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Free tasty Linux

Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop & Server Editions were released into the wild today. Those are two seperate versions, by the way.

If you are not familair with Ubuntu, it is one of the most popular distros of the Linux operating. Ubuntu is generally considered to be one of the friendliest versions of Linux, with a graphic intensive GUI that rivals other PC OS'es, such as Windows.

As always, Ubuntu is free to download. The semi-secret codename of this edition is Intrepid Ibex.

Press release:

Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop Edition is designed for the pervasively connected digital lifestyle. With new 3G network support, users can move smoothly from wired and WiFi networks onto 3G cellphone networks while traveling. Ubuntu 8.10 is also built to be shared - users can start a quick "guest session" on the fly and let someone use their computer to surf the web or check email, while maintaining the security and integrity of their own data. And if that person really enjoys their brief session as an Ubuntu guest, they can put Ubuntu on any USB key and take it home to install on their own computer rather than having to burn a CD.

As a bonus, all Ubuntu 8.10 users will be able to enjoy programming from the BBC, with high quality streamed content available through the default media players in Ubuntu 8.10. Canonical has worked with the BBC to make sure that much of the material is available to users in all locations.

"Ubuntu 8.10 sees us lay the groundwork for a radically different, more mobile, desktop computing environment over the next two years," says Jane Silber, COO of Canonical and head of Online Services for Canonical. "Our rapid release cycle means we can deliver the elements to support this future faster, more fully realised, and more attractively packaged than the traditional OS vendors. Ubuntu 8.10 has many features that sign-post how Linux will provide the drive and innovation in desktop computing."

"Working with open source technologies like GNOME, Ubuntu 8.10 provides exciting new features for users like creating an always-on system that seamlessly connects wireless and cellular networks," said Stormy Peters, executive director at the GNOME Foundation. "Users no longer need to worry about finding a network - their computer is always connected. This is a great step for both mobile and desktop computing."
 

Screenshots!

Microsoft has unveiled quite a bit of the next Windows operating system (OS), Windows 7, at its Professional Developers Conference this week, via the Milestone 3 "pre-beta", so let's take a look shall we?

Additions

• Touch screen - mouse gestures will work for non-touch PCs.
• BitLocker-To-Go - USB encryption technology previously only known to Vista Ultimate will now be built in.
• Device Stage - application which keeps hardware devices in sync.
• Business services - deploy new images from USB sticks while retaining files and apps (no need to back up to servers); ability to cache files on PCs within a branch; PowerShell 2.0 (optional) to provide integrated script development, test and runtime environment.
• Non-DRM AAC support for music ripped via iTunes.

Changes

• Taskbar overhaul - larger previews of minimized windows, ability to see a stack of windows under one icon ("Jump Lists"), preview mode which lets you look at files without opening them (i.e. Apple's QuickLook), ability to store favourite files as shortcuts.
• HomeGroup - an overhaul of home networking, this one seems to be taking steps after Apple's Bonjour, which makes sharing and sending devices and files (to another printer, person, etc) streamlined.
• UAC - still present, but less intrusive. Ability to never show alerts.
• Wi-fi - simpler, goes back to the XP approach more or less.
• Searching - improved functioning. Search by document type or tags. Access not limited to files, folders, or just your machine.
• Memory usage - under control thanks to a new windows manager. Open more windows, consume less memory.
• Energy consumption/battery life - less energy used, more life, same or improved performance; command-line energy trouble-shooter at your service.
• Less demanding - could potentially run on sub-$500 notebooks.

Subtractions

Note that these will bundled separately under 'Live Essentials'. Obviously not that essential, eh?

• Photo Gallery
• Windows Mail
• Movie Maker
• Contacts
• Calendar

Reportedly, this is more an improved version of Vista rather than XP, or something altogether new. And while it currently resembles the former OS quite a lot, this is likely to change as we get closer to the public release. Which, by the way, is getting conflicting reports: Microsoft SVP of Windows and Windows Live Steven Sinofsky says he thinks three years from the release of Vista is a good time (January 2010), though a public beta will arrive early next year. Meanwhile, chief executive Steve Ballmer says he wants it out next year.

Vista 2? ME Xtreme? XP Plus? No -- 7; Windows 7

Micrsoft has supposedly settled on calling the next Windows, Windows 7. Like it? The name definetly has a computer software feel to it.

The continues in Microsoft's tradition of refusing to be hampered by any sort of conventions or logical formula for coming up with new names for new versions of Windows.

Windows 7 is planned to be released in the second half of '09 -- which is a pretty quick development cycle. Windows 7 will feature DirectX 11 -- even though game makers never really made any DX 10 games, this doesn't really matter much.

Vista was one of the least successful of Microsoft OS'es, so the development of Windows 7 was reportedly sped up. Whether the new Windows will feature ever thickening layers of DRM* and a new subset of inferior features* remains to be seen. Irregardless, it will probably require another 1 GHz of processing power* and at least 2 more gigabytes of RAM* to run.

* = Humor.

Google's "Chrome" promises to deliver new technologies, stability, and performance

Google has stood idly by while the likes of Firefox and Safari have been chipping away at Internet Explorer's ubiquity for years. Browser wars have become fashionable again, and each of the IE/Safari/Firefox/Opera/whatever camps have been slaving away at trying to convince one another that their browser is superior.

No one was expecting Google to throw another contender into the mix, but that is exactly what they've done -- and by the looks of things, loyalties could be shifting sooner than you might think.

Dubbed "Chrome", the new browser is still in Beta (this is Google, after all), and is currently only available for Windows -- though OS X and Linux versions are in the works. Of interest are the technologies Google chose to employ in Chrome: WebKit (as in, Safari's rendering engine) for rendering, and a brand-new, Google-developed JavaScript interpreter named "V8".

My initial impressions of the browser are quite positive. The UI appears to be very clean and slick, start-up time is lightning-fast, resource use is minimal, and best of all, load/rendering performance is the best I've seen of any browser to date. Pages that normally take an ice age to load up due to massive amounts of JS (I'm looking at you, Digg) snap in with no hiccups.

The tabbed browsing implementation is also different from what we've seen in most browsers -- rather than housing everything in a single, monstrous process, Chrome uses a one-process-per-tab concept. What does this mean for the non-nerd? Stability, mostly.

I'm sure everyone has raged at their keyboard, nearest loved one, or a wall when a site in one of their tabs brings the whole browser (and all of your other awesome tabs you hadn't had a chance to read) down. With a one-process-per-tab implementation, if one of those tabs crashes, nothing else is affected.

Of course, other browsers have tried to get around this problem simply by letting you reload your last session the next time you launch the browser, but that's sort of a second-rate solution compared to simply not crashing in the first place.

Computer science nerds out there will tell me that the potential for resource use is higher since every process has to have a copy of certain things in its process memory, rather than sharing a copy, but that's irrelevant given that Chrome's total memory usage is already looking better than either IE's or Firefox's.

All in all, Google's first stab at these browser shenanigans is a solid one. I'm looking forward to the final product. If you have some free time, I highly recommend you try something new, and give it a whirl.

Not much to the app besides a big price tag

Some people have a problem: they have too much money. Too much money can be annoying; it can fall out of your pockets often (inevitably leading to a trail of homeless people behind you), it can make you the target of jokes and derision (ex.: "Look at the rich jerk!") and having too much money also means that you might run out of stuff you'd like to buy.

Well a new iPhone application is here to help. It's called the 'I am Rich' app. It's a screensaver, recently sold on the iTunes App store, that showed a big red ruby when activated -- and that's all. It went up for sale for $1000 last week, and eight people reportedly purchased it. Apple has since decided to remove the application however, for undisclosed reasons.

Here is a video of 'I am Rich' in action. Normally, we would charge about $120 for each viewing of the video below -- but we are feeling generous. Here you are, you members of the unwashed rabble, the 'I am Rich' app:

So much for enhanced security.

SearchSecurity reports that two security researchers have found a way that gets around all of the memory protection safe guards in Vista.

Speaking at Black Hat, Mark Dowd of IBM Internet Security Systems and Alexander Sotirov of VMware Inc will talk about new ways they found to bypass Vista's Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and other protections, by using Java, ActiveX and .NET objects to load arbitrary content into web browsers. Apparently Internet Explorer is particularly vulnerable to the new techniques which take advantage of how web browsers handle active scripting and .NET objects to allow loading any code they wish - and executing it. Apparently the root of the flaw is that Microsoft software assumes that any .NET objects loaded are safe, and they can load arbitrary DLL's.

Gamers and IT techs rejoice

"The Diplomat of Dark Sky Entertainment" (developer of the game Beyond Protocol) has taken it upon him/herself to let PC users know the latest edition of Microsoft's Service Pack (SP3), fixes what are called Black Hole Routers.

These mongoloid pains in the butt can cause all sorts of problems, for gamers, networks and IT departments alike; they're known for causing data loss, disconnects and inconsistencies in connections to encrypted channels. There's also the annoying habit of having to log onto your favourite game multiple times.

Anyhow, good news abounds, as Microsoft seems to have remedied the problem with SP3 (though a more complicated, pre-SP3 solution can be found here, which may be best for those who've experienced troubles with the pack). They pretty much glossed over the issue in the documentation, as is typical for Microsoft, but Dark Sky go into detail:

[W]hen a sustained connection is made between your computer and a server of some sort, packets of data are regularly sent back and forth. The path between your computer and the server can be comprised of many different routers delivering the information from one part of the digital world to another. If along the way, one of those routers finds a packet that it decides is too large to pass on, the router should either fragment the packet or at least inform the sender that the packet was not forwarded. Occasionally a router will simply erase or drop that packet leaving the sender and recipient clueless, which causes problems in large data file transmission, encrypted data sending, and login attempts. This is a black hole router instance. They can be the result of a malfunction, malicious intervention, or improper setup. SP3’s black hole router detection automatically uses, what used to be a complicated process of pinging and adjusting, to identify these problems before sending data and if necessary and possible, redirecting traffic around such routers.

Got all that?

Service Pack 3, for them anyway, immediately solved issues, though they state it is not a guaranteed solution. Of course, what ever is?

SplashTop "instant" on Linux for Asus motherboards has been hacked

Have you secretly been wanting a SplashTop BIOS of your own for your motherboard?

Apparently some users of the phoronix forums have been able to extract the Linux filesystem image of SplashTop, add a terminal (and other) programs, and make it installable on standard USB sticks!

I've played with SplashTop on Asus motherboards before, and it is a neat way of allowing simple net access to untrusted users - mind you, Puppy Linux and other small distributions can do the same task.

A new way of getting Office

Digitalhome reports that Microsoft will start selling Office and its security software to the US on a subscription basis starting on July 15th.

The new "Microsoft Equipt" service will include the latest versions of:

• Word
• Excel
• PowerPoint
• OneNote
• OneCare

Apparently Equipt will only be offered in the US in Circuit City stores. Frankly, I expect a wider deployment soon thereafter.

The price is quite affordable, $69.99 per year, and is valid on up to three computers - this should cover most families, and if true, I'd have to say it is a good deal.

Any new versions that come out during the course of a subscription will be available to subscribers.

Future's looking brighter for gaming with Apple

Good news for Mac users: a deal has been struck between Ubisoft and TransGaming (a "leading developer of portability technologies for the electronic entertainment industry") to bring the former's titles to the personal computer line. Not all of them of will be ported of course, but a multi-title deal has been signed. Ubisoft being one of the top three independent publishers in the industry, this looks like it could pioneer a real place for gaming on the Mac. And according to the press release, that problem of titles coming out far too late for the platform will be much less harsh, if not eliminated.

TransGaming's (TG) role in this is to supply its Cider Portability Engine for the purpose of porting the games over, which acts as a "wrapper" around the game software, allowing it to run seamlessly on Intel-based Macs. As well, Ubisoft'll be making use of gametreeonline.com, TGs digital distribution portal:

"We are delighted to offer consumers Ubisoft's titles through our digital distribution portal, GameTree Online, and at traditional Mac retail locations over the next few years," commented Vikas Gupta, CEO & President of TransGaming Technologies. "Ubisoft has been creating award winning games for Windows-PC and I have no doubt that Mac consumers everywhere will be thrilled to have access to this great content. Leading publishers continue to recognize the value of TransGaming's Cider Engine to bring their high quality content quickly and efficiently to the growing Mac community. The addition of Ubisoft titles further broadens the Mac games market and provides further evidence that TransGaming is the partner of choice for Mac enablement."

Anyone over the age of about six (the majority of Mac users, right?), don't get too excited yet though: the first batch of titles will be in the Petz series', though you get some CSI love, too:

"Ubisoft is extremely excited about the partnership with TransGaming to bring our titles to the Mac," said Jay Cohen, senior vice president of publishing at Ubisoft. "This is the perfect opportunity to reach the growing Mac community so they can enjoy games such as CSI: Hard Evidence and our Petz franchise with Catz and Dogz. To expand our business position and serve the growing Mac gaming community, additional key titles will follow later this year, including several day-and-date releases this Fall."

GameTree is pretty scarce as of yet, but the Petz series should be available very soon. Other Ubisoft titles which have never before appeared on the Mac will be released throughout the summer and autumn, coinciding with their PC releases. Hopefully users can look forward to the likes of Resident Evil 4, Prince of Persia, Onimusha 3, Far Cry 2, and more.

Microsoft gives XP an 11th hour reprieve

Microsoft has announced a change of plans: they are going to extend support for Windows XP all the way until April of 2014. By support, this means that they will release and develop security patches and critical updates for the favored OS. XP was scheduled to no longer be sold this year, with security updates tapering off in 2010, but Microsoft faced a minor backlash over this, due to the popularity of the operating system.

Furthermore, while you will no longer be able to buy XP licenses after the end of this month directly, Microsoft will allow Vista buyers a 'downgrade' option -- while some would not call it a downgrade, this option would allow people to get a new license for XP.

As you are probably aware, Microsoft's Vista adoption by the mainstream has been somewhat slow. For computers with a bit less horsepower (such as the EeePC 900 released this month, and older machines) XP is generally a better fit because it requires less resources to run satisfactorily. Many, many buisnesses have stuck with XP, not seeing any real benefit of going with Vista, so this probably factors into Microsoft's decision to extended the support for the OS.

Wave your Wiimote in the air like you just don't care

Jimmy Lesondak, aka DJ WiiJ is gaining momentum around the Bay Area DJing circuit, especially for his unique methods of producing music. Lately he's been messing around with the Nintendo Wii technology and has discovered ways to use the system and the Wiimote to bust out tunes:

"I bought [the Wii] for gaming on launch day. It wasn't until about a month into owning the system that I started using Wiimotes on my PC. I had been playing with one of the mouse hacks at the time and decided to open one of the DJ software applications I use. I started mixing using the Wiimote as a mouse and it dawned on me that it was possible to configure the controller to DJ with."

He's dubbed the process "WiiJing" and you can see a demonstration of how it works in one of his videos here:

Doesn't look terribly embarassing, really.

In addition to his solo stuff, DJ WiiJ performs sometimes with a group of people dressed into Nintendo character costumes:

It's a very cool idea, anyway, and thinking about how this kind of technology could be commercially implemented for drum modules/machines and the like is terribly exciting, in the video game world as well as the music world. Some hacks have already been done for Guitar Hero on the Wii, so how about Rock Band? A full bunch of people playing together with Wii remotes in this way would be a phenomenally fun experience, I think. Would also be awesome for a similar title that let you create music. The possibilities are infinite!

..sort of

Well June 30 is almost upon us, which means the end of new copies of Windows XP made for retail (and bundled with mainstream systems), or as some might put it, the end of an era. Larry Dignan over on ZDNet says our options now are to "shut up and go with Vista" or try a new OS altogether. Well, the thing is, customers are having a hard time letting go (business customers and otherwise), and so is Microsoft, apparently. And so, the field of vision becomes considerably wider.

XP will live on in five ways, which include being made available from smaller manufacturers and in ultra low-cost PCs, availability in 'emerging markets' in the form of XP Starter Edition, Vista 'downgrade' rights, and continued support.

Smaller manufacturer and downgrade support will resume until January 31, 2009, low-cost PC as well as emerging market support until June 30, 2010, and Microsoft support until 2009 (extended support til April 2014).

Are these signs of Microsoft's awareness of Vista's largely apprehensive would-be adopters? While it may not be a failure in their eyes, I'm thinking this is probably still true (the awareness, I mean). Figures are figures, right? And according to Evans Data (cited by Dignan), 92% of developers are ignoring Vista (this contradicts other studies, however).

Dignan claims with cutting off XP, most of us will fall in line with the latest operating system, corporations included. I beg to differ (again, especially with Windows 7 due out as early as 2009), but what about you?

The stock market is becoming fond of Linux

The people are curious about what makes Tux the penguin more popular by the day.  Every day, I hear about and help new Linux converts through a variety of mediums.  Some businesses are even switching to Linux to reduce costs for software licensing (and most recently energy consumption), while others are switching for the convenience of controlling the coffee pot at the edge of their desk with their computer (yes, this has been done before!) or for the thrill of learning something new.  Now, even large business firms that operate as part of the New York Stock Exchange are buying into the idea of going open source.

A good number of firms have already welcomed Linux with open arms.  The remaining firms that are yet to do so are concerned that licensing issues (of which there are none in Linux other than being required to submit changes to source code back to the open source community) and support will make it more trouble than it's worth.  The Linux providers' response?  "There's no problem, jump right in!  The water's just fine!" (paraphrased).  In fact, Red Hat and Novell (the company that develops and maintains SUSE Linux) have developed RTL (Real Time Linux) systems that specifically meet the needs of the fast and furious stock market where time could mean the difference between a million dollars or a billion dollars from a single transaction.  When asked about the feasibility of using Linux in the marketplace, Novell's senior vice president and general manager of open platform solutions said that "there's a strong business case for Linux as an alternative to Microsoft or [other] Unix derivatives."  Some people probably think that he's just saying that because he's paid to say that, but let's look at a few key differences between Linux and Windows and determine whether there really is a strong business case:

Based on this nonexhaustive list, time, money, and security advantages all seem to point to Linux as the better choice.  Granted, it's not always as user friendly as Windows, but that's not stopping Wall Street, where the TABB Group estimates that 72% of computers in the fourteen biggest investment firms in the United States will have a Linux installation by the end of the year.

Watch out Microsoft.  Linux is slowly but surely taking over...

The penguins are keepin' it cool in your data center

For a long while, Linux was only seen on servers and on the computers of hackers or geeks.  As time has gone on, more and more people began to feel beckoned to the light of freedom that open source software offered.  Not just freedom as in the cost of using an application for next to nothing and it still being legal, but freedom in that you choose how you use it and, for the true enthusiasts out there, how you modify it.  While it's still not commanding a formidable share of the desktop market like Windows does, it holds a considerable sway over the server market.  In fact, it's the system of choice for 48% of all servers which are currently running an active website as opposed to Microsoft's Windows Server being used for only 35%.

Now there's yet another reason for server administrators to choose Linux:  It's greener than Windows Server 2008!  With the ever-increasing price of oil and energy, some companies are looking to cut back on expenses wherever possible.  For those that use Windows-based servers, switching to Linux could be a great way to manage energy costs, as it uses up to 12% less energy than its proprietary rival.  However, the tests run by Network World were under various distributions and hardware configurations, so Windows users might not experience as big of a decrease in power consumption when using Linux as the tests run may lead you to believe.

It's hard to decide which distribution of Linux to use for some people, especially when there are currently 220 maintained distributions in various languages on the Internet ready for people to download, install, and use.  In this specific test however, two commercial versions of Linux were used:  Red Hat Enterprise and SUSE Enterprise Linux.  For Windows, they chose the Enterprise edition for Windows Server 2008.

The main key to success?  Enabling a CPU throttle-back mechanism to reduce the amount of energy a server uses.  Sounds easy enough, right?  Wrong.  Only two of the test servers chosen for this trial came ready-made for the feature to be used.Changing your power settings will also help unless you're a hardcore gamer or someone that wants their computer's best performance all the time.

I've personally been using Debian GNU/Linux on my laptop for almost a year now, but I could tell a noticeable difference in my computer's battery life almost right away after switching from Windows Vista.  While this is by no means a definitive statement that will help Tux overcome the giant that is Windows as far as the desktop market is concerned, it's still something worth thinking about.

OS apprehension shows in declining stocks

The criticism of the latest version of Windows has been pretty immense, so it was really only a matter of time before that started to reflect on Microsoft's financial standings. Well, the numbers are in and it ain't looking good. Check out the stock figures from the last year:

And here are the figures from the last three years (note that Vista launched January 2007):

So, slightly lower than the initial launch, and slightly higher than the initial post-launch decline.

In purely monetary terms, a Business Week study confirmed the "dampening" adoption of the OS by corporate customers will cost Microsoft $395 million in revenues for the 2009 fiscal year (beginning July 1), or 2 cents per share.

A Berstein Web survey was conducted in May which polled IT professionals and their Vista usage. According to the results, the companies expect about 26% of their computers to be running Vista by the start of 2011, down from a 68% estimate from a similar survey the year previous.

Why the reluctance? High hardware demands, uncompelling features, clumsy security procedures, and lack of software compatibility, so they say. Personally, the DRM-stuff is a big deal to me (even if it's just planned as a future implementation). That and the fact users can never 'own' Vista, Microsoft is just 'allowing you the privilege' of running it (I've read the fine print). With all this, I just can't trust it.

Charles Di Bona, a senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein raised his estimates for Microsoft's 2010 stock in light of Windows 7, which he predicts will be a strong period. My feeling is by the time it gets out, and assuming it does fully succeed as the true successor to Windows XP, by this point Windows users will be so eager to adopt it'll be flying off shelves. Apparently even corporations are with me on this, too; General Motors is considering skipping Vista and moving right along to 7.

All Things Digital conference reveals a little of Windows 7

Though Microsoft has been pretty quiet about the next version of Windows (tentatively titled Windows 7), here and there a bit of information leaks, and so it was at the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference, which began yesterday and ends tomorrow.

Microsoft revealed the next OS, which is expected for release late next year, will feature touch screen capabilities as an alternative to the tradtional mouse. Showing off the functions, they appear to work and look similarly to what iPhone and iPod touch users are seeing now, having the capability to enlarge and shrink photos on screen. A program called Touchable Paint was shown too, and map navigating software which can be operated with the user's fingers. Update: A video of it in action can be found over on the Windows Vista Blog.

Founder and chairman Bill Gates stated we may be content with our mice now, but just wait a few years:

"We’re at an interesting juncture where almost all the interaction is with the computer and mouse, today, and, over the years to come, the role of speech, vision, ink, all of those will become huge."

Funny, because I was just recently thinking the same thing. To take it even farther, I'm envisioning a system much like the Wii/Wiimote, except instead of using some kind of controller device, you simply use your hand. Perhaps attach some kind of transmitting device, and off you go! And on the topic of game consoles, I can't help but wonder if the world's wide adoption of the Wii and DS had any effect on Microsoft's decision to move in this direction. Interesting stuff.

When questioned about whether or not Vista was a failure, both Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer said while there is room for improvement, they certainly don't look at it as a failure:

“It’s not a failure, it’s not a mistake. Are there things we’ll modify and improve going forward? Sure."

Bill Gates was quoted as saying, "There’s no product that we’ve ever shipped that was 100% of what I wanted. That’s part of the magic of software, people give you feedback... and you get to make a new version. ... We have a culture of ’we need to do better."

I'm all for that sort of envrionment, but when you have 3500 words and over 85 references over on Wikipedia detailing all the criticisms of the OS (XP, in contrast, has 1760 and 22), and entire sites dedicated to why Vista is terrible, I think it's a little more than just 'there's room for improvement.' But of course, who would expect Microsoft to say that? Anyway, since we technically get support for XP until 2014, I'm happily skipping over Vista, myself, and hoping Windows 7 offers an overall better experience than both OS'. If not, I suppose ReactOS will be in beta by then.

One Laptop Per Child Foundation reaches agreement with Microsoft

Remember that One Laptop Per Child initiative? Members of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab started a foundation with the goal in mind of providing laptops to as many children as possible around the world (ideally, one per child). Doing this would obviously require a very low cost machine, and though many said it wasn't possible, MIT found a manufacturer to make the thing, and the final cost was about $100.

Many major computer, technology and other companies signed on to sponsor the project - AMD, Brightstar Corporation, eBay, Google, Marvell, News Corporation, SES, Nortel Networks, and Red Hat - each donating two million dollars.

Well, Microsoft have just now gotten involved as well, agreeing to have their OS available on each of the systems in the future. The computer corporation says they'll begin testing on the laptops in "key emerging markets" as early as June. Eventually, customers will be able to dual-boot their computers with Windows and Linux OS'.

It is not stated whether or not the OS provided will be Vista or XP, or perhaps a half-and-half situation. Also, there is no word on whether or not Microsoft will be donating its own share to the cause, though this can be presumed with all the philanthropic work the company has done.

Maybe it will be as successful as Vista

Microsoft plans to speed up the life-cycles of their operating systems: they now aim to come out with a new OS every three years.  In a talk in Miami yesterday, Mr. Microsoft himself, Bill Gates, said that the new  version of Windows will come "sometime in the next year or so" and that he was "super-enthused about what it will do in lots of ways."

This likely does not mean a retail release is coming next year though; instead, Gates probably meant that the development of the new OS will have come to the point next year where they have a functional, working internal version of Windows 7 to  evaluate.

But it does seem likely that the next Windows could come as early as the first half of 2010.

The outcry over the June 2008 End-of-life for XP worked!

But there may be a fly in the ointment.

Microsoft's press release is very careful to say that the extended availability for XP Home is for "ULCPC's" - a "new class of mobile personal computers commonly known as ULCPCs" - I guess they mean the Eee-PC, Cloudbook etc., and leave it to Microsoft to coin another acronym and say devices are "commonly" known as ULCPC's.

It also sounds like it will only be available as a pre-install on UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC's - and this acronym IS generally in use)

Latest SlySoft AnyDVD (HD) strips BD+ from discs

Seems that the wheels keep turning for HD burning companies, with the format war settled and AACS cracked there was only one real thing left to tackle in the market, that of course being BD+

The latest version of AnyDVD (6.4.0.0) manages to not really crack the VM system but instead to just remove the security as a whole from the disc so that people can have DRM free HD discs to run on any system or to pull off for personal use on storage devices. It's certainly a workable approach, if the system is said to not really be crackable for at least 10 years then why bother with it and instead why not just tell it to stay behind when pulling the data off.

The full detail list of 6.4.0.0 comes down to this:

6.4.0.0 2008 03 19
- New (Blu-ray): Removes the BD+ protection from Blu-ray discs!
(for increased compatibility with titles released by Twentieth
Century Fox :-) )
- New (Blu-ray): Added option to enable / disable BD+ removal
- New (DVD): AnyDVD ripper no longer uses the Windows filesystem, it
has now its own UDF parser / reader.
Discs which cannot be read by Windows can now be copied with the
AnyDVD ripper.
- Fix (Blu-ray): Black display with some BD discs, e.g., "Layer Cake",
second release, "The Fugitive", "Wild Things" (all Region B)
- Fix (DVD): Small bugfix in "repairing defective disc structure"
function of AnyDVD ripper
- Fix (DVD): Problems with some Arccos protected titles, e.g.
"The Grudge", R1, US
- Some minor fixes and improvements
- Updated languages

Seems like the consumers are getting that leash around their neck loosened by the community at large, nice to see that the investments made on DRM paid off for the media companies.

Hopefully will increase DX10 performance

The oft-delayed Vista SP1 is now available, courtesy of everyone's favorite software giant, Microsoft.

Similar to every other Service Pack, this one brings (or at least aims to bring) greater stability to Vista, greater support for devices, and performance enhancements. Improvements include support for the exFAT file system, IPv6 over VPN connections (IPv6 is the new coming standard for all IP addresses, because we are running out of addresses using our xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx system), and the Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol.

From a gamer's perspecitive, the most interesting thing about SP1 is the introduction of DX10.1.

The stand-alone,  x32 version is a 434MB download, while the x64 pack is a sizable 726MB's. But the SP1 versions downloaded through your Window's Update program are much smaller.

How much would you pay for this OS? $1000? $500! How about $99.99!

Microsoft has quite the colorful corporate history. Even Bill Gates himself probably would not have suspected in his wildest day-dreams that he was laying the foundation of a global economic powerhouse when he was punching code in the late 70's. But from small business to behemoth conglomerate, Microsft grew rapidly in a fairly short span of years -- and some of this success must be in all the thanks of these zany old Microsoft videos.

You might have seen these old promo videos starring Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) -- if you haven't, well, check them out, they are pretty amusing:

Here's the Ballmerinator back again for Windows XP. This is some fantastic advertising folks!

Can't get enough of that Ballmer guy? Check out his energy levels in a Microsoft developers conference! This guy is explosive. If you watch any of these videos, watch this one:

What about overseas? Surely there must have been some wacky commercials somewhere in the world, right? How about this Japanese commercial for 3.1-- not sure exactly whats going on here:

If you like rap, then you might like this big hit from "YO MS Raps!"

Not sure if this final MS Office commercial is the real deal, but apparently it was a bit too spicy and was banned:

If it wasn't for these 5 classic videos, perhaps Microsoft wouldn't be the same successful corporate giant that it is today. Then again... maybe not.

Even more Standards Compliant than ever?

Earlier this afternoon MS launched their Internet Explorer 8 beta page, and made available for download the next generation of the IE browser.  The browser is available immediately for download on Vista, XP SP2, Server 2008, and 2003 Server.  Probably the question most websites (and yours truly) is wondering relate to the Standards Compliance and CSS support of the browser.  I felt that IE7 was a very nice step forward for IE and unlike many other users I thoroughly enjoy that release, but it still left a few things to be desired.  With IE8 MS introduces the following new features:

• "Activities", which allow users to easily look up information from within a webpage or send information to another application.  The jury is out on this one until I see some interesting implementions.
• "Webslices", a very interesting feature which allows users to subscribe to a specific portion of a webpage and place it on their favourites toolbar.
• Renaming the Links bar to the Favourites bar.
• Crash Recovery - Firefox users will remember this as "Session Recovery", where the tabs that you had open can be restored after a crash.  Actually on Firefox I use this feature so I can cheat and end the Firefox process when it starts gobbling up 200+MB of RAM (closing Firefox takes forever in this scenario).
• Improved Phishing filter.
• Apparently a significant improvement in performance (rendering and js).  This is something that MS has downplayed by not highlighting in their major features but it sounds like something any end-user might find appealing.

I'm not one for beta software normally, but if you want to check it out get to the Beta 1 download site.

I suggest you read the Release Notes before proceeding however, since I already noted that they have a release note about anchors not behaving well in IE8 (wouldn't this be considered a show stopper?  nearly every site in the world makes SOME use of anchors, including Microsoft's own release notes page).

Meanwhile, from a website developers perspective, IE8 has what appears to be a rich number of improvements.  IE8 supposedly has compliance for CSS2.1 and includes a developer toolbar.  That toolbar sounds appropriately powerful, and I am eager to see how it compares to the Firefox developer add-on.  Check this out:

Internet Explorer 8 includes tools that Web developers need to efficiently debug their sites directly in Internet Explorer. Developers can immediately debug a site's HTML, CSS, and JScript from within Internet Explorer 8, rather than switch between Internet Explorer and a separate development environment. In addition, Internet Explorer 8 Developer Tools help developers identify why their site does not render or behave as expected. They do this by providing visibility into Internet Explorer's internal representation of the site rather than just a source view.

Finally, by making it simple to edit any site, Internet Explorer 8 Developer Tools makes experimentation and iterative development easy. This enables rapid prototyping and helps developers improve their skills.

In addition to this IE8 will be introducing CSS3 elements, HTML and ACID2 improvements. There is also a VERY interesting ability to swap rendering modes between 3 different modes:

• Quirks – backwards compatibility with IE5 rendering behavior.
• IE7 Standards – backwards compatibility with IE7 JavaScript and layout behavior.
• IE8 Standards – latest features, including the CSS 2.1 compliant layout engine and DOM/HTML breaking changes.

Overall an interesting release that I feel keeps IE in the running.