play a lot of Unreal Tournament 2004 though (about 3 hours a night) and for whatever reason, I seem to aim better with hitscan weapons (instant hit, unlike rockets, etc.) such as the lightning gun and shock rifle with vsync off than I do with it on. I'm not sure why that is, but it became pretty apparent when I turned it on for a few days.

Since I play with vsync off, I do get tearing from time to time, but I'd rather deal with a little tearing here and there than getting blown to bits 5x more often.

Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed!

As an odd aside, a couple weeks ago NASA announced a more efficient propulsion method for atomic-powered spacecraft. I doubt it would scale to the size they're talking about, but it's interesting nonetheless.

They want to make sure that more people are ingrained with the "need" for Windows, so that they will keep using it. Almost like a drug addiction. So they came out with Windows XP Starter Edition, in an effort to target the low end markets. However, as a Google News Search shows, XP Starter Edition is a bust... Sure, they are selling it "cheap", but honestly, according to reviews of features, it's worse than crippled shareware that is given away for free.

Overall, I'm happy that people in those countries will not be starting life addicted to the drug Microsoft sells, and start with a clean slate. And when 2 billion users in China are using Linux, maybe we'll get more games that run under it. ;)

"transfer speed of one gigabyte per second (40 times the speed of DVD)"

Read more here.

According to this article, he did sign something.

I am rather disappointed by the quality of this article:
"I just got a new computer with a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 card with amazing sound and music capabilities. For example, theres support for 24-bit EAX Advanced HD sound,"

What the fuck is 24 bit EAX Advanced HD Sound? Its not a feature, its a fucking marketing term. EAX may loosely refer to 3D Audio features but the author clearly doesn't know what he's on about.

Firstly let me get something off my chest - creative fucked ME over. my Soundblaster Audigy, a "24 bit" card is nothing of the sort. It only plays 16 bit sounds. Apparently it can (in hardware) mix 24 bit sound down to 16 bit, bypassing the windows functions that do the same, nonetheless marketed to me as a 24 bit card. So of course this means the card is completely useless if bought specifically for audio work.

Also my mate bought a soundblaster live, one of the selling points was that the "liveware" could be upgraded, providing more features/effects/whatever. His original cd came with liveware 3.0, since then (well last time I checked) creative have not bothered updating the SBLive liveware, which is a bit naughty.

Their drivers are SHIT, check this, this and this.

The last link hints on having the same FUCKED UP driver problems that I have been having: the original driver off the cd will install, but none of their updates off their website work. I have been through all the tech support and they have even sent me out a new driver cd (for free) but those drivers wont install. Creative seem to have some sort of fucked up hardware detection routine in the driver installation for every drivers apart from the ones on the original cd, and this hardware detection always tanks stating "No creative product found in this computer. Please ensure it is installed properly."

My mate has a soundblaster live and when he went from win 98 to winXP his SBLive just completely refused to work, with all the drivers from creatives website claiming that he had not soundblaster installed. The CHEEK! If only creative would allow MS' hardware detection to do the work, rather than have their FUCKED UP BUGGY hardware detection fail to find legitimate hardware. My mate now uses unofficial drivers for his soundcard that *arent even written* by creative. This was the only way he could get his sound card (that he paid 180 pounds 5 years ago for) to work.

Once I gave up on getting any semblence of modern drivers working, I moved onto getting 3d audio working in games. Like fuck was that going to work. Every game I tried refused to recognise the existence of EAX hardware. In every game without fail, the EAX option would be unselected. This was particularly galling with halo.

In the end I uninstalled my SB Audigy and used my onboard 5.1 surround. Which is recognised by games, shock horror! Admittedly when theres about 10 people firing at once in halo the sound gets choppy, but at least I have surround.

Also we have to ask about the quality of onboard effects on the soundblaster live. The reverbs are so shit and tinny that you cannot possibly use the for any audio application. This belies their claim that their soundcards are good for musicians.

Finally we have to ask: is the lack of decent 3d support due to game developers not being bothered, or is it due to the 3d support/hardware accelerated sound support being in such a perilous state?

I tend towards the latter. The author of the article states:
"Creative Labs has a virtual monopoly, due at least in part to aggressive techniques such as lawsuits or buyouts to take care of most potential competitors....Fortunately, even without competitive market pressures, Creative Labs has developed high quality audio hardware."

Sort of. We are talking about 200 frames per second when we talk about frame rates. Even fairly weak monitors refresh at 60Mhz (thousand cycles per second). Check out http://www.d-silence.com/video/refres h.h tm for a better explanation.