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IE7 team group photo.

Instead of reducing the amount of computation we do in IE to make it faster, let's just look for more processing power instead!

Did you look at the CPU graphs at the end of the article? If you look at the graphs for IE8 and IE9, it shows the CPU usage has been greatly reduced by offloading the tasks to the GPU. It went from 50% CPU usage to an average of 12%.

This is just a better use of the processing power available in the modern computer.

Instead of reducing the amount of computation we do in IE to make it faster, let's just look for more processing power instead!

Did you look at the CPU graphs at the end of the article? If you look at the graphs for IE8 and IE9, it shows the CPU usage has been greatly reduced by offloading the tasks to the GPU. It went from 50% CPU usage to an average of 12%.

This is just a better use of the processing power available in the modern computer.

These are the sunspider results. Link

It might be better to plot those results on a log scale (while stating the units!) so that it is possible to properly compare not just IE with the rest, but also the others with each other. Mind you, I also like to plot my graphs so that bigger is better. (I know how to lie with statistics!) This makes it easier to convey the results to a non-technical audience.

These are the sunspider results. Link

Good, I hate when installers and update utilities hide crap like that behind "express" or default settings.

Please look at the screenshot of the dialog in question before judging. Would you still say that it's "hidden behind express" after seeing how it actually looks?

What really gets to me is the fact that such a huge change in user preferences is "hidden" behind a "use express settings" tick box.

Did you see how it actually looks like? It's not exactly hidden. It's right there for everyone to read, "Default browser: Internet Explorer".

Of course, most users don't bother to read anything and would just click Next-Next-Next, but that is a very different problem.

Always take what "analysts" said in regards to Apple with a couple tablespoons of salt. They have shown over and over that they
1. have no understanding on how to analyze Apple's business or
2. biased at interpreting facts (if they have facts at all), e.g. Enderle or
3. dishonest so that they can play with Apple stock, e.g. Jim Cramer

Which one is Tim Chowdry? He is the one who said iPod sales failed to meet high expectations after Apple sold "only" 22M and he predicted that Apple would sell 24-30M in a quarter. He is one who likes to set impossible goals and takes Apple to task for failing to meet his goal. Who in the right mind expects 30M iPods a quarter? Now check your quote again: He set the goal for iPhone to 20-30M and confidently told people Apple would fail.

How did he pick 20-30M? Is it because now it seems Apple would meet the goal unlike his prediction:

... a client note that the company "is probably unlikely" to meet its goal of selling 10 million iPhones in 2008.

Why is he sure that Apple couldn't meet that? What is the real barometer for a smartphone to be a "complete disaster?" I can pull those numbers out of my ass if I don't have to justify my rationalization.

mini ITX 6.7x6.7 inches
nano ITX 4.7x4.7 inches
pico ITX 3.9x2.8 inches

Where is portability a problem again?

Then upgrade with confidence. You would do us a great service if you all upgraded. Please.

What the heck is this then ?

http://uacblog.members.winisp.net/images/SecureDes ktop/UnsignedApp.png

FireFox : changes color for secure connections, etc... (your e-Banking site is yellow, because of https & validate certificate)
There's also proposition to change color when using mixed caracter bank (warning for cyrillic/latin homographs, etc...)
etc...

IE7 : changes color for URLs from known spoofer (www.paypaI.com is red because it's in a phisher-black-list. But new phisher won't be red until added to black-list.).

It's 2 different coloring methods, it's heuristic vs. "list-of-known-evil"

For those of you who are interested, I have put up a compile of company website screenshots on my website. It seems that a lot of companies (in the computer industry at least) are displaying solidarity with the hurricane victims. Screenshots

You sign your releases via PGP.

How does one get Internet Explorer from Windows XP SP2 to use something based on OpenPGP instead of its native X.509 based system for disabling the Big Scary Alert Box when running a downloaded program?

Your public key should be available from multiple keyservers, and presumably you've hooked yourself into the web of trust.

How does one get into the web of trust? Google (my city) key signing doesn't seem to produce any relevant results. Biglumber.com seems to list key signing parties only in Triangle Area (North Carolina), Munich, and Zurich; I don't live within walking distance of any of those locations.

Evidently the Phantom has made an appearance at the Microsoft booth at CES. According to Mike Hall's blog, it's running on WindowsXP Embedded.

Below is the text describing the system. There's also a nice picture posted there as well.

Next is the Phantom from Infinium Labs (Windows XP Embedded), this is quite an interesting device, I guess most people have XBOX's, Playstations, Nintendo Game Cubes or other dedicated game consoles - the Phantom plays PC games - a user gets offered a list of games (the Phantom supports all current and future Windows PC games according to the Infinium web site), the games are downloaded into the Phantom and then played on your TV set - since these are PC games you control the games through a keyboard and mouse - the keyboard/mouse being displayed with the Phantom on the Microsoft booth has an interesting "Lap" console for the keyboard and mouse - apparently it's quite comfortable to sit and play games using this.

Microsoft actually acknowledges that an Open Source competitor exists! Film at Eleven.

I've noticed a pattern of behavior from MS marketing: they don't seem to want to acknowledge linux, firefox, et. al. as actual products - and so a wry smile crept onto my face when I saw the image referencing the Mozilla Foundation as "Unknown Publisher."

This entry is probably an attempt at "payback" for all those "My Windows Installation Nightmare" anecdotes populating the 'web. However, his story seems just a *bit* contrived. I've installed firefox on multiple PCs and multiple windows versions and experienced 0% of the problems he's describing. Huh?

I don't claim to know what caused his problems since I have not experienced them, but they were not due to the blogger using the wrong decompresser. He downloaded the exe, not the zip.

The files inside the .exe installer are compressed in the 7-Zip format, so the Firefox installer is responsible for the decompression. In earlier Firefox installations, I think "7-Zip" was actually displayed in the title bar of one of the dialog boxes. A third-party 7-Zip program could not be used even if you wanted to use it.

True.. check out the photo I took there a while back - 3'rd photo. Look at all the dead trees