The Windows name: Is there special significance to '7?'
On Monday, Microsoft confirmed that its nomenclature for Windows marketing will revert to an earlier time, when numbers were enough to convey meaning. Now, already, the company is having to explain its own logic and its numerology.
It could, for all intents and purposes, just be a number. But previous editions of Windows, including the one we're on now, have been given so-called "aspirational names" whose significance and symbology were the subject of some sustained gushing from Microsoft's marketing department in the past.
Intel says it's positioned for the coming economic storm
Of the American corporations that will be impacted -- some severely -- by the global economic downturn, Intel will be best positioned to withstand the storm due to its very low debt position, its senior executives told investors Tuesday.
So the only uncertainty facing Intel in the coming quarter and thereafter is not how much liability it will suddenly face, but how much demand for CPUs and technology products will drop. This from both CEO Paul Otellini and new CFO Stacy J. Smith, during the company's quarterly third quarter conference call.
First public Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 builds now downloadable
Download Mozilla Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 for Windows from FileForum now.
6:08 pm EDT October 14, 2008 - This afternoon, two Mozilla spokespersons confirmed to BetaNews the official availability of Firefox 3.1 Beta 1, which should include some features that could catch it up with IE8 Beta 2.
Apple has a surprise competitor in notebooks: Samsung
Samsung is actually known as an innovator in the notebook computer field, having equipped some models with solid state drives as early as two years ago. But it hasn't made its notebook presence known in America until today.
While the requisite drooling over the new MacBook Pro's slick glass surface goes on in Cupertino this morning, there's a tsunami under way in notebook computing, and its source appears to be Seoul. Samsung today announced it is storming onto the US notebook market with a complete lineup whose marketing structure has already been tested elsewhere in the world, and with price-competitive models that have intriguing features and a promise for quality.
Final Silverlight 2.0 ships Tuesday
Download Silverlight 2.0 for Windows from FileForum now.
11:56 am EDT October 14, 2008 - BetaNews has verified that Silverlight 2.0 has been released on schedule, and that the update process has begun.1:03 pm EDT October 13, 2008 - In a teleconference today, Microsoft Corporate Vice President Scott Guthrie told the press that the company's 2.0 version of Silverlight will be ready to ship tomorrow, October 14.
President signs controversial IP enforcement act into law
Convicted counterfeiters will now be subject to increased fines and the forfeiture of their property, under a new law that took effect yesterday. And the size of government just got bigger, with the creation of one more office.
While opposition was, as we put it some weeks ago, "mounting" against an intellectual property enforcement bill that would create a new government office in charge of enacting government policy against IP infringement, piracy, and counterfeiting, it's fair to say that opposition remained in large part outside of Congress. Last September 26, the US Senate passed the PRO-IP Act by unanimous consent; two days later, the House ratified it by a vote of 381-41.
No surprise: 'Windows 7' will be Windows 7
Is it an indication that poetic titles and artificial excitement can do less to endear an OS in the minds of its users than simple, straightforward functionality? Today, Microsoft said it's going back to doing things by number.
In a quick announcement this afternoon on the company blog for Windows Vista -- what's already being perceived as the "old version of Windows" by Microsoft -- the company's corporate VP for Windows product management revealed what many developers had already long suspected: The next version will be called what we've been calling it for months already, "Windows 7."
Columbus Day means tech stocks re-discover forward momentum
For the last several days, investors whose contribution of capital influx fuels the US technology business had difficulty determining which way was up. Today, on what for some was a holiday, they definitely found up again.
In perhaps the most welcomed rally in the history of the US stock market, a single-day 936.42 point surge in the Dow Jones Industrials (an 11.08% gain) indicated investors' newfound confidence in the British and European governments' respective bailout plans for their troubled banks. Almost every major technology stock participated in the rally, giving much needed support for some issues that were, and even still are, dangerously close to delisting.
Everyone talk at once: .NET 4.0 will include Parallel Extensions
Parallelism in programming has largely been conducted in the laboratories. But with the next version of the .NET Framework, developers everywhere will be able to experiment with what could become a monumental change in languages.
In perhaps the most significant development in the brief history of the field of implicit parallelism in computing, one of Microsoft's development teams announced last Friday that the next .NET Framework 4.0 -- the first glimpses of which we'll see later this month from PDC in Los Angeles -- will include the so-called Parallel Extensions as a standard feature. This after the Extensions were first introduced in a Community Technology Preview last November.
Microsoft finds published exploit of Vista privilege elevation hole
A less-than-critical Vista hole could become more critical, as Microsoft's security team says it's aware of a published exploit that could enable an ordinary process to pass itself off as a system process with unrestricted access.
Last April, Microsoft admitted to a serious, though perhaps not critical, security hole in all modern versions of Windows including XP and Vista. But a notice posted last Thursday to the company's Security Response Center blog, warning of a published exploit using that same technique, is an indication that the hole has gone unplugged all this time.
Wal-Mart changes its mind, leaves existing DRM servers up
In what can only be described as another "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario, faced with the option of thousands of disgruntled customers, Wal-Mart is informing them it's decided to leave its online DRM servers running.
According to letters received by customers and reprinted today by multiple sources -- among them Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow -- the nation's largest retailer is telling them that music they downloaded from the Wal-Mart online music store can continue to be played indefinitely. It has apparently reversed its decision of last week, and while still moving forward toward a DRM-free model for future music downloads, will leave its servers online to support the DRM schemes in existing downloads.
New Norton Vista tool trades UAC for online feedback
Download Norton Labs UAC Tool for Windows Vista from FileForum now.
The latest freeware tool from Norton Labs offers to do Vista users a favor by turning off many of those annoying User Access Control prompts. If you're wondering what Symantec wants in return...so were we.
Qualcomm gains an ally in its renewed war with Broadcom
The leading provider of chipsets for the world's GPS devices is no longer seen as unchallenged in that department, and in August was handed a crushing defeat at the hands of Broadcom. Now, the enemy of its enemy may be its newest friend.
Last August 8, a judge with the US International Trade Commission found that SiRF Technology, a company that builds the chipsets used in a sizable, but slipping, majority of the world's GPS systems, were infringing upon six US patents from a Broadcom subsidiary directly related to the sensitivity of GPS devices. That subsidiary is called Global Locate, Inc., and it too makes GPS chipsets.
Time for a 'Patch Tuesday' just for Apple?
In an advisory published by Apple this afternoon, Mac users and admins are being advised of the availability of the seventh major security package this year, which will include some 20 patches for both the System and Mac applications.
The last major Apple security update came on September 15, and the one before was issued on the last day of July. So security updates are getting to be a monthly affair with Apple, just as they've been with Microsoft for quite some time.
The AMD split: Can two companies fare better than one?
It was obvious that AMD's current financial status, and its competitive situation with Intel in the multi-core era, were both untenable. Drastic action had to be taken. But can AMD come back without owning its own processes?
Faced with a critical decision about how it could finance the expansions it needed in order to build processors that can help it regain its competitive footing against Intel, AMD made a decision that would make Solomon weep: It sold a majority stake in its most treasured possession, its fabrication facilities, to an entirely new company called ATIC, comprised of foreign interests that have agreed to place former AMD personnel at the head of its new managing company.
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