27 posts tagged “microsoft”

 So today, Microsoft announced version 2 of the Zune. Big yawner right? Well maybe not so much. According to the very reliable Ars Technica, there are some pretty interesting features in Zune 2.0. Most notably, WiFi sync. If I'm reading the a

rticle correctly, you can now sync a Zune over a WiFi hotspot. It's still not clear if you need the software installed on the computer or what, but it sounds like a cool feature. One thing that sounds cooler, but is limited to Vista Users. is the ability to sync recorded TV shows from Vista Media Centre onto the Zune over WiFi. There is a slight downside though. Video Files can be HUGE, and doing that kind of downloading over a G connection is probably going to take a while. The 3x3 DRM has semi been eliminated. You can still only play the song 3 times, but there's no time restriction.
    One thing that really ticks me off, is that they insist on DRM podcasts, even though Microsoft doesn't have any legal grounds to do so, considering that most podcasts  don't have any copyrighted material in them.
    All in all, a good product except for 2 things. A) DRM. It sucks. Period.B)It's not yet in Canada. Why is that all the tech companies put Canada way down on they're "To realease products Hopefully Microsoft will wise up and bring the Zune to Canada.

You may recall a while ago that I mentioned that one of my favorite books is the Bathroom Readers. I had a bunch of Chapters money from Christmas and my birthday, So I went down to the Chapters today and picked up the Gigantic Bathroom Reader. It's a whopping 752 pages of trivia, oddities and the fun stories. And it only cost me $14

.95!  THat works out to be about a nickel a page (I think) Anyway, it's a great book and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves to learn and also loves to laugh at the same time! Great book
    The second more exciting piece of news, in my mind at least is that I got a new mouse today. I go the Logitech S 510 desktop in January. I loved it-for the most part. The keyboard is great. Having ability to launch apps with the touch of the a button. The only thing that I hate about it is the mouse. It's a crappy mouse in terms of ergonomics and the fit of my hands. I have medium-large hands and and mouse is very small. Worst of all, the shape is like a hill. Your palm rests at the top and your fingers slant forward. Needless to say it's not very nice to be using for a few hours a day. So I went to Futureshop (after I went to Chapters.) and went browsing through the iMacs (surprisingly, one of them the 17" iMac, was running a build of Leopard.) anyway, I talked to one of the associates and he pointed me to the Microsoft 5000 Laser mouse, an ergonomic mouse. So I bought it. Not a bad purchase, after all, but setting this thing up was a pain. I followed the steps and it uninstalled the Setpoint software for the my Logitech stuff. This caused my keyboard to not work and I had to use the on screen keyboard to type stuff. Long story short, it now works and I like it. I'll have a more in-depth post on that in the near future. I'm off to bed. Later.

    If you haven't seen this yet, it's pretty darn cool. Microsoft showed of it's latest innovation on Wednesday and for once, it's actually an innovation. Codenamed "Milan" it's taking the GUI and user experience to the next frontier. What's that? Touch. Instead of justing using a keyboard and mouse, you use your fingers and hands to do things. Sound farmiliar? Yeah it sounds a lot like the Multi-Touch patent that Apple filed for the iPhone. It's unclear if the two projects are related. But man does this thing look cool. Want to resize photo's? Pinch them with your fingers. The possibilities are endless, if you want to have a look at what  "Milan" is capable of, check out this video from YouTube on what Microsoft Surface computing is capable of. This is what excises me about technology, how it's going to change our lives, how we do things and how we interact with each other. I can't wait to see similar products like this that are cheaper and reachable for the average consumer.
Time will tell.

 So much for relaxation. Even though this is only day 1 of 4 that I have off, I feel as if the weekend is to be wasted. I had a lot of work to do this morning and I really didn't get to do a whole lot of relaxing. Tomorrow morning is not going to be much better. Gotta go work with my grandfather to pay off money I owe him. Long story. This should be the last time this happens anyway, so I might even make a few bucks off the deal.
    Went out and rented Stranger than Fiction with Will Farrell tonight. Not a bad movie. Better then the last few one's we've rented. It seems my parents ability to rent decent movies had degraded in the past few months. I really wanted to get either Good Sheppard or Casio Royale. But that wouldn't have been age appropriate. Once little brother turns 14 or whatever, then I can bring home so decent movies. Until then, where restricted to mostly kiddie and semi-decent flicks to watch. Of course, I could  bit-torrent them all....but I'm not that kind of person.
     Cousin of mine (read:fellow geek/nerd.) is coming here on Sunday afternoon with a copy of Vista. Going to install the 30-40 day trail (not sure what the exact time frame is.) By that time, I should have enough money to buy an actual copy. I'm looking forward to it. I know I've chastised Vista in the past, but I can't really do that without giving it a try, right? If I don't like it, I'll go back to XP, but my theory is that trying never hurt anybody. *Goes away to back up critical data.*
Hopefully I'll Post tomorrow.

 Windows Vista was released 4 weeks ago. It was Microsoft's major release in 5 years. Needless to say, it's packed full of features. With the shiny Aero glass, Bitlocker drive encryption, a redesigned media center, there is definitely some incentive to upgrade. But is it worth it? Let's take a look at this?
 4. Hardware Unless you have a machine that's been made in the last year, to year in a half, your going to need a hardware upgrade of some kind. And even if you have a new system, your going to need a hardware upg

rade of some kind. I have 1 GB of RAM in this new system, but in order to get decent performance out of any app (like Audition, Photoshop, etc.) you need 2 GB of RAM. And on top of this, if you invested in a new shiny DX 10 graphics card, you have to wait for Nvidia to get off it's but and write proper drivers.
    In comparrison, Mac OS X can run on a G3 (366 Mhz) 128 of RAM and a Radeon 7xxx to 9xxx  with most of the shiny Aqua based effects. What does that tel you? Mac. If your just a casual computer user,  go to your friendly Apple Store or Authorized Apple Reseller and get yourself a Mac Mini or iMac. Considering the amount you have to spend on hardware, plus a copy of Vista, a new mac is looking pretty good.
3. Software: Currently there are around 900 "Vista Certified" applications which is just a fancy of saying that the companies that make the software payed Microsoft a few thousand bucks to say "Yep, we'll make sure it works with Vista". Many of the apps that previously worked with XP no longer work Vista. It's only a matter of time, but it's still a pain in the butt. Adding to the misery, to get apps like Photoshop and Audition to perform decently you need 2+ GB of Memory. In contrast you can run most apps on Mac OS X with 1 GB of memory. Some apps require a bit more, but in the grand scheme of things, you don't need much memory
2.Virtulization: Here's where Microsoft screws you over big time.If anyone likes to use virtualization, stick with your copy of XP Pro. If you like to virtualize Linux or any other operating system, you need to go out and buy a copy of Vista Bussiness or Ultimate. Guess what? You can get Parrallel's for Mac to virtualize Windows, Linux, OS/2 (why?) and other opearating system. And it only costs you $79 and an Intel based Mac.
1. Next Release: Windows Vista is the lastest release and matches the features of OS X Tiger. But Tiger is reaching new of Life and the next release is on the way. OS X 10.5 Leopard promises to have updated Spolight, Dashboard, and new features included Spaces,Time Machine, iCal, iChat and many others. Apple will probably release Leopard in the next few months with 10.6 coming in early or late 2008. So once again, Microsoft is going to go play catch up.
    That's my take on Vista vs. OS X. What you buy is your business, but I urge casual computer users and non-gamers to swtich to Mac to avoid the deathtrap that is Vista.

So the iCEO doesn't like DRM after all. A letter posted on Apple.com today speaks volumes more then what's on the page. It tu rn

s out even though Apple uses DRM, Steve Jobs (who is probably one of the most famous music fanatics in the tech industry.) says that if consumers could the "Big 4" (EMI, BMG, Universal and  Warner) to not use DRM on it's content, Apple would embrace it "in a heartbeat". Apparently the only way that the record labels would put the music on iTunes would be to DRM it. At least Apple is a bit sensitive to consumer needs and doesn't DRM it to death (like Microsoft, Real and Sony.) So will Apple get rid of Fairplay? Not likely. Unless the there is a massive revolution in the content industry, Apple is not likely to drop Fairplay. and the entire DRM thing. I don't think Mr. Jobs want to be stuck with no content on one of the major points that made Apple profitable again (iTunes and iPod) I think the only that would allow for a massive change in the DRM schemes is a complete and total consumer rebellion against DRM. Where starting to see the begining of that now with the rejection of Microsoft's Zune device. It might take some time but I believe that sooner rather then later, DRM will go the way of the dodo bird. I'll look back on this later in life when DRM is gone and say "I remember when we had DRM on our music and we could do certain things with our content. I'll be happy when that comes.

    So I got the results back from that rewrite that I did yesterday. 53. Not bad considering my other marks in the course. Teacher called all of us over to his desk during class today so he could chat with us about our marks. I'm marching into exam with a 52ish. Which means I have to come out of this exam with a 50 at least in order to pass this course. That shouldn't be to bad. Got the revised results of my C. History test back as well. 92%. My top mark in that class was a 97% on the economics test. I have a test on sovereignty which I'm going to study for in a few minutes. when Mom get's home we have to finish icing that cake and such. I finished my Powerpoint for one of my last Soc. assignments for the semester. Made some models that I placed under CC to share with people. I've decided to put all of my paper's and such under CC for people to use and to give me some recognition. I'll put some of them up on a site somewhere.
    Just saw an article on Ars (Technica) about Windows Home Server. One of the first lines in the article is "remember when you had XP home for home, XP Pro for work and Windows 2003 Server for Server?" He then goes on about the fact that Microsoft has muddied the water with numerous versions of Vista. I think that they did this  reason. No more one size fits all  Microsoft has given up on all the "one size fits all" model. They're targeting specific groups of consumers with specific versions of Vista. Home Basic for the granny that only does word processing and email. Home

Premium for the  people who enjoy lots of  multi-media. Business for well,  business. Enterprise for small  business and Ultimate for the power user/enthusiest/I want everything-all-the-shiny-stuff group. I think they learned over the past few years that people use computers for different things and they need specific programs and features for a specific user groups. It may be frustrating for me and you, but it makes sense-well kinda.
    I don't like all of the DRM in Vista. I don't like the fact that Microsoft bent over backwards for the RIAA and the MPAA again. These are all reason to not get Vista. Will I get Vista? Maybe. Maybe not. Right now I'm thinking not. Why? Well first of all money. I have much better things to spend my money on. Second of all you never never ever by the product the first six months that it's out. It took them 2 service packs to get XP somewhat secure. I don't even want to know how long it's going to take them to get Vista secure and working properly. Finally, the only reason I would consider Vista is if I can get a recently priced DirectX10 graphics card. I'm waiting for the midrange nvidea cards as well as ATI's initial offerings to come out this march. I'm heading down the Florida in march, so I might pick up one on the cheap. We'll see. Anyway back to the books.

     Today was the first day of the Consumer Electronics show in (VIVA!) Las Vegas. Needless to say, there is some pretty cool stuff. Having watch both the DL.tv and Lab Rats podcasts, it's clear that on day one,there was tonnes of stuff announced, with tonnes more to come in the next few days. Last night, Bill Gates gave a keynote and demo'd some really cool, never before seen features in Vista. One of these features is the ability of use the Windows Search to search not only the PC you are currently using, but also all of the PC's on your network that are using Vista. But wait there More! You can even use an Xbox 360 controller to play games on your PC. And the final feature demo'd at Bill Gates' keynote? Full HD motion desktop in Vista. I can't recall the name right now but it looks awsome.
    Final thing. Tomorrow is the Stevenote at Macworld Expo. It's sure to be a great time and as I have last period off, I'll be home early and blogging about it as developments roll in. It's sure to be a blast
This is just the beginging, it'll be fun to see what the rest of the week brings.

Well 2006 is almost gone and I'm looking forward to 2007. 2006 has been a busy year. New technologies have made there way unto the desktop, mobile and server markets. Intel released it's new Core platforms while AMD is on the verge of it's 4x4 architecture being released. nvidia released it's revolutionary new series 8 GPU, using a new architecture that increases GPU performance many times over.    Apple Computer has made it's much awaited Intel transition, unveiling new notebooks and desktops. Microsoft is on the verge of a new era with the release of Windows Vista within the next 30 days. The world itself has been very busy, with a regime change, the first in the 13 years. Stephen Harper and his Conservatives swept to power in January with a minority. On the international stage, Israel and Lebanon with a 3 month, requiring the mass evacuation of citizens from dozens of nations. 
Onto the Categories:
Technology 

Best Gadget: Sanyo Xacti HD-1A (Previous: Apple iPod/iPod Nano)
With the world going HD it's time for the camcorder world to go HD as well. This thing is tiny. You can fit it into your shirt pocket, it's that tiny. It shoots in 720p. And here's the cool thing: It takes SD cards. A 2 GB card will shoot about 30 minutes for of footage. Now that might not sound like a lot, but when your shooting HD video that's pretty good. So say you get 6 2 GB cards, that's 3 hours of HD video. I can see in '07 the Xacti facing some competition from Canon and Sony, but for now it's the best in it's class.

Honorable Mention: 2G iPod Shuffle

I considered putting this as the Best Gadget of the year, however I'm trying not be biased in favor of Apple, but this second generation shuffle is sweet. It's smaller than the 1^st generation, made of metal instead of plastic and looks much better. I'm considering getting one for my Mom for her birthday in July.

Worst Gadget: Microsoft Zune (Previous: N/A)
Now this may seem biased but I have several reasons for this. First of all, let me state that I love the hardware. It's a nice device. The rubberized plastic is nice and the colors look pretty cool (except for the brown one.) The screen is beautiful. It's bigger than the one on the iPod and looks Nice. The interface is pretty cool and looks very pretty. I believe it gives you the ability to use custom images as the background. Like I said, love the hardware, kudo's to the guys who designed it. But then, Microsoft, being the “Oh we have to play nice with the industry”. Coperation that it is, decided to DRM pretty much everything on the Zune. Say you use the Wi-Fi to share a song, even if it's a song you composed or it's supposed to be shared under Creative Commons applies DRM to it (which is a violation of Creative Commons.) So, in short the Zune had a lot of potential, but that was before Balmer got ahold of it and decided to please the record industry. The status quo is unchanged, iPod is still on top.

Best Overall Product: Intel Core 2 Duo (Previous: N/A)
Intel released Core Duo processors just under a year ago and followed this July with the new Core 2 Duo processors. What makes the Core 2 so special? It's a huge leap forward for the industry. For a while, Intel, in the words of Jerry Pournelle: “They had computers could could bake Pizza in” which is not far from the truth. The Prescott chips ran hot. And the next generation of Pentium 4's really didn't help either. So after a 5 year stint with the NetBurst architechture, Intel moved on to a completely new architecture known as Core. And guess who came up with it? The Israeli's. (they saved Intel's bacon.) Instead of running every single possibility through the processor (guessing basically), the new Core architecture runs eveything in Parallel, which makes things much faster. The amount of L2 cache has almost doubled. The max Intel had on it's chips was 2x 1 MB on the Pentium D series. Now the Low end Core 2 (1.86 Ghz) has 2 MB of L2 with the 2.13, 2.4,2.66 and 2.93 Ghz having 4 MB of L2 cache. That's a lot of cache and it makes this chips really fast. Ideal for gaming and video editing. Needless to say, Apple made a good move when they jumped ship for the PPC platform. The Core 2 Duo is a revolution in micro-processor technology.

Worst Overall Product: Sony Laptop Batteries (Previous:Sony Rookit'd CD's)
Sony has not managed to stop it's losing streak. For the second year running they are running the “Worst” categories. Last year they blundered with the Rootkit'd CD caused an uproar. Now they're the faulty Laptop batteries caused a major brouhaha in the tech community with almost 12 million of them recalled. I mean come on Sony, when will you get your act together? They just can't seem to get all of there policies to work together for the betterment of the coperation as a whole. Recently Matsushita has claimed that they have developed a fireproof Laptop battery that will not explode. Well see how this pans out. So for the second year running, Sony has produced a product that is anti-consumer. Hopefully 2007 will be a better year for Sony.

Best Executive: Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical Ltd (Previous:Steve Jobs, CEO Apple Computer)
Shuttleworth, an international Entrepreneur has become a pioneer with the Linux operating system by taking it from the enthusiast market of PC power users and open source advocates such as Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds to people who can't afford Windows. Shuttleworth has funded the development of Ubuntu and it's sister projects and so far it's a major success. Many people who saw Linux as a complex OS only for experienced users. I'm pushing for adoption within both the education system at my church which is setting up a community computer lab. Needless to say that Shuttleworth, a modern Stallman or Torvalds. Shuttleworth deserves his place as Best Executive of the Year for leading Ubuntu to the place it's at now.

Worst Executive:Patricia Dunn (Previous: N/A)
Dunn screwed up royally. If you don't know what happened this summer, Dunn was caught using gestapo like tactics to investigate several HP board members and technology journalists. She used a practice known as pretexting in which the companies she hired to investigate lied to aqquire phone records and other confidential information. Thus, she earns the Worst Executive on this list for 2006.

Best Overall Cooperation: Canonical (Previous Apple Computer)
This year Ubuntu Linux, which is Canonical's main product hit the mainstream with many anti-DRM advocates including Corey Doctorow adopting Ubuntu instead of Windows or Mac OS X. Although Edgy Eft was a bit of a bumpy upgrade, I look forward to Fiesty Fawn next April. Canonical has made Ubuntu a mainstream product in the open source world and the Linux flavour of choice for both beginners and Linux veterans alike.

Worst Overall Coperation: RIAA (Previous Sony BMG)
What's there to say?The RIAA is the type of organization that is the zenith of not consumer friendly. They sue grandmother's who scratch their heads when they here the word “BitTorrent” and “P2P Networks”. They go after people who don't have a computer, much less an internet connection. They favor the DMCA and are against Net Neutrality. What's there to like about them? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

General News

Best Politican: Peter Stoffer MP Sackville-Eastern Shore (Previous: N/A)
My MP is the greatest. I have sent in various letters for a number of causes and every time he has responded with a positive phone call. He really cares about his constituents unlike many MP's in Central Canada. He also supports the troops, health care and many of the things. He has no political agenda and that earns him the honor of  Best Politician of '06. 

Worst Polictian: Belinda Stronach (Previous: Belinda Stronach)
Ms. Stronach ran for the leadership of the Conservative Party in 2003. When she did, I respected her imensley. Her policies where sound and she had a likeable personality. Things have gone down hill since. She jumped ship to the Liberal Party in May of last year and alleged to have had an affair with Tie Domi, star player of the Toronto Maples Leaf's. In short, she's an opportunist and I don't like opportunist's. At least in government. The government is here to serve the people, not your own selfish self interests. She's the worst politician in Canada for 2006, for the second year running.

Worst Policy: Stay the Course (Previous: N/A)

Up until this past month, U.S. President George W. Bush has kept on his policy of “Stay the Course” in Iraq. That policy, is costing not only American soldiers there lives, but also the lives of Iraqi's. What good has it done up until this point? Hundreds of Iraq's die every day, for no apparent reason. American soldiers die as well, also for no apparent reason. This policy is soon to be reversed as Bush and his military advisors look for other option in and a new direction in Iraq.

Best Policy: Accountability Act (Previous: N/A)
Last January the Conservatives swept there way to power after 13 years of Liberal rule. With it, Prime Minister Stephen Harper introduced the Accountability Act which gave the Auditor General more power to investigate the spending of the government as well as giving protection to whistle blowers and putting a 5 year lobbying ban on ministers. This Act was the keystone of Harper's election campaign ans was a breath of fresh air considering the rampant corruption in government the past few years. The Accountability Act of 2006 is the Best Policy of 2006.

Best News Story:It's a Series of Tubes! (Previous N/A)

People in the tech community will recall that in June Sen. Ted Stevens, while in committee debating a Net Neutrality Bill called the Internet a “Series of Tubes”. The tech community both in and outside of the United States LAMO'd at Mr. Steven's bumble. It remains a frequent joke in the tech community and is my pick in 2006 for best news story.

Worst News Story: James Kim (Previous Hurricane Karina)

Although there are many of these for 2006, this one stands out for me. James and his family got lost on a remote Oregon road. His family survived, but he himself died of hypothermia, trying to get help. This earns James the worst Story of 2006 and a honorable mention on this list.

    Tha's my take on 2006. I'm off to New Brunswick again tomorrow and I'll be back again on the 30th. I might post once or twice when up there, but I might also take a bit of a hiatus from blogging. But I will definitely post before the new year. I hope everyone is having a great holiday and see on guys later.

Virtunate

     So "Super Week" is over. The Zune is out. The PS3 is out and so is the Wii. So basically all the major releases that people have been looking forward to are over (at least in North America.) Now begins the slew of news about Broken PS3's, weird Wii bugs and screwed up Zune's. I mean less than 24 hours after the PS3 was released there was news of crashing PS3's with there own BSOD's. This is supposed to be the console that kills the Xbox and in the almost year delay that Sony had in releasing it, you'd think they could Iron out all the bugs. According to TWiT, when you turn on the PS3 for the first time, you have to wait close to an hour to wait for the firmware to update. And really, except for the Cell processor and the Blu-Ray player there isn't anything that revolutionary about the PS3. The Wii on the othe r hand, is

amazing. It's the first console that tries to make Video games an active activity as opposed to just sitting on the couch with a controller. I think, when I get another Job in the Second Semester of school, I think the first thing that I will buy is a Wii. And it's cheap. In comparison to the PS3 or the Xbox 360, the Wii is to quote Patrick Norton "A good night out at a serious restaurant." What does that mean? It's cheap. But it's fun. With the dismal failure of the Gamecube there was rumors floating around that Nintendo wouldn't make it to the 8th generation of consoles. Unlike in there early days, the N64 and the Gamecube where not innovation. They where aimed at the kid markets, not the serious hardcore gamers. Now the tables have turned. Nintendo is innovating with the Wiimote while Xbox and PS3 are justing continuing the saga of sitting on the couch. I predict that in the next two quarters, Wii sales will outstrip demand and overtake the PS3 in sales. Am I wrong we shall see.
    Diggers rejoice! The menace to Dggital society is gone! Jason Calacanis, who is hated by the Digg community by trying to buy off the top users of Digg, have left AOL for parts unknown. If you have no idea what I am talking about, back this summer, Calacanis was put in charge of reviving Netscape.com. So Jason played the part of a Xerox machine and copied Digg with a few tweaks. Digg gets content to the front page with a straight up democratic vote. Netscape on the other hand, had Editors as well as the ordinary users. So Calacanis didn't directly copy the idea, but he did piss off diggers because he thought everything was about money. I mean the guy sold Weblogs Inc to AOL in order to get rich. Now he thinks in order to promote the "new" Netscape he lured the top digg users with the prospect of money. Yeah. Right. The Consequence? Bye Bye Calacanis. Nice knowing ya.