Our Top Story Tonight | Microsoft launches Windows 7, eyes PC sales rebound Bill Rigby Oct 22, 2009 | Microsoft Corp launched Windows 7 on Thursday, its most important release in more than a decade, aiming to win back customers disappointed by Vista and strengthen its grip on the PC market. The world's largest software company, which powers more than 90 percent of personal computers, has received good reviews for the new operating system, which it hopes will grab back the impetus in new technology from rivals Apple Inc and Google Inc. "They met expectations but that was pretty much it," said Michael Gartenberg, a long-time Microsoft analyst at market research firm Interpret after a launch event in New York. "They showed off some very cool things, but now they have to keep the momentum going." | 1 | 7 Reasons to Get Windows 7 Today (and 6 Reasons Not to) ExtremeTech
| 1. Your computer can probably run it. Unlike Vista, which proved a giant slop-feeding resource hog compared to XP (I was never able to get it to run satisfactorily on less than 2GB, even in the 32-bit version), Windows 7's system requirements haven't changed much at all since Vista, and the basics are amazingly modest given today's hardware: 2. It costs less than Vista did. Microsoft really seems to have learned its lesson with Vista pricing, which was way too high at first. Although Windows 7 is hardly cheap—especially compared to something like Ubuntu—it'll make a considerably smaller dent in your bank account than Vista did, costing from $40 (for Home Premium) to $80 (for Ultimate) less for the full retail version right out of the gate. And if you go the OEM route, you can save even more. | 2 | 8 things you need to know about Windows 8 Mary Branscombe October 21, 2009 | It's no surprise that Microsoft has been working on Windows 8 for a while, moving from general planning to more in-depth discussions in the spring; earlier this month the Windows team finalised the key scenarios. That's not down to dissatisfaction with Windows 7; Microsoft always starts planning the next version as soon as it's clear what's going to make it into the version under development. At this stage there isn't any official information and there won't be for a year or more. But there are some things we do know. 1. Windows 8 release date is late 2011 or early 2012 | 3 | FCC proposes network neutrality rules (and big exemptions) Nate Anderson October 22, 2009 | The FCC unveiled its six network neutrality rules today, along with a pair of gaping exceptions. But does the agency even have the authority to regulate the 'Net? The Republicans and the EFF both say no. As expected, the FCC laid out its draft network neutrality rules at an open meeting today. Despite the partial dissent of the two Republican commissioners, the pro-neutrality faction has won a major rhetorical battle; even its toughest opponents sing the praises of a "free and open Internet." The draft rules are short, taking up less than two pages of text. At their heart are the four existing "Internet freedoms" that the FCC approved back in 2005: | 4 | Is Net Neutrality a FCC Trojan Horse? Corynne McSherry October 21st, 2009 | On Thursday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski is expected to unveil draft rules aimed at imposing network neutrality obligations on Internet Service Providers (ISPs). In the excitement surrounding the announcement, however, many have overlooked the fact that the this rulemaking is built on a shoddy and dangerous foundation – the idea that the FCC has unlimited authority to regulate the Internet. Genachowski has announced that the draft regulations will require ISPs to abide by the "Four Freedoms" set forth in the FCC's 2005 Internet Policy Statement, as well as the additional principles of nondiscrimination and transparency. EFF strongly believes in these six principles. Our work speaks for itself: we are developing software tools to Test Your ISP in the wake of uncovering Comcast’s meddling with BitTorrent traffic, seeking a DMCA exemption to let you run applications of your choice on your mobile phone, and fighting Hollywood’s efforts to force DRM restrictions into your television. But Congress has never given the FCC any authority to regulate the Internet for the purpose of ensuring net neutrality. In place of explicit congressional authority, we expect the FCC will rely on its "ancillary jurisdiction," a position that amounts to "we can regulate the Internet however we like without waiting for Congress to act." (See, e.g., the FCC's brief to a court earlier this year). That’s a power grab that would leave the Internet subject to the regulatory whims of the FCC long after Chairman Genachowski leaves his post. | 5 | Music Pirates are Immoral Cheapskates, Or Are They? Ernesto October 21, 2009 | Millions of people are downloading copyrighted music every day, using file-sharing software such as BitTorrent and LimeWire. Some argue that the music industry has brought on this behavior by refusing to innovate. Others, including the RIAA and some lone researchers beg to differ, and see other reasons for this deviant behavior. So who’s right? A recently published study by researchers from Duke University and the Department of Justice reveals that music pirates are just immoral cheapskates who have no fear of lawsuits. But do these claims really hold? Let’s take a look at the study and the findings the researchers present. The researchers surveyed a few hundred undergraduate students who were asked if they would buy the single "Right Round" from rapper Flo Rida for X amount of money. The price tag for the song was based on the last two digits of their social security number, ranging from 0 to 98 cents. The regular 99 cent price was excluded. | 6 | Space archaeology Jill Thomas and Justin St. P. Walsh June 01, 2009 | Cultural heritage has emerged in the last few decades as a subject of increasing debate and interest. Controversies such as the Greek claim on the Parthenon Marbles, in the collection of the British Museum since 1816, the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001 and the looting of the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad in 2003 have shown how objects and sites can have significance for both scholars and the public. Nations and collectors claim ownership, while disenfranchised populations assert their rights and identities and experts work to preserve fragile ruins. Now, efforts to preserve archaeological remains face a vast and challenging new frontier lacking definitive legislative regulation: outer space. Man-made objects preserved in the vacuum of space are irreplaceable artifacts of humanity's scientific achievements. Although the United States retains jurisdiction over the equipment left at the moon's Tranquility Base, the 1969 Apollo 11 landing site, for example, Neil Armstrong's famous words highlighted the importance of the first moon landing for all of us: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Comment: This is an old story, but I believe we should be making some effort in preserving breakthrough space achievements like the Hubble Space Telescope. | 7 | Engineers create fingernail-size chip that holds 1TB of data Lucas Mearian October 21, 2009 | Engineers have created a new fingernail-size chip that can hold 1 trillion bytes (a terabyte) of data -- 50 times the capacity of today's best silicon-based chip technologies. The engineers, from North Carolina State University, said their nanostructured Ni-MgO system can store up to 20 high-definition DVDs or 250 million pages of text, "far exceeding the storage capacities of today's computer memory systems." The team of engineers was led by Jagdish "Jay" Narayan, director of the National Science Foundation Center for Advanced Materials and Smart Structures at the university. | 8 | Volunteers wanted for simulated 520-day Mars mission
October 20th, 2009 | Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the martian surface. In reality, they will live and work in a sealed facility in Moscow, Russia, to investigate the psychological and medical aspects of a long-duration space mission. ESA is looking for European volunteers to take part. Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the martian surface. In reality, they will live and work in a sealed facility in Moscow, Russia, to investigate the psychological and medical aspects of a long-duration space mission. ESA is looking for European volunteers to take part. The ‘mission’ is part of the Mars500 programme being conducted by ESA and Russia’s Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) to study human psychological, medical and physical capabilities and limitations in space through fundamental and operational research. ESA’s Directorate of Human Spaceflight is undertaking Mars500 as part of its European Programme for Life and Physical Sciences (ELIPS) to prepare for future human missions to the Moon and Mars. | 9 | Inside Astronaut Boot Camp Dawn Stover 10.22.2009 |
| Three test pilots. Two flight surgeons. One molecular biologist. A flight controller, a Pentagon staffer and a CIA intelligence officer. These are the nine people chosen by NASA to be America’s next astronauts. Late this summer they reported to Houston along with two Japanese pilots, a Japanese doctor, a Canadian pilot and a Canadian physicist who will train alongside NASA’s class of 2009. Call them the lucky 14. Selected from more than 3,500 applicants, NASA’s new astronaut candidates arrive at a pivotal moment in the history of human space exploration. The agency’s bold ambition is to rocket humans beyond the International Space Station for the first time in more than 40 years. The question is when. | 10 | Air Force's Secretive Space Plane Nears Maiden Voyage Leonard David 22 October 2009 | You would think that an unpiloted space plane built to rocket spaceward from Florida atop an Atlas booster, circle the planet for an extended time, then land on autopilot on a California runway would be big news. But for the U.S. Air Force X-37B project — seemingly, mum's the word. There is an air of vagueness regarding next year's Atlas Evolved Expendable launch of the unpiloted, reusable military space plane. The X-37B will be cocooned within the Atlas rocket's launch shroud — a ride that's far from cheap. While the launch range approval is still forthcoming, SPACE.com has learned that the U.S. Air Force has the X-37B manifested for an April 2010 liftoff. | 11 | 'Sidewalk Astronomy' to Sweep the U.S. This Weekend
Oct 21, 2009 | People across America will have a chance to gaze up at Jupiter and its four largest moons this weekend the same way Galileo did almost 400 years ago. To celebrate "Galilean Nights," a project supported by the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009), public observing events will be held this upcoming weekend in over 50 countries. More than 75 events in the United States are planned. Several observatories will be available to the public for remote observing sessions and people will be allowed to take photographs of astronomical objects from their own personal computers. Participants who take photographs can also submit the images for consideration in the Galilean Nights astrophotography competition. | 12 | After the Moon, India eyeing human space flight
Oct 22, 2009 | United Nations, Oct 22 (IANS) After the success of its first Chandrayaan moon mission, India is now looking at exploration of outer space using planetary missions including a human space flight programme, a UN panel was told. 'Having achieved self-reliance in end-to-end space programme, the Indian space programme is entering into space exploration phase mainly to explore inner solar system and build such capabilities for exploring outer solar system,' a member of the Indian parliament said Wednesday. 'Exploration of outer space using planetary missions will be furthered with Chandrayaan-2 and its follow on missions,' said Ali Anwar Ansari participating in a debate of the special political and decolonisation committee on 'International Cooperation In The Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.' | 13 | Apocalypse 2012? The Truth About the End of the World Seth Shostak 22 October 2009 | The hype is beginning to invade the cultural landscape like bio-engineered kudzu: the end of the world is a mere three years away. In late December, 2012, thanks to an unusual celestial alignment — or maybe just the expiration date of the Mayan calendar — our planet will be wracked and ruined. Look on the bright side: you can blow off your estimated tax payments for that year. Hollywood producers — never ones to miss a silver lining — are hoping to make some hay with Earth's imminent quietus. A soon-to-be-released film, bearing the inventive title "2012", will let you see just how visually stunning doomsday can be. The brouhaha has got some people's knickers in a knot. Scientists have waded into this sticky chiffon of pseudoscience and hyperbole, and told everyone to cool it. The end is not nigh, guy. After all, the apocalypse is routinely predicted, but always fails to appear. | 14 | Rethinking relativity: Is time out of joint? Rachel Courtland 21 October 2009 | EVER since Arthur Eddington travelled to the island of Príncipe off Africa to measure starlight bending around the sun during a 1919 eclipse, evidence for Einstein's theory of general relativity has only become stronger. Could it now be that starlight from distant galaxies is illuminating cracks in the theory's foundation? Everything from the concept of the black hole to GPS timing owes a debt to the theory of general relativity, which describes how gravity arises from the geometry of space and time. The sun's gravitational field, for instance, bends starlight passing nearby because its mass is warping the surrounding space-time. This theory has held up to precision tests in the solar system and beyond, and has explained everything from the odd orbit of Mercury to the way pairs of neutron stars perform their pas de deux. Yet it is still not clear how well general relativity holds up over cosmic scales, at distances much larger than the span of single galaxies. Now the first, tentative hint of a deviation from general relativity has been found. While the evidence is far from watertight, if confirmed by bigger surveys, it may indicate either that Einstein's theory is incomplete, or else that dark energy, the stuff thought to be accelerating the expansion of the universe, is much weirder than we thought (see "Not dark energy, dark fluid"). | 15 | Entrepeneur says he strikes oil with our garbage Dugald McConnell October 19, 2009 | Like the alchemists who once tried to turn lead into gold, a green entrepreneur says he has found a cost-effective method for turning plastic trash into oil. During a recent visit to his new demonstration plant in Maryland, Envion CEO Michael Han describes his process: Waste plastic is shredded and melted and then processed in a way that separates the petroleum from the rest of the ingredients. At one end of the machinery, shredded plastic trash is dumped in a hopper and goes up a conveyor belt into a "reactor." At the other end is a spaghetti of pipes and valves and tanks. | 16 | As Hybrid Buses Get Cheaper, Cities Fill Their Fleets MICHELINE MAYNARD October 20, 2009 | IF you wonder whether hybrid-electric vehicles will ever catch on, simply ask one of the millions of people who ride in them every day. Transit systems from New York to Taipei, and from Ames, Iowa, to Ann Arbor, Mich., are adding hybrid buses at a rapid clip. New York, by far, has the nation’s biggest fleet of hybrid buses, which run on electricity and diesel fuel, with nearly 1,000 in all five boroughs, most in Manhattan. | 17 | Weighing the pros and cons of stratospheric geoengineering Jeremy Jacquot October 22, 2009 | One of the first cost-benefit analyses of stratospheric geoengineering looks at how military aircraft, weather balloons and artillery shells could be used to cool the planet. The ideas may sound like science fiction, but some researchers are seriously considering what it would take to shoot sun-reflecting aerosols into the atmosphere to counter climate change. Fleets of small jet aircraft could fly into the lower stratosphere several times a day and release sulfur gas to produce planet-cooling sulfate aerosols. Or giant balloons made out of plastic could be equipped with long hoses and used to pump sulfur gas upwards into the atmosphere. As outlandish or downright laughable as these may sound, these schemes, or others very much like them, are currently the subject of vigorous debate among some of the world's leading researchers. A serious take on the possibilities comes courtesy of a study published a few weeks ago in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Its authors, led by Alan Robock of Rutgers University, weighed the costs, risks, and potential benefits associated with the injection of sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere using existing technologies. They found that, while stratospheric geoengineering would slow sea-level rise, keep global temperatures in check, and stop the melting of sea ice—at an annual cost of several billion dollars—it would also produce more droughts and worsen ozone depletion. And, crucially, it would do nothing to reverse ocean acidification. | 18 | 5 New Technologies That Will Change Everything Glenn Fleishman October 20, 2009 | While sipping a cup of organically farmed, artisan-brewed tea, I tap on my gigabit-wireless-connected tablet, to pull up a 3D movie on the razor-thin HDTV hanging on the wall. A media server streams the film via a superspeedy USB connection to a wireless HD transmitter, which then beams it to the TV. That actor--who was he? My augmented-reality contact lenses pick up the unique eye motion I make when I have a query, which I then enter on a virtual keyboard that appears in the space in front of me. Suddenly my field of vision is covered with a Web page showing a list of the actor's movies, along with some embedded video clips. USB 3.0 Before you leave work, you need to back up your computer. You push a button, and 5 minutes later, while you're still packing up, your system has dumped 150GB of data onto an encrypted 512GB superfast solid-state drive, which you eject to take with you for offsite backup. On your way home, you stop at a movie kiosk outside a fast-food restaurant and buy a feature-length 3D video download on sale. You plug in your drive, the kiosk reads your credentials, and while you watch a 90-second preview of coming attractions, the 30GB video transfers onto your SSD. You pull out the drive and head home. | 19 | Apple.com leading the way with html5 implementation Matt October 21st, 2009 | Apple has always been a leading innovator in terms of hardware design and OS improvements. Now they are leading the way by embracing next generation web technology by being one of the few websites to implement html5 video tags on a production website. If you go to apple.com with a webkit powered browser (Safari/Chrome in Mac or Windows) and play some of the new videos promoting the new iMac and Magic Mouse, the videos are played using html 5 video tag. When you try to play the same video using IE or Firefox the QuickTime video player kicks. Even though the latest Firefox browser support html5 video tags, its implementation is limited to Ogg Theora, the video files on apple.com are MP4. | 20 | How The iPhone Is Blowing Everyone Else Away (In Charts) Erick Schonfeld October 21, 2009 | Yesterday at the Web 2.0 Summit, Morgan Stanley Internet analyst Mary Meeker did her annual data dump slide presentation, this year focusing on the growth prospects of the mobile Web. As usual, there were 3 or 4 slides that really captured the trends she was talking about, particularly the ones around iPhone adoption and how that phone in particular is catapulting mobile Web usage into the mainstream. You can see her full slide show below (all 68 of them), but let me pull out the three iPhone slides that helps put its growth into perspective. The first one above shows the growth of data traffic on AT&T’s mobile network. It is 50 times higher than it was just three years ago. I added two arrows to show when the first iPhone launched in June, 2007 and the iPhone 3G in July 2008. | 21 | 12 Characteristics of Successful Internet Entrepreneurs Focus Editors
| As long as there have been successful Internet entrepreneurs, there have been attempts to nail down what makes them successful. Whether it's a fellow entrepreneur looking for an edge or an interested layperson who is simply curious to know more, no shortage of people are dying to know how the Internet's business visionaries reached the top. These business success stories aren't the result of a secret formula; rather, each entrepreneur possesses a number of characteristics unique to their pursuits. Here's a rundown of 12 of these traits, the entrepreneurs who have them and the companies they helped create. | 22 | 50 Kick-Ass Websites You Need to Know About Alex Castle, Norman Chan, and Forence Ion 10/21/09 | It's time to update the entries in your browser's links toolbar. But with recent estimates putting the size of the internet at well more than 100 million distinct websites, it's getting harder and harder to get a handle on all the great stuff that's out there. That's why we've compiled this list. And unlike some lists you may have seen, which try to name the very "best" websites, but end up just telling you a lot of stuff you already know, we've chosen instead to highlight 50 of our favorite sites that fly under most people's radar. Think of it as the Maximum PC blog roll (remember those?). These sites represent great alternatives to popular web destinations like YouTube and Hulu, and include useful references, powerful web apps, and the unknown blogs you must absolutely bookmark. Demoscene.tv
See What Can Be Done with 4 Kilobytes If you’re any kind of nerd at all, you probably know about the demoscene, where talented programmers create complex videos rendered in real-time, stored in incredibly small files. If you’re not familiar, you should make yourself acquainted with the scene, and all of the trippy, procedurally-generated content it has to offer. And hey, it’s not like you’re going to hit your bandwidth cap watching demos. | |