Announced today, Direct X 10.1 will be available as a demo, along with XAudio 2, which will be a replacement for DirectSound.

I’m sure a lot of Vista users would be happy just getting some indirect sound.

The DirectX 10.1 model shows off a new shader model, 4.1, which, according to the release will be a significant step ahead in graphics.

Undoubtedly, nVidia and ATi fortunes will be increased by this. Why doesn’t someone be really cool, and come up with a Linux gaming specification?

Full article at Extreme Tech.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, nVidia, ATi, graphics specification, DirectX 10.1, XAudio2

Tags: microsoft, nvidia, ati, graphics specification, directx 10.1, xaudio2

Seagate announced the end of life for parallel ATA, also known as EIDE, drives early next year.

Claiming that demand is drying up for the drives, the company will end the run of the 15-year-old technology. Also stated is the claim of higher performance with SATA 150 and SATA 300 drives, though much of this performance is, at this point, theoretical.

What is incontrovertible is the ease of wiring with SATA connections. That ease also allows more efficient cooling in many cases. Also, the major manufacturers are releasing the largest capacity drives only in SATA interface.

What is not covered in the announcement is the real reason for the lower consumption of the drives. Motherboard manufacturers are removing the standard second PATA interface on the motherboard, and thereby forcing use of SATA drives. It’s a case of readying the system for better performance, much as DDR2 was not a real performance increase at first, the real increases coming well after introduction.

Parallel ATA drives will continue to be available through retail channels for quite a while after the stop, until supplies are exhausted. Also, no word yet from drive manufacturers Western Digital, Hitachi, and Samsung concerning the fate of EIDE from their production lines.

Tags: seagate, maxtor, eide, pata, ata-133, western digital, samsung, hitachi

On CRN, a report is made of Microsoft releasing updates to Vista, which it dubs Service Pack 0.5, then talks about the ‘no comment’ attitude at Microsoft, and the later disappearance of the news earlier reported at several sites.

The nVidia Web site seems to be the only one that has not removed the news, which gives little specific to the news of the updates.

Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt again. Microsoft doesn’t seem to get the idea that what once worked in the time before the Internet, the blog, and the instant message, will not be as effective now.

For many, each day that Vista is not patched, and continues to be slammed in the press, it is yet another reason to move to another operating system (Linux, any of the BSDs, etc.) or simply stay with Windows XP, as it has yet to be shown any real advantage to Vista.

Full story.

Tags: windows vista, service pack, fud, windows xp, linux, freebsd, openbsd, netbsd, pc-bsd, nvidia

In February of 2009, the nation will be forcibly switched to a digital television format. The reasons given are many, from needing bandwidth for national emergency usage to simple bandwidth needs of all services.

Recently, Congress has worried that the public will be angered by the switch, as many are not ready to make the switch, or, for that matter, aware of the upcoming changes mandated.

It does seem a bit late in the game for Congress to suddenly be showing remorse, or regret that it went along with the current administration’s selling of the airwaves to the highest bidders. It is simply another move in the Bush administration to sell off any public holdings to the corporate customer.

For those who welcome digital television, and look forward to the digital content made available by the change, there are three to five times as many who are not ready to switch, or aware of the move. It has been very poorly orchestrated.

Those who know about the change tend to believe that the 1.5 billion dollars set aside by Congress for public education will be enough. The only visible effect of the campaign thus far seems to be that new televisions that are not carrying digital tuning capability are being marked with a note to the effect that the sets will be rendered useless after the upcoming cutoff, unless additional add-on boxes are used. This is not as useful as one might think, as many consumers will be still using televisions that are otherwise fine, and have occasion to see the signs.

Some in Congress are of the belief that people not ready to switch will flock to the cable and DBS providers, who won’t be affected by the mandated switch, thereby averting some of the wrath others fear.

Tags: u.s. congress, digital broadcast television, bandwidth allocation, over the air television

One of the perks of being in the computer industry is that sometimes you get free stuff. It is no different in many other businesses. When I sold cell phones, I got free stuff related to that ecosystem. When I was selling high end stereo and video, things were really cool, both because I could get multi-thousand dollar stuff that was state of the art for 50% of retail, and I could afford to pay the 50% of retail to get it.

That was years ago, before my 2 beautiful children, that I would not trade for anything less than a pair of Infinity Reference Standard III speakers. (just kidding)

What is really annoying is when you can’t get what you want at any price. This is sad, because I just started receiving a free subscription to PC Magazine. I should be happy. It is still a decent read, mostly because of John Dvorak. It is however, a mere shell of what it used to be. The magazine is much smaller than it used to be, and much less useful to me, as I don’t have the same need for the information I once had as a novice. When it comes to digital anything that doesn’t explicitly have connection to computing [digital cameras, iPods, etc.], I really couldn’t care less. The reviews that are done on televisions leave me cold, as the ideas of what is important to them is of little import to me.

What I need is a magazine for computer people, knowledgeable, but wanting to learn even more, not necessarily programming, but a little of that not being bad….a magazine like Byte.

Unfortunately, Byte is no longer. I can no longer read about what is happening at Chaos Manor, and Jerry Pournelle. Stories covering the inner workings of IBM are not covered, perhaps they are less than relevant to most. Many things are found on the internet in snippets, but nothing that congeals it all into something really satisfying to read. The sad fact is that there is no magazine today that assumes the space left by Byte.

Can you feel my pain? Does anyone else miss Byte?

Tags: byte magazine, chaos manor, dr. jerry pournelle, pc magazine, john dvorak

To many, the idea of putting a silicon chip in some part of the body is best left for the lower animals on the planet. Hitachi apparently thinks so too, as it is developing a system that would make that technology as ridiculous as it sounds. It should also make fingerprints a thing of the past as well.

Finger vein authentication technology is being touted as a much better way of determining identity, as it would be much harder to replicate. Also, taking off someone’s finger, in the extreme, would not work, as the blood would be gone from the vein and change the ability to identify.

The testing period will be starting in September, with 200 Hitachi employees set for ‘guinea pig’ status. Credit card company JCB seems to like the idea and is cooperating during the trial.

With success the concept might move across the Pacific soon.

Article

Tags: hitachi, identification, rfid, fvat, jcb, finger vein money

Doh!

Networkworld states:

From McAfee and Symantec to Apple and Microsoft, most vendors that make antispam products are failing to fully satisfy customers, according to survey released Tuesday by the Brockmann & Company.

The best-performing technology by a large margin is made by challenge-response vendors like Sendio and SpamArrest, which challenge the identity of first-time senders, the report states.

But customers rarely are fully satisfied by antispam filters packaged with e-mail clients, hosted e-mail or commercial antivirus software. Too often, the products let spam messages through and mistakenly delete e-mail that’s not spam.

Thirty six percent of companies surveyed have lost business because of legitimate e-mails getting caught in spam filters, says report author Peter Brockmann, president and research director.

“Whatever products they have developed obviously haven’t been working,” Brockmann says.

That’s bad news, as PDF spam seems poised to overtake image spam as the next big problem. “Now it looks like there’s going to be PDF spam, which is even worse for businesspeople,” Brockmann says. “We sign purchase orders and pass contracts back and forth all the time.”

Further into the article…

The rate of customers who are not “very satisfied” is more than 70% for six of the eight types of antispam technologies. Commercial software filters, such as those produced by McAfee, Symantec and TrendMicro, fully satisfy just 22% of users, the report found. Filters that come with PC e-mail clients, like those from Apple, IBM Lotus and Microsoft, fully satisfy 21% of customers.

Why then, do companies still produce the same old answers to questions no one is asking? (Can we please purchase software that costs too much and doesn’t do what it advertises?)

Until we insist on better software by not buying bad software, things will not change.

Tags: microsoft, symantec, mcafee, trendmicro, apple, ibm, lotus, pdf

Xandros, a lesser known, but popular, Linux desktop operating system, acquired Scalix last week. By doing so, it adds an e-mail, calendar, and groupware platform of its own, which can be customized to allow better interoperability with its desktop and server offerings.

Xandros also offers a management tool set called Bridge Ways, and is moving toward being able to offer, within its own brand, complete solutions for home or business. With Xandros Server 2, Scalix 11, and  Xandros Desktop 4, the company can offer as complete a solution as Microsoft.

Scalix while being part of Xandros, will continue to be an independent subsidiary, and will be easily usable on the other platforms it works with now, Novell SuSE and RedHat. Also, the source code for Scalix products will remain available on the ScalixForge website.

Tags: xandros, scalix, novell, redhat, groupware, scalixforge

Many of the other writers here are involved in bringing to the readers applications to help protect their computers from malware, virus infestation, and any of a number of other bad things that can happen to a computer.

When using a computer, it must be remembered that the innocuous box that people use in their everyday life is capable of causing great destruction. It cannot be observed as easily as when someone carelessly operates an automobile, and crashes into something or someone, but the consequences of not observing caution when at the keyboard can be more devastating than many automobile accidents.

As someone would not give a five year old the keys to the family sedan, and tell him to ‘go and learn to drive’, the uninitiated should not use a computer where any theft or loss of information is possible.

Instead of saddling a computer with software to further bog down the speediest of machines [firewalls and antivirus software already slow things enough], it would be more intelligent to have the new or infrequent user learn some things about what can be done to avoid the problems about which so many tell stories of woe. A few words of caution can go a long way, if the person is willing to listen and absorb the knowledge.

Many problems stem from simply not reading what is being presented on the screen. It may not be enjoyable to read all of the fine print put before an installation happens, but simple assent, by clicking in the box, is never a good idea. In the same way the U.S.Congress sneaks things into a bill, hoping to get it passed without the knowledge of those who are not fully familiar, many programs, especially those reporting themselves as free, try to piggyback additional programs onto the computer. A good, and ostensibly benevolent, example of this is the Firefox browser, which tries to have you install the Google toolbar. While certainly not malware, not everyone wants or needs the added functionality, and load, on their machine. Many people simply let the install proceed, and then quizzically inspect the effects upon the next instance of the browser. Imagine the havoc when an author is not fully aware of what is being bundled with their software, and is, by human nature, anxious to get some of the promised ‘red-white-and-blue lucky bucks’ flowing into their pocket. A prime example here is that of the Messenger Plus program, a few iterations ago, which had been bundled with malware that installed itself, whether or not you assented to it. When the author of the software found out, it took quite some time for anyone to trust him enough to use the software on a machine.

This brings another point to be considered. If a piece of software is new, and has no word of mouth, or cannot be found with at least passing comments on a search engine, it is best to completely avoid it. Let the experts try it out, and benefit from their experience.

While the number of programs to save the user from himself will certainly continue, perhaps it would be best to allow users who refuse to exercise caution or any degree of intelligence to ‘fall and skin their knees’ a couple of times, so that they will watch the traffic, the next time they walk the information superhighway.

Tags: installation, malware, virus infestation, inexperience, common sense, ignorance vs. stupidity

Thinking about the software of today, and remembering some of the great programs of yesterday, it is easy to see what the problem is. Programs today are written by people who are in a hurry to cash in on their offerings, but don’t realize what is needed to make things really useful.

There are two ways to make software really useful. The first, and the road that seems to have always been taken by Apple, is to have the ergonomics of use well thought out before release. The ‘human engineering’ has always been apparent in Apple’s offerings, as most people can sit down to a Mac, and within minutes, be amazingly productive. This is especially true for those who are older and haven’t been around computers before.

This is not, by definition, a platform related issue, as it would be possible for any other computer system to be as intuitive to operate, if only the designers cared. This is what is wrong with Windows, in every incarnation, and to a lesser extent, Linux shells. Windows was, in the beginning, different, for the sake of being different. Linux shells, are trying to gain popularity by emulating the Windows menu styles and program feel, which is fine, but not really innovative, just slightly different.

How did things get this way?

Windows programs have never been consistent, and apparently Microsoft either likes it that way, or doesn’t care enough to maintain consistency.

An example of this is drag-and-drop, in many programs one is able to mark an area, click on it to pick it up, and move across windows to drop the information into another program. MacIntosh software has always worked this way…back to the beginning when we referred to the machine as a MacIntosh.  Windows programs, well, no one ever said things would be easy…and they aren’t. Many windows are designed so that information can not be put into the clipboard, or on the other side, certain windows can not accept data from the clipboard.

People have, over time simply gotten accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of the ways the programs work. Yet, even today, the same look and feel is not found in every program. The menus of programs all include File, Edit, Tools, and Help headers, but no consistency is found under the headings. It would seem logical that with each iteration of the Windows operating system, that hosts, and serves as style format for all other programs, the interface would become more refined and familiar.  One look at the Vista offerings and it is clear that it just isn’t so.

A problem has also been the fact that Microsoft has always been ‘of two minds’ in the design of any interface. Giving the consumer choice of how to do things seems like a good thing, until realizing that it makes for twice the number of operations in any interface. If only one way was available to do a task, every program using the operating system could emulate that way, and much difficulty could be avoided. Another problem has been when two or more ways are available to accomplish a task, and the people who design things decide with an upgrade, the way that you learned to do something is no longer necessary, as there is still the other way of doing that particular task. If you did not learn the other way, you are in for some upgrades of your own.

This is, unfortunately, being duplicated with the Linux shells. No consistent way of accomplishing a task is present.

Since both Windows and Linux are suffering from ’schizophrenia’, it would be logical to assume that complete manuals, or man pages, would be of great importance. They are, but not to the purveyors of these products. With Linux, it can be excused, as no one is charging for the product, so complaints can easily fall on deaf ears. With Windows, each iteration gets more and more expensive, yet the manual has managed to completely disappear. 

An entire cottage industry has come into being, because no one is willing to hold Microsoft, and every software company that produces for the Windows platform, responsible for decent documentation. Microsoft states that the on-line help is available, and also falls back to help via the internet. This is only effective if the computer in question has the ability to access either of these. Also, simply because the help is on the computer, does not make it usable, correct, or complete. There are many places in the Windows XP Professional help that refer to things that are completely incorrect, having been changed in the update of Service Pack 2. Unfortunately, the help files were not updated to give correct instructions or parameters for many of the changes.

It is necessary to hold the purveyors of a product accountable, for more than just minimal usability. In the case of Microsoft and others who want to be paid for their software, the public needs to insist on a complete on-line [local disk drive] help system, at the very least, while more preferable would be the complete on-line help and the inclusion of a complete soft bound paper manual. If the companies won’t supply it, don’t purchase the software. Companies are always whining about being able to get near list price for their efforts. Make it clear that a way to do this is by making outside help, either human or paper, unnecessary, by including comprehensive help.

For Linux, since their is usually no money involved, simply don’t download or use the distribution of additional software. Be vocal [let your fingers shout]. Let the authors know that either the software can become so easily used that no extra help is necessary, or the man pages need to be completed before the software is available for download. When there is money involved, it should be made clear that documentation that was complete would go a long way toward making the ‘x’- number-of-days free support calls go away.

Technorati Tags: ergonomics, usability, Apple MacIntosh, Microsoft, Windows, Linux, man pages, documentation, cottage industry

Tags: ergonomics, usability, apple macintosh, microsoft, windows, linux, man pages, documentation, cottage industry