Microsoft has announced the infrastructure for its cloud computing service Azure, formerly (and presently) Windows Vapor.
"We want to be more responsive to your needs," said Sam Ramji of Microsoft during a Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit panel this week as he wiped rotten tomatoes off his suit.
"We want all open source innovation to happen on Windows 7. In practice, Windows is too slow, and just putting Linux underneath the same software stack triples performance. So we're running the Windows versions of the software on Linux using Wine. We'll also be funding the Wine on Windows initiative."
The new Microsoft Amazingly Open And Genuine Public License allows you complete freedom to use, modify and redistribute the software provided that every copy comes with a DVD of Windows Vista Ultimate, you acknowledge that Microsoft's FAT patent protects a remarkable and valuable innovation in computer science and all accompanying documentation is in OOXML. Also, all your data belongs to Microsoft.
The overwhelming dominance of Microsoft was assured, he said, pointing to their success in paying netbook manufacturers to use Windows XP and paying US retailers not to stock the Linux versions of the computers. "We're also enforcing our patent on right-clicking. And on the number seven."
Home Office counter-terrorism experts intend to exploit nu meeja websites to "channel messages through volunteers in Internet forums" as part of a campaign to "taint the al-Qaeda(tm) brand," according to a document accidentally posted to Wikipedia this morning.
"We understand that people on Internet forums have no experience whatsoever of participants paid to advocate a position or product," says the report. "A single image macro exchange of 'U R TERRIST' 'NO U' 'O RLY?' 'SRSLY' could save countless lost souls."
The unit is also targeting the BBC and other online news outlets. The main obstacle appears to lie in writing messages stupid enough to pass for genuine reader comments. "Some of our top fake news writers have burnt out their brains on the task and now sit shaking and gibbering about real life being worse than any parody. And house prices."
Other work includes faked reports of al-Quaeda branded Zunes on Gizmodo, suitably on-message mouseover popups on XKCD and photomanipulations of Osama bin Laden as Pedobear on 4chan.
The initiative was spearheaded by a Home Office civil servant asked to account for the number of work hours he seemed to be spending on Internet message boards. His latest proposal is to fight al-Qaeda on MP3, BitTorrent and pornographic websites. "I've bought a new 500 gigabyte USB portable disk drive on expenses to store this important confidential data," he said.
I have a friend who seriously tried to tell me that 4chan was a CIA entrapment operation for online activists. I'm not sure even an AI could reach that level of WHAT.
60% of UK consumers are willing to browse with an ad-blocker in return for free videos, music and other content, a survey has revealed.
"This willingness to pretend to view adverts in exchange for free content is good news for sites wanting to lie to advertisers," said Tudor Aw at KPMG, "and is perhaps a pointer in the ongoing debate over whether lying to advertisers or lying to subscribers is the right revenue model."
40% of respondents said they would pretend to accept popups, popunders, interstitials, Phorm, floating windows zipping and swooping about the screen, Flash videos that start playing sound automatically, eye-gouging animations and 2o7.net cookies in exchange for free music. 16% said they would pay to avoid ads. The rest would continue to get their telly from BitTorrent and browse with Mozilla Firefox with AdBlock.
People were more willing to pay on mobile phones, unless they had a modern phone with which they could steal someone's WiFi connection.
Google, the world's largest online advertising agency, said it was looking into tastefully-interspersed direct content advertising and brand placement, and added that you should PUNCH THE MONKEY TO WIN £20,000!!! "If you know what's good for you."
"It's not like there's much else to do," said Boris Busybody, 77 (IQ), of Egham Hythe, idly whirling his four-foot penis around his head in a desultory fashion. "Expanding your manhood, growing your breasts, increasing your sperm... the Lib Dem phone calls get a bit much. That's Doctor Busybody, by the way. My Ph.D arrived last week."
Spam has revitalised the local economy. Mr Busybody has given up cab driving and is now working a lucrative job processing payments from home after he sent them his bank details in response to an urgent security message. "I had that King Otumfuo Opoku Ware II in the back of my cab once. Very generous and helpful fellow."
The Egham Tourist Board has seized the day, with plans for a 50 foot tall penis sculpture at Junction 13 of the M25 on the exit ramp to the town. The sculpture will be encircled by a genuine imitation Rolex and spray a fountain of Spermamax, obtained at a very reasonable rate from a Canadian pharmacy. "You will search an hour for your underwear in the ocean of our spam!" is to become the new town motto.
"I did get a good one the other day," says Busybody. "Barrister Matthew Sergeant Busybody of MessageLabs said we could promote our town to millions of people just by sending them an advance fee to process our incoming email. The stuff they try! 'Scuse me, V!k@grk@ kicking in, got to go have sex again. Sorry."
Microsoft has announced the infrastructure for its cloud computing service Azure, formerly (and presently) Windows Vapor.
"We want all open source innovation to happen on Windows. In practice, Windows is too slow, and just putting Linux underneath the same software stack triples performance. So we're running the Windows versions of the software on Linux using Wine."
The new Microsoft Amazingly Open And Genuine Public License allows you complete freedom to use, modify and redistribute the software provided that every copy comes with a DVD of Windows Vista Ultimate, you acknowledge that Microsoft's FAT patent protects a remarkable and valuable innovation in computer science and all documentation is in OOXML.
As Microsoft's search engine share sunk to its lowest level yet in February, with approximately 8 to 9 queries total worldwide, Steve Ballmer has reiterated his willingness to hook up with Yahoo! and its 21 queries worldwide.
The press conference was held on a street corner in San Francisco as Mr Ballmer and Jerry Yang sat with their hats on the sidewalk and playing harmonicas with a "WILL WEBSEARCH FOR FOOD" sign behind them.
"Understandably, we expect less activity in the Great Recession," said Mr Ballmer. "Nobody knows what value assets should be... say, you aren't finished with that cigarette, are you?"
Press attendees included a schizophrenic local resident in a tinfoil hat ("to keep Google out"), two teenagers drunk on malt liquor and a policeman keeping an eye on things from a distance. The teenagers taunted, confused and upset Mr Ballmer by suggesting he attempt to locate his own posterior.
"My new search technology is unstoppable! Just look at this netbook!" shouted Mr Ballmer, waving an Etch-a-Sketch in a threatening manner. "IT'S MAUVE! IT RUNS WINDOWS SEVEN! LINUX PUT A RADIO IN MY HEAD! I'LL SHOW 'EM ALL! BASTARDS!"
"Some love stories are eternal," said Mr Yang. "Romeo and Juliet. Heloise and Abelard. Leopold and Loeb. Microsoft and Yahoo."
Microsoft launched Surface, its tabletop computer system, in the UK yesterday.
People will use the touchscreen computer "the same way they have interacted with everyday items their entire lives," said Philippa Snare of Microsoft UK, "with hands and with gestures." Instead of a keyboard or mouse, the techno-table uses a 30-inch touch-sensitive screen that also reacts to objects placed on it. Photos are automatically downloaded from cameras or phones. A spilt cup of coffee causes the "I'm a PC" guy to appear on the screen and start shouting at you for ruining his shirt, and your fourth Big Mac of the day causes him to keel over with a heart attack and the system to blue-screen. Users then make an appropriate gesture.
Unlike conventional computers which only one person can use at a time, Surface is a "multi-touch" system allowing several people can use the screen at the same time. Stealing someone's data is as simple as sliding your phone onto the screen. "We've made it completely compatible with popular gadgets such as Windows Mobile and Zune."
Surface will appear in communal areas such as shops, hotels and pubs first, allowing the public to get used to the new technology and see how it responds to pints being poured over it and kebabs in the coin slot.
Surface is part of Microsoft"s vision of the Digital Home. "Imagine your television, your refrigerator, your gas boiler running Windows Vista - I mean, Windows 7. What could possibly go wrong?"
Acid::Rip splits the disc up by feature, rather than by VOB. Does very nicely for me.
The interface is horrible - "user friendly" is not taking every command line option and making a button for it. Setting bitrate for each feature and fragment in turn is a PITA.
But apart from that it's the best and easiest I've found.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced that the Australian government will build a new $43 billion national broadband network, connecting 90% of homes to 100-megabit fibre internet. "We believe that fast broadband is absolutely essential for our nation's future", he said.
"Telstra has raised issues with the amount of bandwidth usage this will produce, given we're still hooked to America by tin cans and string, but our Great Firewall of Australia Internet filtering project should keep usage down to reasonable levels at near-dialup speeds. We promise you won't go over your download cap."
The Great Firewall will reliably block all illegal material, child pornography, terrorism and unAustralian thoughts.
"Not only are the contents of the list illegal," said Senator Stephen Conroy, " but revealing the list is also illegal, and so is linking to someone linking to someone claiming to reveal the list. So we're blocking Google Search. Having to use Anzwers should keep usage right down."
Calling it, the "single largest infrastructure decision in Australia's
history," Mr Rudd said the project would employ up to 37,000 people a year monitoring citizens' net access, reading their email and correcting spelling errors in their football forum posts.
A consultative process will determine the regulatory framework for the network. "We're considering getting Senator Fielding to do it personally," said Senator Conroy, "since he's the dickhead who demanded the censorship in return for his votes. Hopefully it'll melt his brain. Bloody balance of power. At least Xenophon's bloody sane."
"The newspapers put their content up on the web for free and then Google, the freeloading bastards, tell people where to find it. We told them to pay up or stop using our stuff, and they said OK, they'd stop using our stuff!
"We need federal regulation to bring back balance, 'balance' defined as being able to make them give us money because we want it. You'd think the Internet wasn't invented to give news agencies and record companies free money!"
The press group argues that traffic from search engines doesn't make up the cost of producing the content. "Ad revenue has collapsed, so search engine traffic doesn't bring in enough views to pay for itself. Our inability to sell ads is clearly Google's problem."
The AP suggests the exploration of new models that "require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates, both on our own site through advertising and 'at the edges' in the world of search and aggregation. Basically, they should just give us money because we want it. And the music industry too. How about a bailout? Go on, gi's it."
"The newspapers put their content up on the web for free and then Google, the freeloading bastards, tell people where to find it. We told them to pay up or stop using our stuff, and they said OK, they'd stop using our stuff! Not giving us free money is a clear abuse of Google's power.
"We need the Government to bring back balance, 'balance' defined as being able to make them give us money because we want it. You'd think the Internet wasn't invented to give newspapers and record companies free money!"
The newspaper group argues that traffic from search engines does not make up the cost of producing the content. "Ad revenue has collapsed, so search engine traffic doesn't bring in enough views to pay for itself. Our inability to sell ads is clearly Google's problem. It's also the BBC's problem, so we should get some of the TV licencing fee too."
The Guardian suggests the exploration of new models that "require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates, both on our own site through advertising and 'at the edges' in the world of search and aggregation. Basically, they should just give us money because we want it. And the music industry too. How about a bailout? Go on, gi's it."
Microsoft launched Surface, its tabletop computer system, in the UK yesterday.
People will use the touchscreen computer "the same way they have interacted with everyday items their entire lives," said Philippa Snare of Microsoft UK, "with hands and with gestures." Instead of a keyboard or mouse, the techno-table uses a 30-inch touch-sensitive screen that also reacts to objects placed on it. Photos are automatically downloaded from cameras or phones. A spilt cup of coffee causes the "I'm a PC" guy to appear on the screen and start shouting at you for ruining his shirt, and your fourth Big Mac of the day causes him to keel over with a heart attack and the system to blue-screen. Users then make an appropriate gesture.
Unlike conventional computers which only one person can use at a time, Surface is a "multi-touch" system allowing several people can use the screen at the same time. Stealing someone's data is as simple as sliding your phone onto the screen. "We've made it completely compatible with popular gadgets such as Windows Mobile and Zune."
Surface will appear in communal areas such as shops, hotels and pubs first, allowing the public to get used to the new technology and see how it responds to pints being poured over it and kebabs in the coin slot.
Surface is part of Microsoft's vision of the Digital Home. "Imagine your television, your refrigerator, your gas boiler running Windows Vista -- I mean, Windows 7. What could possibly go wrong?"
Slashdot Mirror
Wine is working on it ;-)
Microsoft has announced the infrastructure for its cloud computing service Azure, formerly (and presently) Windows Vapor.
"We want to be more responsive to your needs," said Sam Ramji of Microsoft during a Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit panel this week as he wiped rotten tomatoes off his suit.
"We want all open source innovation to happen on Windows 7. In practice, Windows is too slow, and just putting Linux underneath the same software stack triples performance. So we're running the Windows versions of the software on Linux using Wine. We'll also be funding the Wine on Windows initiative."
The new Microsoft Amazingly Open And Genuine Public License allows you complete freedom to use, modify and redistribute the software provided that every copy comes with a DVD of Windows Vista Ultimate, you acknowledge that Microsoft's FAT patent protects a remarkable and valuable innovation in computer science and all accompanying documentation is in OOXML. Also, all your data belongs to Microsoft.
The overwhelming dominance of Microsoft was assured, he said, pointing to their success in paying netbook manufacturers to use Windows XP and paying US retailers not to stock the Linux versions of the computers. "We're also enforcing our patent on right-clicking. And on the number seven."
Get daily email alerts of new News of the News — home delivery via Feedburner!
Home Office counter-terrorism experts intend to exploit nu meeja websites to "channel messages through volunteers in Internet forums" as part of a campaign to "taint the al-Qaeda(tm) brand," according to a document accidentally posted to Wikipedia this morning.
"We understand that people on Internet forums have no experience whatsoever of participants paid to advocate a position or product," says the report. "A single image macro exchange of 'U R TERRIST' 'NO U' 'O RLY?' 'SRSLY' could save countless lost souls."
The unit is also targeting the BBC and other online news outlets. The main obstacle appears to lie in writing messages stupid enough to pass for genuine reader comments. "Some of our top fake news writers have burnt out their brains on the task and now sit shaking and gibbering about real life being worse than any parody. And house prices."
Other work includes faked reports of al-Quaeda branded Zunes on Gizmodo, suitably on-message mouseover popups on XKCD and photomanipulations of Osama bin Laden as Pedobear on 4chan.
The initiative was spearheaded by a Home Office civil servant asked to account for the number of work hours he seemed to be spending on Internet message boards. His latest proposal is to fight al-Qaeda on MP3, BitTorrent and pornographic websites. "I've bought a new 500 gigabyte USB portable disk drive on expenses to store this important confidential data," he said.
yes, it was.
"LOLbot, how do we reverse entropy?"
i dunno lol
I have a friend who seriously tried to tell me that 4chan was a CIA entrapment operation for online activists. I'm not sure even an AI could reach that level of WHAT.
They could call it ... Freenet!
Your Internet can feel like the Australian one.
I'm sure Anonymous Coward's opinion carries tremendous weight at Slashdot.
60% of UK consumers are willing to browse with an ad-blocker in return for free videos, music and other content, a survey has revealed.
"This willingness to pretend to view adverts in exchange for free content is good news for sites wanting to lie to advertisers," said Tudor Aw at KPMG, "and is perhaps a pointer in the ongoing debate over whether lying to advertisers or lying to subscribers is the right revenue model."
40% of respondents said they would pretend to accept popups, popunders, interstitials, Phorm, floating windows zipping and swooping about the screen, Flash videos that start playing sound automatically, eye-gouging animations and 2o7.net cookies in exchange for free music. 16% said they would pay to avoid ads. The rest would continue to get their telly from BitTorrent and browse with Mozilla Firefox with AdBlock.
People were more willing to pay on mobile phones, unless they had a modern phone with which they could steal someone's WiFi connection.
Google, the world's largest online advertising agency, said it was looking into tastefully-interspersed direct content advertising and brand placement, and added that you should PUNCH THE MONKEY TO WIN £20,000!!! "If you know what's good for you."
Email filtering company MessageLabs reports that Egham, Surrey, on the suburban outskirts of London, is the town that receives the most spam in Britain.
"It's not like there's much else to do," said Boris Busybody, 77 (IQ), of Egham Hythe, idly whirling his four-foot penis around his head in a desultory fashion. "Expanding your manhood, growing your breasts, increasing your sperm ... the Lib Dem phone calls get a bit much. That's Doctor Busybody, by the way. My Ph.D arrived last week."
Spam has revitalised the local economy. Mr Busybody has given up cab driving and is now working a lucrative job processing payments from home after he sent them his bank details in response to an urgent security message. "I had that King Otumfuo Opoku Ware II in the back of my cab once. Very generous and helpful fellow."
The Egham Tourist Board has seized the day, with plans for a 50 foot tall penis sculpture at Junction 13 of the M25 on the exit ramp to the town. The sculpture will be encircled by a genuine imitation Rolex and spray a fountain of Spermamax, obtained at a very reasonable rate from a Canadian pharmacy. "You will search an hour for your underwear in the ocean of our spam!" is to become the new town motto.
"I did get a good one the other day," says Busybody. "Barrister Matthew Sergeant Busybody of MessageLabs said we could promote our town to millions of people just by sending them an advance fee to process our incoming email. The stuff they try! 'Scuse me, V!k@grk@ kicking in, got to go have sex again. Sorry."
Microsoft has announced the infrastructure for its cloud computing service Azure, formerly (and presently) Windows Vapor.
"We want all open source innovation to happen on Windows. In practice, Windows is too slow, and just putting Linux underneath the same software stack triples performance. So we're running the Windows versions of the software on Linux using Wine."
The new Microsoft Amazingly Open And Genuine Public License allows you complete freedom to use, modify and redistribute the software provided that every copy comes with a DVD of Windows Vista Ultimate, you acknowledge that Microsoft's FAT patent protects a remarkable and valuable innovation in computer science and all documentation is in OOXML.
(work in progress, not yet on notnews)
It's called astroturfing. It's cheaper to pay pennies to people to troll message boards than it is to actually fix Windows Live Search, I mean "Kumo".
Er, what? I used it when it was first getting word of mouth, in 1998. I was shocked how good it was even then.
It may be much better now, but it still kicked arse in a major way the day it was out.
To be fair, Google Image Search is still shitty. Microsoft Live Image Search is nearly as useful in practice.
Google cracked the text search problem and have the best email client ever. That doesn't mean they shit gold, or even close.
As Microsoft's search engine share sunk to its lowest level yet in February, with approximately 8 to 9 queries total worldwide, Steve Ballmer has reiterated his willingness to hook up with Yahoo! and its 21 queries worldwide.
The press conference was held on a street corner in San Francisco as Mr Ballmer and Jerry Yang sat with their hats on the sidewalk and playing harmonicas with a "WILL WEBSEARCH FOR FOOD" sign behind them.
"Understandably, we expect less activity in the Great Recession," said Mr Ballmer. "Nobody knows what value assets should be ... say, you aren't finished with that cigarette, are you?"
Press attendees included a schizophrenic local resident in a tinfoil hat ("to keep Google out"), two teenagers drunk on malt liquor and a policeman keeping an eye on things from a distance. The teenagers taunted, confused and upset Mr Ballmer by suggesting he attempt to locate his own posterior.
"My new search technology is unstoppable! Just look at this netbook!" shouted Mr Ballmer, waving an Etch-a-Sketch in a threatening manner. "IT'S MAUVE! IT RUNS WINDOWS SEVEN! LINUX PUT A RADIO IN MY HEAD! I'LL SHOW 'EM ALL! BASTARDS!"
"Some love stories are eternal," said Mr Yang. "Romeo and Juliet. Heloise and Abelard. Leopold and Loeb. Microsoft and Yahoo."
TWO CHAPS ONE CUP
(both worksafe and brainsafe, oddly enough)
Microsoft launched Surface, its tabletop computer system, in the UK yesterday.
People will use the touchscreen computer "the same way they have interacted with everyday items their entire lives," said Philippa Snare of Microsoft UK, "with hands and with gestures." Instead of a keyboard or mouse, the techno-table uses a 30-inch touch-sensitive screen that also reacts to objects placed on it. Photos are automatically downloaded from cameras or phones. A spilt cup of coffee causes the "I'm a PC" guy to appear on the screen and start shouting at you for ruining his shirt, and your fourth Big Mac of the day causes him to keel over with a heart attack and the system to blue-screen. Users then make an appropriate gesture.
Unlike conventional computers which only one person can use at a time, Surface is a "multi-touch" system allowing several people can use the screen at the same time. Stealing someone's data is as simple as sliding your phone onto the screen. "We've made it completely compatible with popular gadgets such as Windows Mobile and Zune."
Surface will appear in communal areas such as shops, hotels and pubs first, allowing the public to get used to the new technology and see how it responds to pints being poured over it and kebabs in the coin slot.
Surface is part of Microsoft"s vision of the Digital Home. "Imagine your television, your refrigerator, your gas boiler running Windows Vista - I mean, Windows 7. What could possibly go wrong?"
Acid::Rip splits the disc up by feature, rather than by VOB. Does very nicely for me.
The interface is horrible - "user friendly" is not taking every command line option and making a button for it. Setting bitrate for each feature and fragment in turn is a PITA.
But apart from that it's the best and easiest I've found.
Hence Jonathan Schwartz' attempts to use open source as Sun's "Hail Mary" pass.
Where "synergy" is another word for "2+2=1". This could produce even more economic value than Microsoft plus Yahoo! would have.
Forks of everything forkable approaching in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced that the Australian government will build a new $43 billion national broadband network, connecting 90% of homes to 100-megabit fibre internet. "We believe that fast broadband is absolutely essential for our nation's future", he said.
"Telstra has raised issues with the amount of bandwidth usage this will produce, given we're still hooked to America by tin cans and string, but our Great Firewall of Australia Internet filtering project should keep usage down to reasonable levels at near-dialup speeds. We promise you won't go over your download cap."
The Great Firewall will reliably block all illegal material, child pornography, terrorism and unAustralian thoughts.
"Not only are the contents of the list illegal," said Senator Stephen Conroy, " but revealing the list is also illegal, and so is linking to someone linking to someone claiming to reveal the list. So we're blocking Google Search. Having to use Anzwers should keep usage right down."
Calling it, the "single largest infrastructure decision in Australia's history," Mr Rudd said the project would employ up to 37,000 people a year monitoring citizens' net access, reading their email and correcting spelling errors in their football forum posts.
A consultative process will determine the regulatory framework for the network. "We're considering getting Senator Fielding to do it personally," said Senator Conroy, "since he's the dickhead who demanded the censorship in return for his votes. Hopefully it'll melt his brain. Bloody balance of power. At least Xenophon's bloody sane."
The Associated Press has asked the government to examine Google News and other content aggregators, claiming they contribute insufficiently to their income.
"The newspapers put their content up on the web for free and then Google, the freeloading bastards, tell people where to find it. We told them to pay up or stop using our stuff, and they said OK, they'd stop using our stuff!
"We need federal regulation to bring back balance, 'balance' defined as being able to make them give us money because we want it. You'd think the Internet wasn't invented to give news agencies and record companies free money!"
The press group argues that traffic from search engines doesn't make up the cost of producing the content. "Ad revenue has collapsed, so search engine traffic doesn't bring in enough views to pay for itself. Our inability to sell ads is clearly Google's problem."
The AP suggests the exploration of new models that "require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates, both on our own site through advertising and 'at the edges' in the world of search and aggregation. Basically, they should just give us money because we want it. And the music industry too. How about a bailout? Go on, gi's it."
The Guardian Media Group has asked the Government to examine Google News and other content aggregators, claiming they contribute insufficiently to their income.
"The newspapers put their content up on the web for free and then Google, the freeloading bastards, tell people where to find it. We told them to pay up or stop using our stuff, and they said OK, they'd stop using our stuff! Not giving us free money is a clear abuse of Google's power.
"We need the Government to bring back balance, 'balance' defined as being able to make them give us money because we want it. You'd think the Internet wasn't invented to give newspapers and record companies free money!"
The newspaper group argues that traffic from search engines does not make up the cost of producing the content. "Ad revenue has collapsed, so search engine traffic doesn't bring in enough views to pay for itself. Our inability to sell ads is clearly Google's problem. It's also the BBC's problem, so we should get some of the TV licencing fee too."
The Guardian suggests the exploration of new models that "require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates, both on our own site through advertising and 'at the edges' in the world of search and aggregation. Basically, they should just give us money because we want it. And the music industry too. How about a bailout? Go on, gi's it."
Microsoft launched Surface, its tabletop computer system, in the UK yesterday.
People will use the touchscreen computer "the same way they have interacted with everyday items their entire lives," said Philippa Snare of Microsoft UK, "with hands and with gestures." Instead of a keyboard or mouse, the techno-table uses a 30-inch touch-sensitive screen that also reacts to objects placed on it. Photos are automatically downloaded from cameras or phones. A spilt cup of coffee causes the "I'm a PC" guy to appear on the screen and start shouting at you for ruining his shirt, and your fourth Big Mac of the day causes him to keel over with a heart attack and the system to blue-screen. Users then make an appropriate gesture.
Unlike conventional computers which only one person can use at a time, Surface is a "multi-touch" system allowing several people can use the screen at the same time. Stealing someone's data is as simple as sliding your phone onto the screen. "We've made it completely compatible with popular gadgets such as Windows Mobile and Zune."
Surface will appear in communal areas such as shops, hotels and pubs first, allowing the public to get used to the new technology and see how it responds to pints being poured over it and kebabs in the coin slot.
Surface is part of Microsoft's vision of the Digital Home. "Imagine your television, your refrigerator, your gas boiler running Windows Vista -- I mean, Windows 7. What could possibly go wrong?"
First read as "I'd like to see what the Rapture would look like using Adobe Flex and Ruby on Rails."
If you've been bad, you get to use Silverlight, XPS and HD Photo for everything for all eternity!
We need punctuation in NASDAQ symbols just so we can call them M$ for real.