EU fines Intel $1.4B, says it paid OEMs, retailer to exclude AMD products
For years, the evidence against Intel with regard to its business conduct in Europe has been treated as allegation, especially by anyone in the press with any serious intent of showing fairness. As of today, at least in Europe, it's no longer an allegation: Intel cheated, says the European Commission this morning, in a decision that can best be described as the worst-case scenario for Intel coming to fruition.
This morning, the EC found that for a 62-month period beginning in October 2002, Intel paid German retailer MediaMarkt, which operates stores primarily in Germany and Russia (not an EU member), to sell Intel-based computers exclusively in its retail outlets. This based on evidence turned up during a February 2008 raid of Intel's German offices.
Windows 7 gives Firefox 3, IE8 speed boosts, while Firefox 3.5 slows down
In preliminary Betanews tests Tuesday comparing the relative speeds of major Web browsers in Windows Vista- and Windows 7-based virtual machines, not only did the general performance of Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 improve by about 23%, but the latest production build of Firefox 3.0.10 appears to improve its performance by 17.5%. This despite running in a Windows 7-based virtual machine that we estimate to be 12.1% slower overall than a Vista-based VM hosted by the same environment.
These are the initial findings of Betanews' experiments in how the architecture of Windows 7 may or may not influence the performance of major Web browsers. We wanted to see whether Win7 made browsers faster or slower, and doing that meant hosting browsers in virtual environments whose relative speeds with respect to one another could be normalized.
The Web without the browser: Mozilla's Prism enables true Web apps
Download Mozilla Prism for Windows 1.0 Beta 1 from Fileforum now.
Mozilla Labs has been devoted to building ideas into viable code that may or may not become products someday. For a year and a half, one of its tasks has been to build a framework for deploying Web-based applications straight to the desktop, while introducing though not necessarily mandating a new methodology or set of practices for sites to follow. In other words, if an application is already live in a browser like Firefox, let's take it out of the browser motif and move it to the desktop.
Russinovich rescues the TechEd 2009 keynote with Windows 7 AppLocker demo
In the absence of many dramatically new product announcements (notices about the Office 2010 technical preview and Windows Mobile 6.5 were already expected), it was Senior Vice President Bill Veghte's job for the first time to rally the troops during this morning's TechEd 2009 keynote address in Los Angeles. But perhaps not everyone has Bill Gates' knack for holding an audience captive with sweeping gerunds and participles, or Ray Ozzie's outstanding ability to conjure a metaphor as though it were a hologram hovering in space, and describe it for countless minutes without relating it to the physical universe.
What may have kept attendees affixed to their seats for the time being was the promise of Mark Russinovich, Microsoft's Technical Fellow who always dives right into a real-world demonstration in the first few minutes, and is always affable enough to be forgiven for the inevitable technical glitch. Though Russinovich's stage time today was shorter than usual, one of his highlights was a demonstration of a feature Windows 7 RC downloaders had already received but may not have known they had: a way using group policy to block specified software from running on client systems even after it's been upgraded or revised.
Office 2010 Technical Preview to arrive in July
In a presentation to TechEd attendees this morning, Microsoft Senior Vice President Bill Veghte announced that the first versions of the Office 2010 suite to extend beyond the company's doors will be offered to selected Technical Preview candidates. Following up on the news, the company lifted the lid on a Web site that appears as though it was supposed to have been launched tomorrow, with a custom movie trailer and countdown clock that borrows visual elements and other catch-phrases from...well, from a handful of real summer blockbuster movies.
"The future begins now," rings a vaguely familiar bell. The arrangement of the characters in the graphics should recall some Terminator images. And "Countdown to the Beginning of Awesome" may be a stretch, but it harkens back to one of the best lines in Bolt.
Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 to ship before the holidays
Microsoft's Windows Business Senior Vice President Bill Veghte delivered what may very well have been one of the more disappointing keynote addresses to TechEd 2009 in Los Angeles this morning, judging not only in terms of features but in pure speech quality. But one hour and fifteen minutes into the address, he answered the key question he called one of two "elephants in the room:"
"When are we going to ship? This is a question that I get a lot," Veghte said. "We're going for holiday and we're tracking very, very well for it."
Second wave of Windows 7 updates tomorrow, but they won't be for real
The big difference in using Verizon Wireless over its competitors, its current wave of TV ads suggest, is that every user is backed up by "the network." With Windows 7, Microsoft is working to create a similarly distinguishing value proposition. It'll be given its biggest test to date tomorrow, as "the network" from Microsoft pushes out a series of 10 placebo system updates, to see how well it can handle the heavy Patch Tuesdays yet to come.
As the Windows Update Product Team blogged on Friday, the boatload for the Win7 RC's first Patch Tuesday will contain ten update patches. Nine of them will run automatically and should run flawlessly. One won't, but that's part of the plan.
Top 10 Windows 7 Features #6: DirectX 11
Early in the history of Windows Vista's promotional campaign, before the first public betas, Microsoft's plan was to create a desktop environment unlike any other, replete with such features as 3D rendered icons and buttons, and windows that zoomed into and off the workspace as though they occupied the space in front of the user's face. That was a pretty tall order, and we expected Microsoft to scale back from that goal somewhat. But for several months, journalists were given heads-up notices that there would be several tiers of Windows performance -- at one point, as many as five -- and that the highest tier, described as a kind of desktop nirvana, would be facilitated by the 3D rendering technology being called DirectX 10.
DirectX is a series of graphics libraries that enable Windows programs to "write" graphics data directly to screen elements, rather than to ordinary windows. While the operating system's principal graphics library since version 3.0 has been the Graphics Device Interface (GDI), its handles on memory are tied to window identities and locations. But it's DirectX that makes it possible for a 3D rendered game to be played in the Windows OS without having to be "in" a window like, say, Excel 2003.
No clear decision on Microsoft .NET Micro Framework's new business status
Granted, Microsoft's not accustomed to scaling back operations as drastically as it has had to this year, so it's understandable when a company gets the first-time jitters. But as of this morning, not even the people who direct the development of .NET Micro Framework -- Microsoft's innovative development platform for small devices -- can give a definitive answer with regard to what's happening to the project, shedding only selective rays of light on already fuzzy explanations.
On Wednesday, ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley was first with a story saying Microsoft had made the decision to release the .NET MF project to "the community," though the company left the true definition of that term to the rest of the world to ponder. Foley's original source for her story -- as is typical for the veteran journalist -- was Microsoft itself, whose spokesperson had told her and others in the press, "Microsoft also intends to give customers and the community access to the source code," She also quoted portions of the statement saying the business model for .NET MF was changing to "the community model."
The legacy of Khan: Star Trek's first collision course with the mainstream
My best friend Jeff saved me a copy, because he knew I'd not only want to see it but dissect it, the way a hungry crow goes after a freshly slammed armadillo in the middle of I-35. I was a Star Trek fan the way a New Yorker is a fan of John McEnroe or an Oklahoman is a fan of the Dallas Cowboys, loving to see them in the spotlight but always critiquing their style. Jeff was the assistant manager of a movie theater with four (four!) screens, so he got the advance promotional kit for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Jeff saved me the first promo poster with stills from the movie. Between the premiere and my high school graduation, the premiere was -- at least at the time -- the more exciting event.
I can't think of Star Trek movies today without picturing the gang of us seated around the linoleum tables at Big Ed's, chomping down a heap of fresh-cut fries and taking apart the pictures from the promotional kit for clues. What was the meaning, for example, of Uhura's and Chekov's sweater collars being blue-gray, while Sulu's and Scotty's were mustard yellow?
Top 10 Windows 7 Features #7: 'Play To' streaming media, courtesy of DLNA
Perhaps you've noticed this already: Getting media to play in a Windows-based network is a lot like siphoning water from a pond using a hose running uphill. If you can get enough suction, enough momentum going, you can get a decent stream, but there are way too many factors working against you. Foremost among these is the fact that you're at the top of the hill sucking through a hose, rather than at the bottom pushing with a pump.
So home media networking is, at least for most users today, precisely nothing like broadcasting whatsoever. That fact doesn't sit well with very small networked devices like PMPs, digital photo frames, and the new and burgeoning field of portable Wi-Fi radios like Roku's SoundBridge. Devices like these don't want or even need to be "Windows devices;" and what's more, they don't want to be the ones negotiating their way through the network, begging for media to be streamed uphill in their general direction. They want to be plugged in, shown the loot, and told, "Go." Back in 2004, a group of networked device manufacturers -- the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA, and yes, it's another network association) -- coalesced with the idea of promoting a single standard for being told "Go." But up until today, there hasn't been a singular, driving force uniting the standards together, something to look up to and follow the way Web developers followed Internet Explorer.
Even more fusion after the latest AMD reorganization
In the business press and in business marketing, the term "merger" is often used quite loosely, sometimes to mean the incorporation of another company as a division of the acquirer. When AMD acquired ATI in July 2006, the merger was touted as a pairing of equals, and the forging of a permanent fraternity between two giants in their respective fields. But almost immediately afterward, talk of ways to build processors that used AMD cores and ATI pipelines together led to discussion about truly fusing the two divisions' business units; and the first sign of the fallout from that discussion was former ATI CEO Dave Orton's departure from the AMD executive ranks in July 2007.
Almost precisely one year ago, the actual fusion of the two divisions began, with the creation of a Central Engineering group that would conduct research and development for all the company's processors. Freescale Semiconductor veteran Chekib Akrout was brought in to lead that department, but in a partnership arrangement with AMD veteran Jeff VerHeul. Yesterday afternoon, AMD announced the remainder of its fusion is complete: As AMD spokesperson Drew Prairie explained to Betanews this morning, there is now one marketing department and one product management department as well, while some of the functionality of Akrout's department is being shifted.
EU Parliament approves law ensuring Internet access as a fundamental right
For years, the European Commission has been planning a comprehensive package of telecommunications reform, with the aim of creating a "bill of rights" spelling out what individual European citizens should have a right to do online, and what kind of business environment they should expect. For instance, consumers should have the right to change their carriers while keeping their old phone numbers, reads paragraph 1 of the Telecoms Reform bill; and in paragraph 3, when a member state imposes a measure that a telecom business believes threatens free competition, it may raise the issue before a higher, continental authority that may trump national lawmakers.
But it's paragraph 10 that's been the cause of considerable debate. After the EC submitted the reform bill to the European Parliament (the lower house of the EU's legislative branch) it amended that paragraph with stronger language about the rights of a European citizen to Internet access -- language that attempts to quite literally equate the right of access to the right of free speech.
Last November, the text of that amendment looked like this: "No restriction may be imposed on the fundamental rights and freedoms of end-users, without a prior ruling by the judicial authorities, notably in accordance with Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union on freedom of expression and information, save when public security is threatened where the ruling may be subsequent."
Google Chrome grows up, joining the realm of everyday exploitability
When the first public beta of Google Chrome arrived on the scene last September, it was given a rather rude welcome: It immediately faced the problem of averting a vulnerability. But this was only by virtue of the fact that it uses the open source WebKit rendering engine, whose exploitability had been discovered in Apple Safari just a few weeks earlier.
Now, however, Chrome is coming unto its own, but in a good way: Developers discovered some serious vulnerabilities in the browser apparently before malicious users did. In perhaps the most potentially serious dodged bullet, one of the Chromium project's lead contributors discovered a buffer overflow condition that occurs when a bitmap is copied between two locations in memory. The pointers to those locations may point to different-sized areas without any type or size checking, theoretically enabling unchecked code to be copied into protected memory and then potentially executed without privilege.
First Windows 7 RC patch turns off 'hang time' correction in IE8
Perhaps Google Chrome's most innovative architectural feature is the way it relegates Web page tabs to individual processes, so that a crash takes down just the tab and not the whole browser. In addressing the need for a similar feature without overhauling their entire browser infrastructure, the engineers of Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 added a simple timeout mechanism that gives users a way to close a tab that appears unresponsive.
As it turns out, there's quite a few legitimate reasons why a Web page might appear unresponsive although it's really doing its job. One of them concerns debugging with Visual Studio, as this user of StackOverflow.com discovered.
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