Imagine if your computer screen curved around your head, immersing you in information, images and sounds. "I'd never seen moviegoers get really thrilled on small screens,'' he said. "It becomes a much more compelling experience at an IMAX theater. I thought "What if we had a computer display that looked more like a Cinerama?' ''
That hunch has led to a two-year project at Microsoft, where Starkweather -- who invented the laser printer at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center and won an Academy Award for his work on film scanning -- is developing a new kind of computer display.
A federal judge on Monday rejected a bid by two computer industry trade groups to appeal Microsoft Corp.'s MSFT.O settlement deal with the government. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the Software and Information Industry Association and the Computer & Communications Industry Association do not have the legal standing to step in and appeal the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
With the judge's permission, the two groups had filed friend-of-the-court briefs with Kollar-Kotelly arguing in favor of stricter sanctions against Microsoft. But Kollar-Kotelly said legal precedents did not support the groups' argument that they had a right to intervene in the government case. If they want to pursue the matter further, she said, they can file a private case against the company.
After customers complained that they couldn't identify the most serious security vulnerabilities, Microsoft has added a fourth category to its vulnerability rating system. But critics feel that the extra tier adds even more complexity to an administrator's job.
Under the new system, fewer bulletins get the "critical" stamp. Only vulnerabilities that could be exploited to allow malicious Internet worms to spread without user action are now rated critical. Many issues that were previously rated critical are now "important," a new category in the rating system. These "important" vulnerabilities could still expose user data or threaten system resources, but they might not receive the urgent attention from administrators that they deserve.
The next update to Microsoft's Windows CE .Net OS, which has been given the code name McKendric, will ship before the middle of 2003 and include several new features, a company executive said at the Microsoft Embedded DevCon 2003 conference being held here.
Expected to be called Windows CE .Net Version 4.2 when it hits the market later this year, McKendric offers several improvements over the current version of the OS, Windows CE .Net 4.1. It will incorporate new features, such as support for VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), a firewall, and wireless networking support for residential gateways, said Chip Schnarel, group program manager for Windows CE OS development at Microsoft.
"Media2Go" is the current code name for a software reference platform designed to build and power the next generation of smart personal media player devices which enable you to enjoy your video, music and pictures on the go. Watch the latest sitcom as you commute, entertain your kids with their favorite video in the back seat of the car, share your favorite tunes with your friends at a party, or take your entire collection of photos and home videos with you to show the grandparents on your next visit. "Media2Go" allows you the personal freedom and convenience to easily enjoy your best video, music and pictures on the go.
Microsoft has been touting the success of its online Xbox gaming service at the Consumer Electronics Show, (CES), in Las Vegas. "We have been amazed at the results of Xbox Live," said Bill Gates in his speech at the start of the event. "Sales of the starter kits have been doubled our original projections." Xbox officials are promising a raft of new games in the coming year to rival the best titles currently on sale. Microsoft is investing millions into fostering a network of gamers across the world, playing against each other on the Xbox.
Carlos Perez has posted 25 reasons why he thinks Java is a better platform than .NET, and I kind of feel sorry for him. Why? Because I've written like 100 lines of Java in my life and I'm pretty sure I could come up with better arguments than these. Many of Carlos's reasons are only tangentially related to the Java platform and are more about perceptions than technical excellence. That makes me sad - Java deserves better.
Unfortunately the reality in this industry is that perceptions matter as much as technology, so I feel compelled to respond. I'm pretty sure I'm being trolled for doing so, but it's such juicy bait I can't help it. Before I do, let me be clear - I like software. I've been around enough platforms to find joy in all of them, including Java. Java introduced some important ideas to the mass market, many of which obviously made it into .NET and were refined in the process. JUnit, Ant, SAX parsing, Eclipse - lots of great stuff comes out of the Java space (as well as stinkeroos like Swing). It is not my intention to smear the Java platform here, rather to smear the arguments proposed by Carlos.
There's really nothing bad to say about VS 2003. It's an all-around improvement over VS 2002. The IDE is faster, marking a rare occasion when a new product performs better than the old one! It's more reliable, and it's a better development experience, with the interface streamlined in a number of ways. There's really no reason not to use this product, because as a developer you need to be peeking around the next corner all the time.
I'm running VS 2003 on a test machine, and I think that once it goes RTM, moving to it should pretty much be a no-brainer. You can almost think of VS 2003 as a massive service pack to VS 2002. If your production code isn't set to be released for a few months, it makes sense to begin developing with VS. NET 2003 and the 1.1 Framework now. There are significant productivity enhancements, and do you really want to release code that targets the V1.0 framework when V1.1 is just around the corner?
Microsoft recently released a new product called Windows Media 9 Series. Not just a player, as some people would think, Windows Media 9 series is a complete set of technologies for encoding, serving, and viewing digital media. This technology includes some real breakthroughs in streaming of digital media, and in compressing it.
And this is what MPEG-LA doesn't like: It's better than MPEG-4. And it's cheaper.
Now, any time in a capitalist society that someone makes something cheaper and better, it's considered a good thing. After all, we all like things to be better, and we all like them to be cheaper. And if you'd like them to be on an Apple or Linux desktop, Microsoft can deal with that too.
David Smith, an analyst with Gartner, says Microsoft was smart to drop ".Net" from the operating system's formal name because the moniker, which is used to label a variety of Microsoft products, has created too much confusion. "They put the name on products that didn't have that much to do with what .Net's all about," Smith says.
The name change, Smith says, doesn't mean that Microsoft is rethinking its Web-services strategy. "The company remains 100% committed to Web services," he says. In a related attempt to clarify its branding strategy, Microsoft said last week it will use a ".Net Connected" logo to designate products that "easily and consistently" work together in its .Net architecture.