Posts Tagged ‘microsoft/news’

JavaScript, graphics performance improvements on tap for IE9

// November 19th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

The first information about the next version of Microsoft’s web browser was revealed at PDC on Wednesday. The announcement described three main areas of improvement: JavaScript, web standards, and graphics technology. IE9 will contain a new, significantly faster JavaScript engine, it will have richer support for web standards like CSS 3, and it will use the new Direct2D and DirectWrite technology for its graphics and text rendering.

Running Windows 7 under OS X: Ars reviews VMware Fusion 3

// November 18th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

VMware Fusion 3 was released last week into the anxiously trembling hands of desktop virtualization junkies, and we’ve run the release through a gamut of heavy tests to see if it’s able to meet the hype. At first glance, 3.0 doesn’t look to be teeming with new features, but the changes that are there are significant:

Have we started to fill our carbon sinks?

// November 18th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Each year, human beings put vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through processes like the combustion of fossil fuels or the clearing land for agriculture. Thankfully, the majority of it doesn’t stay there, as there are a number of significant carbon sinks that pull somewhere around 60 percent of human emissions back out of the air, dissolving it into the oceans and sequestering it in growing forests. One of the worries about our continued carbon emissions is that these sinks could eventually start to fill, increasing the challenge involved in limiting the levels of atmospheric carbon. Two new studies have looked at the issue, and they come to what appear to be very different conclusions. Any process that removes carbon from the atmosphere can act as a carbon sink. These include basic processes like having the gas dissolve into the ocean, to more complex ones, like the sequestration that appears to take place in mature forests. The cumulative impact, however, is huge; carbon sinks are estimated to remove about 60 percent of the CO 2 that human activity puts in the atmosphere annually. (The remaining 40 percent is termed the airborne fraction.)

Inside "MinWin:" the Windows 7 kernel slims down

// November 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

As Windows 2000 was being developed in the second half of the 1990s, Microsoft was firmly focused on building in as much functionality as possible, in a play to push Novell Netware aside and establish Windows NT as the operating system for the business world. When NT was released to manufacturing ten years ago, it was well-received by reviewers, businesses, and enthusiasts alike, and for much of the decade the OS has been considered by some to be the pinnacle of Windows releases. Its headline business features—Active Directory, Group Policy, Internet Information Services, Management Console, Windows Management Instrumentation—have become industry standards. But most importantly, Windows NT served as the technological basis for what can fairly be described as the most successful and well-known software product of all time: Windows XP. But there’s always been a dirty little secret hiding underneath that iconic field of green grass. From an engineering and security standpoint, the foundation of Windows 2000 and Windows XP is absolutely horrible .

Hollywood wants to own your outputs (and that’s a good idea)

// November 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

We like to encourage debate in hot topics in tech policy and law. This week, we’re focusing on Selectable Output Control, which Hollywood and the cable industry are both pushing hard for at the FCC. We invited Kyle McSlarrow, head of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (cable’s trade and lobbying group in Washington) to take his best shot at convincing Ars readers of the virtue, wonder, and necessity of SOC. Ars will be publishing its own response from our resident SOC expert, Matt Lasar, tomorrow. SOC lets content owners exert fine-grained control over the outputs on your A/V gear in order to better protect their “high-value” content. But McSlarrow says that’s not as terrifying as it sounds—it’s just technological progress in action, and the end result is good for everyone. Convinced? Or ready to hate your cable company even more? Let us hear your thoughts in the discussion thread.

Microsoft: Azure to go live in January, for pay in February

// November 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Microsoft plans to transition its Windows Azure cloud computing platform from preview to full production capacity on 1st January next year, Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie announced at the annual PDC conference on Tuesday. The service, currently operating as a free Community Technology Preview (CTP), will remain no-cost throughout January; from February 1st it will start accumulating charges. The cost schedule was previously announced in July.

Week in Microsoft: pirates tackle COFEE, Windows 7 again

// November 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Let’s look back at the week that was in Microsoft news. Here were the top stories: Pirates navigate around Windows 7 activation again : Pirates have put together tools to remove and disable Windows Activation Technologies (WAT) in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and also take care of all the side effects. Pirates get a taste of Microsoft COFEE : Microsoft’s Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE) software, which helps law enforcement officials grab data from password protected or encrypted sources, has leaked.

Week in tech: Google Go(es) and AMD gets rejuvenated

// November 14th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Tech News

If it’s Saturday, then it must be time to look back at the week’s top stories on Ars. And so we shall. Go is a new programming language from Google that aims for performance that is nearly comparable to C, but with more expressive syntax and faster compilation. What it won’t do, however, is liberate the coding masses from bracist tyranny. Google’s Go is yet another take on C. Talk show host Glenn Beck has failed in his attempt to take over a parody domain name suggesting that he may have raped and murdered a young girl in 1990—but after the loss, the domain name owner hands it over anyway.

Test, package .NET apps for Linux with Visual Studio add-in

// November 11th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Linux vendor Novell is offering a new commercial add-in for Visual Studio that will allow software developers to test and package .NET applications for Linux without having to leave their Windows development environment. The new tools could potentially help boost the availability of third-party software for Linux. Novell’s Mono project, an open source implementation of the .NET runtime, makes it possible to run quite a bit of .NET software on the Linux platform. It opens up the door for .NET shops to expand their audience by making their programs available for deployment on Linux, but the additional effort involved in testing and packaging is an impediment in some cases. Novell’s new Mono Tools for Visual Studio (MonoVS) add-in will help to lower the barriers and simplify the process.

Kindle for PC adds flexibility, but not a whole lot more

// November 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Kindle for PC , Amazon’s e-reader software for Windows, has finally been released to the throngs of Kindle users who want to read their books on the computer. The software, which was announced late last month, offers yet another way for customers to read their electronic books—this time in full color. In a world where e-books—particularly those from Amazon—are riddled with restrictive DRM, this is sort of Amazon’s way of throwing customers a bone and letting them read in (almost) any format. The software is currently available for Windows XP SP2, Vista, and 7, with a Mac version “coming soon.” Though it’s designed to supplement an actual Kindle device, no Kindle is required if you want to simply use the software and buy from Amazon’s Kindle store.

« Older Entries


eXTReMe Tracker