January 2012
7 posts
1 tag
icacls gripes and moaning
icacls is quite useful for setting permissions. Its save and restore feature is almost very useful. I say “almost” because it is annoyingly narrow; it is not possible to directly transfer permissions from one file to another differently-named file. The saved permissions specify the exact file name in addition to the permission string.
This makes sense for making bulk permission...
My Weekly Artists for the week ending 2012-01-22
Soulwax (15) DJ Schmolli (2)
Europe proposes a "right to be forgotten"
European Union Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding has proposed a sweeping reform of the EU’s data protection rules, claiming that the proposed rules will both cost less for governments and corporations to administer and simultaneously strengthen online privacy rights.
The 1995 Data Protection Directive already gives EU citizens certain rights over their data....
Google works on Internet standards with TCP...
As part of Google’s continuing quest to dole out Web pages ever more quickly, the search giant has proposed a number of changes to Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), the ubiquitous Internet protocol used to reliably deliver HTTP and HTTPS data (and much more besides) over the ‘net.
Google’s focus is on reducing latency between client machines and...
Jurors: leave the information age—or go to...
An English court has sentenced a juror to six months in prison for contempt of court after she performed research on the Internet and forced the abandonment of a criminal trial.
Psychology lecturer Theodora Dallas, 34, was a member of the jury in the trial of Barry Medlock, accused of causing grievous bodily harm. She looked up certain information related to the trial on...
Microsoft gives a glimpse of the Windows 8 store...
Microsoft has revealed a little more of the Windows 8 Store experience, with screenshots and video of browsing the store, application search, and the install and upgrade experience.
The store will be the sole source for non-enterprise users to get Metro applications; it will also include links, but no purchasing or installation, to certain desktop applications. The post...
My Weekly Artists for the week ending 2012-01-15
Soulwax (18) Ricardo Autobahn (12) Paul McCartney (11) Plemo And Rampue (10) Electric Light Orchestra (9) Mint Royale (8) Mauro Picotto (6) Queen (5) Rob Dougan (4) Pet Shop Boys (4)
December 2011
9 posts
A look ahead: 2012 is Microsoft's turning point →
2011 was in many ways a quiet (albeit thoroughly profitable) year for Microsoft. The company made big, important announcements—the Nokia partnership, the Windows 8 reveal—but neither…
Microsoft to make CES 2012 its last amid claims of... →
Claiming that the timing of the event meshes poorly with the company’s product launches, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Corporate Communications Frank X. Shaw announced on…
Leadership change could herald Windows 8-powered... →
Andy Lees, head of Microsoft’s Windows Phone division for more than three years, has been moved by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer into a new “time-critical” role that somehow combines…
Azure price cuts, bigger databases, now with... →
Microsoft has rolled out a big update to its Azure cloud computing platform to make it cheaper, easier to manage, easier to scale, and easier to use with popular open source software.
Is Apple using patents to hurt open standards? →
Opera developer Haavard Moen has accused Apple of repeatedly using patents to undermine the development of Web standards and block their finalization. World Wide Web Consortium…
Microsoft brings the Genius Bar to the Web with... →
Microsoft has quietly launched a new service to help Windows and Office users get the most out of their PCs. Answer Desk is an online version of the Answer Desks found in…
Win 8 app store revealed: more money for devs,... →
In San Francisco today, Microsoft started talking up the Windows Store, the online marketplace for Metro-style Windows 8 applications. With Apple’s Mac App Store and iTunes Store…
Can a Windows Phone Web demo win over iPhone and... →
Keen to get consumers to take a look at Windows Phone, Microsoft has released a browser-based demo of its smartphone operating system for iPhone and Android users. The Web site…
With WP7 Mango available for all, Microsoft pushes... →
Windows Phone’s “Mango” update has been pushed out to the last few stragglers. The final handset to receive the update is the Dell Venue Pro—a quirky device with a portrait mode…
November 2011
12 posts
Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 4: Windows 7... →
Microsoft has released the fourth preview of Internet Explorer 10. As is the case with previous Platform Previews, the release is aimed at developers: the new features are…
UK "cyber strategy": Stuxnet, censorship, and... →
On Friday, the UK government released its “Cyber Security Strategy,” acknowledging the importance of the Internet to modern life, but also the risks it poses from criminals,…
My Weekly Artists for the week ending 2011-11-27 →
For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat:... →
Thanksgiving is here, and across the US millions will be visiting parents and grandparents, eating themselves into a coma, and watching sports on TV. Though it’s traditional to spend…
Feature: AMD's Bulldozer server benchmarks are... →
The desktop benchmark scores for AMD’s new Bulldozer architecture didn’t make happy reading for fans of the chip company, with the new design sometimes failing to beat AMD’s own…
Nokia Windows 8 tablet coming in June 2012? →
In an interview with French newspaper Les Échos, Paul Amsellem, head of Nokia France, said that the company would have a tablet running Windows 8 in June 2012. As is typical…
The 40th birthday of—maybe—the first... →
Forty years ago today, electronics and semiconductor trade newspaper Electronic News ran an advertisement for a new kind of chip. The Intel 4004, a $60 chip in a 16-pin dual…
ARM touts PlayStation 3 power in a mobile GPU →
Chip designer ARM has announced its next generation mobile GPU, the Mali-T658. ARM boasts that the design will offer ten times the performance Mali-400 MP, found in, among other…
Barnes & Noble: Microsoft using patents to... →
Barnes & Noble claims that Microsoft is attempting to stifle competition in the mobile device market and has asked the Department of Justice to investigate, reports Bloomberg. In…
Some surprises on list of firms reportedly mulling... →
Reuters is reporting that HP is investigating the possible sale of webOS. The future of the smartphone and tablet platform, acquired by HP last year when it bought Palm, has…
Siri for everyone, with Pioneer's Zypr API →
Pioneer today launched Zypr, a free-to-use Web service platform providing voice-controlled access to online services such as mapping, navigation, social media, calendars,…
Killing Microsoft's Courier: the right decision,... →
CNET has published a two-part feature detailing the inside story of Microsoft’s ill-fated Courier tablet (part one, part two). Courier, a foldable two-screen tablet envisaged…
October 2011
10 posts
More than just sexy phones: how Nokia will help... →
Unlike, oh, to pick a random example, Apple, Microsoft has only a very limited retail presence. The company has opened a handful of (high-quality and actually rather pleasant)…
ARM aims for the server room with its new 64-bit... →
Chip design firm ARM today announced the eighth generation of its ARM Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). The ARMv8 ISA extends the current ARMv7 architecture to include support for…
Hands-on: Nokia's Lumia 800 is exactly what... →
In London today, Nokia revealed the first fruits of its partnership with Microsoft: a pair of Windows Phone handsets, the Lumia 800, codenamed Sea Ray; and the Lumia 710,…
What does Windows XP's tenth birthday mean to you? →
For all its wide usage and market share, I never liked Windows XP, and never ran it on any system I’ve owned. I stuck with Windows 2000 until the release of Windows Server 2003,…
Nokia Windows Phone handsets not likely in the US... →
Ever since the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft was announced, 2012 was positioned as the “real” launch year for Nokia handsets with Windows Phone, with only limited…
Amazon infuses e-books with HTML5 power with new... →
With its Android-powered, full-color Kindle Fire tablet just around the corner, Amazon has announced a new e-book format to take advantage of its richer features. The new file…
Microsoft posts record earnings despite netbook... →
Microsoft has released its earnings statement for the first quarter of its financial year 2012, and it’s been another bumper quarter for the software giant. Revenue of $17.37…
Feature: Can AMD survive Bulldozer's disappointing... →
AMD’s long-awaited Bulldozer processor finally hit the market this week, and the Web has been flooded with benchmark results. One thing is clear: this won’t kill Intel’s Sandy…
Microsoft works to win desktop users over to the... →
The most striking, in-your-face, and noticeable part of Windows 8 is its new Metro user interface, and in particular, its Start screen. The Start screen is a replacement for the…
Feature: JavaScript has problems. Do we need Dart... →
Google hopes to upset JavaScript’s dominance by introducing a new language, Dart. Dart is designed to be simpler, more familiar, and faster than JavaScript, and Google one day…
September 2011
8 posts
Making the lives of IT easier: Windows 8 Refresh,... →
Though aimed primarily at software developers, last week’s BUILD conference introduced a few new Windows 8 features that will make the lives of enterprise IT departments easier….
Metro-style Internet Explorer 10 ditches Flash,... →
Windows 8 will have two versions of Internet Explorer 10: a conventional browser that lives on the legacy desktop, and a new Metro-style, touch-friendly browser that lives in the…
Windows Server 8: built for the cloud, built for... →
Where Windows 8 is an operating system built for the tablet, Windows Server 8 is an operating system built for the cloud. Not the Windows Azure public cloud; rather, it’s built for…
Microsoft BUILD: what we expect to see about... →
After months of rumors, speculation, sneaky peeks, and anticipation, Windows 8 will have its first truly public outing this week at Microsoft’s BUILD conference in Anaheim,…
My Weekly Artists for the week ending 2011-09-11 →
August browser stats: Safari dominates mobile... →
Our browser stats post is late this month. The source we normally use, Net Market Share, has changed the way it reports its data. This is good and bad. Mostly good, but it took extra…
Feature: Ultrabook: Intel's $300 million plan to... →
My desktop isn’t the only computer I plan to replace in the next few months. I need a new laptop too, and my goal is simple: to find a 13” MacBook Air that isn’t made by Apple. It turns out that I’m not the only one wanting this mythical non-Apple MacBook Air. Intel wants them too—it calls them Ultrabooks. The chip company has been kicking the Ultrabook idea around for a...
Hacker "Kayla" taken down in latest LulzSec... →
Police have arrested two men in the UK in connection with online attacks performed by LulzSec and Anonymous. The men, aged 20 and 24, were arrested yesterday by officers from the…
August 2011
6 posts
Feature: How the London riots showed us two sides... →
I watched in disbelief, horror, and dismay as news broke of Londoners laying waste to their—and my—city. My part of South London, Tulse Hill, escaped the riots, probably for want of…
Khronos ships OpenGL 4.2 spec, outlines plans for... →
The Khronos group unveiled on Monday the OpenGL 4.2 specification, the newest update to the cross-platform 3D graphics API. The new spec includes a handful of new features designed to…
August Patch Tuesday: busy, busy →
On Patch Tuesday this month, Microsoft will be delivering 13 bulletins that address 22 different vulnerabilities in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, .NET, and Visual Studio. That’s…
VMware softens on vSphere 5 pricing, but downsides... →
VMware has announced that it will change its pricing scheme for vSphere 5 after its initial plans left current users staring down the barrel of hefty price hikes, and…