Ten years ago who, other than chip designers, thought we would see so many multicore processors? We have multicore processors in children’s toys! The Cell processor in the PS3 is a multicore design.

Of course now we have graphics cards that consume more power than the CPU, as computing has become so graphics intensive. I’m not sure anyone saw that one, because I think most thought the CPU and GPU power requirements would follow a parallel path.

Speaking of parallel paths, a former editor of Byte magazine (my all time favorite, in case anyone cares) speaks of parallel processing being the next big thing. It is happening now; we can see it. It is not the same sort of statement such as the one 15 years ago when a few proclaimed that RISC processing would take over the world, and the x86 CISC architecture would be left in the dust. (Well, it might happen now, but it will be happening on a GPGPU, not a ’standard’ CPU in the way it was once predicted.)

After decades of fitful progress, parallel processing is suddenly hot and will soon be commonplace on ordinary PCs. For applications rich in data-level parallelism, performance is soaring by leaps and bounds.

• This is not the type of computing the average user does. It might happen when parallel processors become more common, and compilers are written to take advantage of it.

Multicore CPUs from Intel and AMD are all good, but the game-changers are the next-gen GPUs from Nvidia and AMD/ATI. These chips are evolving from highly specialized 3D-graphics processors for games into broader computing engines for nongame software. Nvidia is leading the charge with a new GPU architecture that, for the first time, supports general-purpose computing as strongly as it supports graphics.

• Again, the hardware power is there, but the software is behind the curve. This is the problem. No one, other than scientists are really excited about this just yet.

Nvidia’s new Fermi GPUs will support error-correction codes (ECC), one terabyte of memory, concurrent kernels, and faster double-precision floating-point math. These features are largely unnecessary for 3D graphics but vital for high-performance general-purpose computing. (In fact, ECC slows down graphics processing, which is why it can be disabled in Fermi chips sold for the consumer market.)

With Nvidia’s CUDA development tools, programmers are accelerating some tedious media-processing tasks, such as video transcoding. CUDA uses the GPU’s programmable 3D-graphics shaders as massively parallel processor cores, delivering performance that today’s PC processors can’t match. In addition, GPUs are finding new applications in scientific computing, financial analysis, medical imaging, energy exploration, and engineering.

Other developments are equally exciting. Microsoft’s DirectCompute brings a parallel-processing API to millions of mainstream PCs running Vista and Windows 7. The new OpenCL standard makes parallel programming easier and less proprietary. Apple’s Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) supports OpenCL and Apple’s Grand Central Dispatch technology (now open source), allowing programmers to distribute workloads across multicore CPUs and GPUs.

• Someday, the CPU will be the master processor, not the most powerful, but the most important one, as it will choreograph the workings of the other processors in a machine.

Intel is busy, too. With its own new GPU (Larrabee) on the way, Intel has acquired two small companies specializing in software tools for parallel programming—RapidMind and Cilk Arts. RapidMind is especially cool, because its software bridges GPUs, multicore x86 processors, and even IBM’s Cell Broadband Engine.

Parallel processing is spreading to the masses, and parallel-programming tools are catching up with parallel-processing hardware. When these trend lines finally converge, we’ll wonder why it took so long.

It’s coming, but it will be some time, primarily because so many still say there is no need for the average consumer. When someone figures out that we will use whatever amount of computing power we can get hold of, the applications will come, and the hardware will follow.

Think of the things that Joe Average can do now. My mother never had a clue when she was growing up that people would be able to essentially become their own publishers. There was no clue that information would be available on a giant connection of computers worldwide, or that it would be, for the most part, free.

People will soon be able to build things for personal usage as easily as they print things from a printer today – this technology is already available, but very expensive, soon, kids will be “printing” their own toys, from plans in a book, or moms will be “printing” the latest fashions, for that party held that evening.

The complex computations needed for these things will be done with parallel processing, and it will seem as natural as dialing a cell phone does now.

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Microsoft Works was a small suite of programs that was not perfect, but it was usually free with many computers, and continuing in that tradition, Office Starter 2010 will be part of a computer purchase also. However, Works could be bought by the end user, which the Office Starter edition will not be. Office Starter will be ad supported, and I wonder how annoying that will be for users, especially those who are on less than stellar internet connections. Waiting for an ad to finish because of a slow connection, while trying to do something with the machine such as save the file would really not be fun.

More information is coming in from various testers regarding the Office Starter 2010 build that Microsoft released to a group of selected testers late last week.

Office Starter 2010 is the Microsoft-designated replacement for its Microsoft Works product. Starter will be a low-end, free (but ad-supported) bundle of Word and Excel.

One (of many) criticisms of Works was that it didn’t support all the same file types as Microsoft Office did, making Works only somewhat compatible with Office. It looks like that same limitation will be present in Office Starter, based on a frequently-asked questions document from Microsoft that one tester forwarded to me. From that FAQ document:

Q: There is a file I can open in Excel or Word that I cannot open in Excel Starter or Word Starter, why?

A: Excel Starter and Word Starter do not support exactly the same file sets.  The following file types cannot be opened in Office Starter: .xla, .xlam, .dsn, .mde, .accde, .odc, and .udl.

Also, add-ins and macros are only marginally supported in Office Starter 2010. According to Microsoft, Office Starter does not support add-ins and will not load them. From the FAQ:

I think this will be very bad for any company or individual trying to use Office Starter 2010 on their netbook, either because of cost or drive space requirements of a full Office 2010 version. Having something that works on the desktop in the office, and not in the netbook on the road would be very frustrating. I imagine the travelling salesman here, trying to show a prospective buyer something that works fine before the trip, but is a total dud on the crippled version of Office Starter.

Microsoft is really shafting the customer here twice. Once by making him wait and wade through ads, and the second time by delivering a crippled product after making the ads a part of this. Do one or the other, not both.

Q: Files have macros, but they cannot be run in Excel Starter or Word Starter, why?

A: Office Starter does not support the creation, editing, or running of macros. However, if a document with a macro is opened in Starter, the macro remains as part of the file.

Another often-glossed-over point regarding Office Starter is how it will be made available. It will be an OEM-only product and not available for download. Again, from the Microsoft FAQ:

Q: How will I be able to get the released version of Office Starter?

A: Office Starter will only be available as pre-loaded software on select new PCs pre-loaded with the Office suites.

As testers noted last week, there’s a new Office-to-Go feature in the Office Starter product that allows users to take their Starter copies (and associated documents) with them on a USB drive. But that feature only works on Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows 7 machines. Since Starter is an OEM-only product that will be preloaded on new PCs, it makes sense it won’t work on XP machines, as OEMs are phasing out XP support (the last bastion for XP — netbooks — won’t be supported after next spring).

What do you think of these Office Starter 2010 limitations? Are any of them onerous enough to make Starter a non-starter?

I don’t live and die by Office, but those I know who do, first don’t like Office 2007, and I’m thinking that Office 2010 will be less a plus as it moves away from the Office 2003 methods more.

Also, each revision of Open Office gets more and more close to closing the gap with Office for everyday jobs. It is free, lightweight, and has no cost or ad-viewing limitations. It’s macros, though not as sophisticated as the ones for Office from Microsoft, do work, and the difference in annoyance between ads and no ads will make a huge difference in the day-to-day usage of the product.

Higher powered netbooks (can you say ION?) and notebooks, as well as desktops where monetary resources are not tight, will either get a full version of Office, or use something else.

Where does that leave Office Starter 2010? The people who will be happy with it are those who don’t know any better, either having nothing before, or truly moving from Works to this product; every other user will look elsewhere for a much better solution.

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Quote of the day:

Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.

- Thomas Szasz

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A short introduction on v3.co.uk, formerly VNUNet, gives a different perspective than is frequently seen on U.S. sites.

Opera is a popular browser with some of the best support for standards. Opera 10 promises even faster web surfing, built in spell checker and HTML emails.

The faster web browsing is thanks to a new rendering engine, this is the software used to create the web pages. It also claims to support web standards properly including the Acid3 test (click the link to see how your current browser fares).

Acid3 is an extreme test, a more visible effect will be the sthirdupport for web fonts. Most browsers can only use the fonts installed on the computer.Web designers often give the browser a list of fonts. The font they would actually liked used, a similar but more common font and then let the browser choose its own serif or san serif font. Web fonts let the browser load the font from a website.

Auto-update is one improvement we are pleased to see as it is a simpler process than having to download a installer.

Note that this is the final and official public release of Opera 10.10 which contains Unite.

Opera give the user a sleek, clean interface; one that can be modified to the user’s liking, without fear of problems such as the ones recently found to be problematic with Firefox.  Though not as fast with certain parts of the solution to browsing as Google Chrome, Opera is faster with each iteration, and more secure than other browsers as defined by the security companies who track these things.

Opera offers features that no other browser implements, and many features implemented in other browsers were features of Opera first. Over its lifespan, Opera has had more great ideas than any other browser, for making the the web an easier place to inhabit for everyone.

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As someone that has worked on several dozen computers used daily by smokers, I can say that it is not a fun experience. The very first thing that needs to be done is blowing out all the dust and ash that accumulates, which can cause anything from overheating to complete failure.

I have a memory of one computer worked on, from back in the days of Windows 98, used in an automotive setting, where the floppy drive was so full of ash that when the drive was removed, a gentle tap on the side yielded an ash plume which was quite impressive. That entire computer was clogged with ash and dirt, and the heatsink and fan combination had been rendered a heatsink only, as the fan was dead, bearings ruined by the dirt and ash. It was a good thing that ash is not usually conductive, because the unused PCI and ISA slots were filled and had to be blown out. It was not a big surprise, the entire garage was that way, the only thing that helped the mechanics not choke was a huge exhaust fan in the back wall.

All that to say that smoke by-products, dust, and dirt are not the friend of electronics in general, and specifically computers.

So when the cases of Apple computers coming up with problems that would not, or could not, be repaired, I was very interested.

I saw it first in ITWire, from down under -

A leading consumer blog has reported two instances in which Apple technicians refused to work on Macs that had been used in houses where people smoked. In both cases, Apple claimed that the smoking voided the Macs’ warranties.

The Consumerist blog , published by the Consumer Reports people, was cc’ed on an e-mail from one Apple customer to Steve Jobs complaining that the Apple Store refused to work on his MacBook because it was contaminated with smoke.

The site later heard also from another Mac owner whose computer was sent back by an authorized Mac service center for the same reason: smoke contamination that voided the warranty.

That user also complained to Steve Jobs. She did hear back from someone at Apple, who told her the company would not require an employee to work with hazardous materials.

Apple offered to do minor repairs if that was all that was required, but upon investigation, the technician found that accumulated tar made the computer impossible to repair.

The Consumerist has not been able to get a comment from Apple about the incidents.

Before forming an opinion on Apple’s position, it’s instructive to read the comments on the Consumerist site from people who’ve actually had to work on computers owned by smokers.

I often wonder why anyone smokes. In this day and age, where more than enough proof is out there to prove the damage smoking does it is truly beyond belief that anyone does it. With all the signs shown on heavy smokers (tar and nicotine build up, etc.), I am surprised that those that smoke would not wise up and not smoke around their electronic items. Perhaps you think that your body will rid itself of the toxins from smoking, but, just as your clothes don’t, your electronics will not be able to remove the effects of tar, nicotine, ash, and any other nasty solid matter from burned cigars and cigarettes.

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A man’s got to know his limitations. Clint Eastwood

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The company is being spun off, no doubt because it is not the powerhouse it once was. The employees are being dropped like flies, and so much is changing that it seems strange to change anything not absolutely necessary.

Being cool, or hip, or whatever is nice, but if more people wonder why the change than appreciate the change, what has been accomplished?

An AOL news release tells more -

AOL PREVIEWS NEW BRAND IDENTITY FOR ITS FUTURE AS AN INDEPENDENT CONTENT-DRIVEN COMPANY

New Aol. Brand Expresses Commitment to Stimulating Content, Openness and Inclusion

NEW YORK–November 22, 2009–AOL today previewed its new brand identity for its future as an independent company committed to creating the world’s most simple and stimulating content and online experiences.

The new AOL brand identity is a simple, confident logotype, revealed by ever changing images. It’s one consistent logo with countless ways to reveal. The new brand identity will be fully unveiled on December 10, when AOL common stock begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

“Our new identity is uniquely dynamic. Our business is focused on creating world-class experiences for consumers and AOL is centered on creative and talented people–employees, partners, and advertisers. We have a clear strategy that we are passionate about and we plan on standing behind the AOL brand as we take the company into the next decade,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AOL.

AOL partnered with Wolff Olins, a global brand and innovation consultancy, to develop a brand identity that speaks to the company’s future. The identity itself is a platform for expression and creativity reflecting the content, products and services which AOL offers. Some of the world’s best creative artists, including Universal Everything, GHAVA and Dylan Griffin created art and animations for the brand.

“Historically brand identity has been monolithic and controlling, little more than stamping a company name on a product. AOL is a 21st century media company, with an ambitious vision for the future and new focus on creativity and expression, this required the new brand identity to be open and generous, to invite conversation and collaboration, and to feel credible, but also aspirational. We’re delighted to have worked so closely with the AOL leadership team to create something bold and exciting that sets AOL apart,” said Karl Heiselman, CEO of Wolff Olins.

Notice that the symbol is capital A, small o, small l, with a period. Wonder what that indicates? I do too. (Perhaps the period should be replaced by an interrobang.)

I hope the new logo doesn’t kill the last of the brand recognition, and remove some of what might allow AOL to survive. We need choices. They are getting fewer all the time.

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A report from Financial Times gives the details of the plan being hatched -

Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company’s being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.

The impetus for the discussions came from News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, said a person familiar with the situation, who warned that talks were at an early stage.

However, the Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google’s search engine.

News Corp and Microsoft, which owns the rival Bing search engine, declined to comment.

One website publisher approached by Microsoft said that the plan “puts enormous value on content if search engines are prepared to pay us to index with them”.

Microsoft’s interest is being interpreted as a direct assault on Google because it puts pressure on the search engine to start paying for content.

“This is all about Microsoft hurting Google’s margins,” said the web publisher who is familiar with the plan.

But the biggest beneficiary of the tussle could be the newspaper industry, which has yet to construct a reliable online business model that adequately replaces declining print and advertising revenues.

In a possible sign of negotiations to come, Google last week played down the importance of newspaper content.

Matt Brittin, Google’s UK director, told a Society of Editors conference that Google did not need news content to survive. “Economically it’s not a big part of how we generate revenue,” he said.

News Corp has been exploring online payment models for its newspapers and has taken an increasingly hard line against Google.

Rupert Murdoch, News Corp chairman, has said that he would use legal methods to prevent Google “stealing stories” published in his papers.

Microsoft is desperate to catch Google in search and, after five years and hundreds of millions of dollars of losses, Bing, launched in June, marks its most ambitious attempt yet.

Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, has said that the company is prepared to spend heavily for many years to make Bing a serious rival to Google.

What are the chances that Microsoft will take its eye off its core business and lose big because of the plans of Darth Ballmer? It was just a few days ago he was presenting himself as a changed person, newly humbled, and willing to concentrate on operating systems as his main purpose in life. How quickly that ruse has been dropped.

Microsoft has sought to differentiate Bing by drawing in material not found elsewhere, though has not demanded exclusivity from content partners. Bing accounted for 9.9 per cent of searches in the US in October, up from 8.4 per cent at its launch, according to ComScore.

Several places have reported that the Bing improvements are coming at a cost to Yahoo, which may have been part of the master plan.

As for providing content not found elsewhere, I suppose causing content duplicated elsewhere to disappear qualifies as providing unique content.

James Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corp Europe and Asia, hinted last week that the company was making progress with its online plans. “We think that there’s a very exciting marketplace, potentially a wholesale market place for digital journalism that we’ll be developing,” he said.

What if Microsoft and Murdoch held a party and no one came? How great would that be?

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UPDATE: Since the time I wrote this, everyone has done some fact checking, and it seems that it is going to happen.

Larry Dignan from ZDNet has given some insight.

Another version of the story has appeared on Maximum PC, with a picture of Ballmer in a moment of dubious triumph. Not the pic below - I happen to think it is appropriate, however.

the only thing worse would be to find that she is a part of the plan…

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The story comes from NetworkWorld, and apparently has no effect on Internet Exploder 8.

A hacker has posted attack code that could be used to break into a PC running older versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser.

The code was posted Friday to the Bugtraq mailing list by an unidentified hacker. According to security vendor Symantec, the code does not always work properly, but it could be used to install unauthorized software on a victim’s computer.

“Symantec has conducted further tests and confirmed that it affects Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7,” the company wrote on its Web site Saturday. “We expect that a fully-functional reliable exploit will be available in the near future.”

Strange how this works. It’s almost like the old salesman’s trick of prediction and proof.

Security consultancy Vupen Security has also confirmed that the attack works, saying it worked on a Windows XP Service Pack 3 system running IE 6 or IE7. Neither company was able to confirm that the attack worked on Microsoft’s latest browser, IE 8.

Symantec did not report that the attack is being used by cyber-criminals, but because Internet Explorer is so popular, this type of code is highly coveted by hackers. If the software does pop up in online attacks, it will put pressure on Microsoft to rush out an emergency patch, ahead of its regularly scheduled Dec. 8 security update. Microsoft could not be reached Saturday for a comment on the issue.

Together, IE 6 and IE 7 command close to 40 percent of the browser market.

That is just sad.

The flaw lies in the way Internet Explorer retrieves certain Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) objects, used to create a standardized layout on Web pages. For the attack to work, the hacker would have to lure a victim to a Web page that contained maliciously encoded JavaScript, Symantec said. This technique has emerged as a favorite way for hackers to install their malicious software on computers in recent years.

“To minimize the chances of being affected by this issue, Internet Explorer users should ensure their antivirus definitions are up to date, disable JavaScript and only visit Web sites they trust until fixes are available from Microsoft,” Symantec said.

Or use another browser. When the fix is so simple, why make it hard? Opera, Firefox, Chrome…the choices are certainly there.

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plus

equals

Internet Explorer large market share.

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The solution is clear.

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Some manufacturers have sprung up with that idea in mind, purposely building a higher quality product, and charging a premium price for their wares. For example, XFX has the remarkable double-lifetime warranty, meaning that if you properly register your product, you have a warranty for the entire time you have the product, and your product has a lifetime for anyone you sell or give it to when you are done with it. This is the strongest warranty I’ve ever seen, and so I have purchased several products from XFX because of it. I have not been let down, none of the video cards has ever failed.

Several other manufacturers have almost as strong warranties, being the lifetime of the buyer. EVGA, BFG, and OCZ have offered such warranties, along with the maker of any quality RAM product. Bright Side of News has a disturbing story about the slow removal of some of these warranties, in a very surreptitious way. -

Ever since premium service vendors appeared on the IT market, one of main selling point was the level of service. When vendors such as Corsair, BFG, EVGA, OCZ appeared and offered lifetime warranty and excellent end-user support, most of our Taiwanese sources started to disclose their business models and claimed that operations such as EVGA cannot succeed due to low margins.

More than half a decade later, EVGA turned into quite a large operation, and with acquisition of EPoX engineering team the company started to produce brilliant motherboards as well. Recently, the company launched several engineering projects of their own, such as Classified motherboards and graphics cards [GTX285 Classified can take up to 600W of power] or GTX 275 Co-Op and there was no telling that we were impressed with the level of commitment.

Personally, I had the most fun talking to Tier 3 motherboard vendors when EVGA entered the world of non-nVidia-chipset market. The feeling of light panic was in all of my sources eyes, who asked how they can expect to succeed. My default approach is to analyze the past of all the companies involved in the market and see where their strengths are. For instance, EVGA could always command a price premium and customers would buy them due to combination of solid product, multiple SKU [Stock Keeping Units] based on a single product that passed additional testing, top-of-the-line warranty and customer service second to none. Personally, I worked with EVGA Europe ever since their inception and saw them growing to stratospheric levels of revenue, just as was in the past with Hercules and Gainward. The key to success in Europe was the fact that EVGA’s European operation was former Hercules and Gainward team [remember Golden Sample and H2O series or even back further, Hercules re-entry into graphics with nVidia cards?] lead by Hans Wolfram Tismer from operational side, Andreas and Aline handling sales and Peter Tersluisen from technical side [guilty party for Black Perl series].

But at the same time, we have noticed something odd is happening. In the past few months, EVGA started to introduce more and more products that do not carry lifetime warranties. Naturally, there are two sides to this story - from one, the conclusion would be that EVGA is getting rid of their lifetime warranties while the other side could be that these products were merely EVGA trying to push its products on those who do not care for lifetime warranties and would rather have inexpensive products rather than a lifetime warranty.

I’m not sure who this would be. Most people I know of know the benefit of a lifetime warranty, for them, or anyone else coming into possession of a product. I know that EVGA has offered lifetime warranties on a couple of products I have recently purchased, yet it was up to the user to be aware of the fact. It was not on the box, or found in the setup instructions, or any other paper included. Once on the website to register, however, the lifetime warranty was there, as if a reward to the faithful, who are good little do-bees, and register the product – guaranteeing a steady stream of EVGA product notices in their mailbox.

Slowly but surely, we believe that those who thought the lifetime warranty was going away are beginning to become right. Here is a recent breakdown of EVGA’s most recent products:

• GT 240 - 2 years
• GTX 275 CO-OP - 2 years
• GT 210 and 220 - 2 years (yes this is a mainstream part, we can expect that to happen)
• Entire P55 Lineup (6 different boards) - 3 years
• GTX 285 Classified - 2 years

Now, the interesting part about the minimum warranty is the fact that EVGA US may claim that they offer “double the standard warranty.” But in the European Union, manufacturers have to offer two year warranty by law, just like they can’t offer lifetime warranty [EVGA, Corsair and others offered 10 year warranty instead]. In any case, all of the recently introduced EVGA’s products carry a minimum warranty, which confirms the claims of Taiwanese manufacturers - EVGA cannot keep up the warranty scheme. A business model that worked for a decade obviously isn’t working anymore, even though - how come remaining premium vendors are still in the business?

I had no idea that the EU had mandatory warranty structures like that. I wonder how that affects resellers such a PNY who offer the no-lifetime warranty warranty. In case that needs explaining, PNY offers a warranty that is listed as lifetime, but PNY is the arbiter of what lifetime means. In the case of their memory, it means that if you purchase PC-133 DRAM, once that type of RAM is no longer widely used in motherboards, your warranty is over, because PNY has decided that the lifetime of the memory is over.

Why this has not caused a class action suit is beyond me.

Most people associate EVGA with their lifetime/10-year warranty and the step-up program. Asking almost anyone who is familiar with the brand and they will associate EVGA with their lifetime warranty and their customer service. Now, if they let their lifetime warranty slip, who’s to say they won’t or aren’t letting their customer service slip too? We heard rumors that EVGA might be letting the step-up program go as well but given the origin of those sources [competing manufacturers], we aren’t inclined to believe that is going on. We contacted our regular contacts at EVGA but are yet to receive an answer.

The last product to be released by EVGA that carried a lifetime warranty appears to be the X58 SLI 4-Way SLI motherboard, which needless to say is not a board that we’d expect them to sell many of considering the $500 price point and lack of availability up until recently. While we understand that some products may have limited production runs, and that the warranty may reflect that… There is still reason to grant a lifetime warranty if EVGA really wanted to as there have been limited run products in the past.

The story has an update, including a message from EVGA that the step-up program will continue, and as they are able to manage, some products will have the lifetime warranty.

I realize the problems of business, but I also realize the attraction of the lifetime warranty. It will be a loss to many if the lifetime warranty is lost, and I believe it will adversely affect EVGA sales. after all, when you no longer compete on warranty, and don’t offer products distinguished from run-of-the-mill any other way, you must either compete aggressively on price, or lose share.

Not only does this show the beginning of a bad trend, It shows the lack of faith that a company has in its own products. After looking through the OCZ catalog of products, I find nothing that has a lifetime warranty other than memory offerings.

Thank goodness BFG Tech and XFX are still holding the line. These are two of the companies that will continue to get my business, on the basis of quality of products, as well as warranties. (It can be argued that the lifetime warranty forces the continued high quality of products released instead of simply the converse.)

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I have noticed the problem with my systems that run Avira in the last couple of weeks, but according to an article on gHacks, the problem has been around longer than that.

We ran a post in the beginning of this month (read: Avira Antivir Update Hangs)that mentioned a growing problem that users of Avira Antivir were experiencing. The problem these users were experiencing was a permanent update failure during the virus definition update of the antivirus software. Some users were able to fix these difficulties by manually updating their Antivir installation, others were not able to solve the problem and decided to switch to other security software programs instead.

Avira made an announcement a few days ago where they addressed that problem somewhat. They mention that they have realized that “users of the free Avira AntiVir Personal had issues fetching the Updates in time recently”. This is not exactly the same issue but it could very well be related.

The problem that I noticed was not only that the auto-update was not working, a forced manual update would not work either. It was to the point where trying to force a manual update was getting nowhere  after about 20 minutes, so I would close the updater down, and then open Opera to go get the virus signature file. Apparently I was not the only one doing this.

The Avira tech blog has this to say about the trouble -

Due to the fast growing amount of malware out there in the wild our virus definition files grow fast as well. We monitored the situation with our Updates very closely. We realise that users of the free Avira AntiVir Personal had issues fetching the Updates in time recently and did come up with a few ideas how we could solve the problem and to better satisfy the needs of our users.

Two of the results are getting realized today: First, we switch from our current virus definition files (called iVDF) to a new format called nVDF. iVDF consists of 4 VDF files, while nVDF uses at least 32 files – we need to transfer less data for updating our virus definitions effectively in the future.

This means that we need to deliver about 25 MByte to every Avira installation starting today for switching to the new update system. This might lead to some delays for some users, especially for the users of our free version Avira AntiVir Personal. Just to get an idea about what we’re talking here: More than 100.000.000 Users are trying to get the update more or less on the same day. That is more than 2.5 Petabytes (or 2,500 Terabytes) of traffic.

To ease the bandwidth bottleneck, we decided to additionally use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). We were first testing a CDN built up by our current Internet service provider. Shortly after activating the CDN, the redirectors – which redirect the update requests to servers close to the users location – were overloaded and couldn’t answer the requests anymore. The situation was solved a little later on, but the CDN isn’t big enough yet to spread this huge update in time. So we decided to switch to a global player in the CDN market to deliver the update.

We hope that the data is transferred much faster this way so also the users of free Avira AntiVir Personal can enjoy their security solution without any problems: After this Update the situation will get much better for the users of Avira AntiVir Personal.

N.B.: Users of commercial Avira products like Avira AntiVir Premium, Avira Premium Security Suite or Avira AntiVir Professional don’t face any of these problems as they access our servers with reserved bandwidth.

Dirk Knop

Technical Editor

So the free users are the only ones affected. We may see some other changes coming, but I really doubt that the free version will go away. It would admit to being defeated by the likes of Microsoft, and I don’t see any of the utility manufacturers doing that anytime soon.

As of this morning, I have not seen the update, but I also have not missed one of the older IVF updates either. Possibly this will happen at the first of the week for me. I am not sure why, but I seem to be the last to get updates – the Microsoft yellow shield indicating patch Tuesday updates usually only hits my machines early Wednesday morning.

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Give me a lever long enough, and I shall move the world. Archimedes

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After examining the previous upgrade cycles, that really is not hard to believe, as most Microsoft upgrade cycles don’t really get going until the first service pack. That is not an exaggeration or lie. That is how the interested should proceed. The other part of the upgrade cycle question is one that really answers itself, because in no other version of Windows has the beta been so widespread, so available. No other time have interested users been able to try, compare, and also important, check with their friends, on their experiences.

And, perhaps most important of all, at no other time has there been a wide availability of a beta following such a dud. People will cite Windows Me, but that doesn’t track, because Millennium Edition was released, and then Windows XP was released soon after, while at the same time, Windows 2000 was available to the serious user (those not running it as only a place to play games). In any case, Microsoft did not let 3 years of being embarrassed by the reputation of Windows Me go by with no answer, the way that Windows Vista was allowed to embarrass, annoy, and otherwise remain. (Personally, I feel that was a golden period in the Microsoft time line. At no other time were 4 versions of Windows widely available to the public. Windows 98 for the gamer, Windows Me for the upgrader that did not want to make the hardware change, Windows 2000 for the serious business user [solid as Windows NT was], and Windows XP for the users that were looking for changes, and were not afraid to strike out in a new direction. Because of the wishes of Microsoft, we will most likely never have that much choice again.)

The big media has a story about the massive numbers sold, but no one is quantifying the phrase massive numbers.

In the mean time, we have a story from one of the PC World columnists, concerning his inability to sell a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium, the version we are told is the most popular.

Though Windows 7 is building a reputation as a messiah that will revive the PC industry, when I found myself trying to peddle an extra copy of the new OS, I couldn’t give the damn thing away.

There have been stories about how Windows 7 is in high demand. According to one study, adoption of Windows 7 just 10 days after its launch is where Vista adoption was four months into its launch in ‘07. Microsoft is reporting that Windows 7 is doing well. Big shocker there.

but later the author states -

There’s lots of noise, but thankfully there are industry analysts to be the voice of reason. In a recent BusinessWeek story, Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa put it best: “People won’t buy new PCs for Windows 7. They’ll only buy them if they need them.”

Well, my own struggle to sell an extra copy of Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade version confirms that notion. It seems people don’t really want Windows 7, even at a rather large discount.

The author goes on to state that after much more advertising, and worrying about the sale, he is finally able to sell the unopened copy at the original price he paid, $50. This is pretty sad, considering the fact that no retailer is selling the same thing anywhere near that price. It does not say much for the alacrity of Windows sales at the retail level.

So, once again it becomes a case of who do you believe. I happen to believe that Windows 7 is much better than Vista, so my take is that what the press is saying should be so, but that only is because of my bias. In a similar fashion, I was more excited about Windows XP than I was about any version …ever. I had to think a moment – I was more excited, and more pleased, about Windows XP than any other Microsoft product ever. It did what I needed doing right at that time (it kept me from rebooting three to five times a day, and allowed me to use larger drives than Windows Me allowed, without a dynamic overlay), and it did it well. The fact that other stories were out about Windows XP being slow on the uptake did not bother me one bit.

It is clearly difficult to see where we are with this, but I will say I know that it is safe to say that many I know are anxious to switch, or already have, while some Windows XP users I know are settled in for the long haul to Windows 8. On the other hand, every Vista user I know has switched already, or is chomping at the bit to dump Vista ASAP.

(The entire story about the sale of the extra copy is quite entertaining, I recommend the full read.)

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Looking around, it did not take long to find a story on Maximum PC, delivering the bad news about the sudden surfeit of Xboxes for sale.

Up to 1 million Xbox modders were pretty pissed to find that they had been banned from Xbox Live following the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the biggest launch in entertainment history. The mass ban was intended to prevent pirated copies of the highly anticipated game from spreading, a notion Microsoft will now have to defend in a class action lawsuit filed against the company.

“Although modification of Xbox consoles is arguably against he terms of use for Xbox/Xbox Live, Microsoft ‘conveniently’ timed the Xbox console ban to coincide with the release of the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 game and less than two months after the release of the very popular Halo 3: ODST game,” says AbingtonIP, the Texas-based law firm who filed the suit.

According to the lawsuit, the timing of Microsoft’s widespread ban may have resulted in more Xbox Live subscription sales than if the bans had taken place before the release of Halo 3: ODST and CoDMW2. The lawsuit also claims that some of the bans locked out users who had modded their consoles for reasons other piracy.

So perhaps the Xbox offered is perfectly legitimate, but then again…

I’m sure somewhere Microsoft has a list of banned serial numbers. It might be wise to obtain that list to compare before purchasing that deal just a tad too good to be true.

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For most people, this is more than enough, as some are so oblivious to what defragmentation is, and does for them, that it makes little difference anyway. Those that do understand, and want to save some money, are certainly going to welcome this latest revision.

gHacks takes a look at the progress of this program -

Auslogics Disk Defrag is a hard disk defragmentation software for the Windows operating system. Recently version 3 of the software program has been released; Reason enough for us to take a look at the improvements in this new version. At its core stands the option to defragment all connected hard drives of the computer system.

The hard drives can be analyzed before the defragmentation to ensure that it is necessary to start the process at all. Hard drives can be unselected which is helpful in several cases including connected solid state drives or encrypted partitions that are not mounted.

The analysis will display the total number of files and the number of fragmented files on the PC system. Auslogics Disk Defrag can then defragment the selected hard drives. A new feature is the option to optimize the fragmentation by consolidating free space by placing all files on the disk contiguously.

The top menu contains several additional options, namely the option to defragment a file or folder and to change the process priority of the defragmentation.

The defragmentation can be paused and resumed anytime. One interesting option is the defragmented file view which makes it possible to take a look at all defragmented files of the selected hard drive. Most changes have been made to the core including performance improvements to the defragmentation process, better tie-ins with the Windows Task Scheduler or better processing of files that are locked by the computer system.

Auslogics Disk Defrag is available as an installer or portable version. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website where it is available for all Microsoft operating systems that have been released since Windows XP including Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Interested users can take a closer look at the release notes to read about all of the changes that have been added to the disk defragmentation software.

and then, from the horse’s mouth -

What’s new in Disk Defrag 3?

Auslogics Disk Defrag is not just a defragmenter any more, but a fully featured disk optimizer. And with all the advanced techniques of disk optimization it has, Disk Defrag 3 remains extremely compact and even easier to use!
Free space consolidation

Free space on a disk is often split into many small gaps between files. Windows fills these gaps with newly created or extended files. The more fragmented the free space is, the more fragmented new files will be. Disk Defrag merges free space into a large contiguous block. This technology dramatically slows further files fragmentation and speeds up disk access.

System files smart placement

Commonly used by Windows, system files may be scattered all over the disk and intermixed with data files. Disk Defrag 3 arranges system files by defragmenting and moving them to the faster part of the disk. This minimizes the time needed for HDD to access system files improving overall computer performance.
Keeping the MFT Reserved Zone Clear

Normally, NTFS file system reserves about 12.5% of the disk volume for the MFT records (a place where information about every file and directory is stored). However, when the rest of the disk space is getting low, the MFT Reserved Zone will be used for storing regular files. This may lead to MFT fragmentation.

Disk Defrag 3 replaces regular files from the MFT Reserved Zone into the rest of the disk space, allowing NTFS to allocate contiguous space for the MFT records and thus to prevent its fragmentation.

Enhanced user interface

A redesigned user interface makes navigation through Disk Defrag 3 more intuitive than ever before. It can be integrated into the Windows Explorer context menu and minimized to system tray on close. Use its many new customization settings to simplify defragmentation process.

List of fragmented files

Disk Defrag 3 lists all the fragmented files after performing disk analysis. Selecting any file from the list will highlight its clusters location on a fragmentation map. You can find the most fragmented files and their paths by sorting the list. Right-click on any file directly in the list to defragment it.

A small thing, which I find really nice, because the authors of this program paid attention to what can be done with the UI of Windows 7, is that the program can be minimized to the Windows 7 taskbar, with the progress of the defrag shown as a growing bar on the icon. It’s not a deal breaker if a program doesn’t have it, but it shows that these people care about details.

The updates keep coming, and features are being added about every couple of months – this is amazing for a free program.

It works well on Windows XP and Vista also. Highly recommended.

Download here.

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Coming right at the launch of Windows 7 this has to really hurt early adoption there.

The news of this comes by way of the ITWire, which tells us the rest of the story -

Microsoft was successfully sued for copyright infringement by the developer of the Chinese fonts used in almost all versions of Windows.

In a judgement handed down by Beijing’s No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court earlier this week, Microsoft has been banned from selling all versions of Windows from Windows 98 onwards in China.

In a statement on their website, Zhongyi Electronic said that the agreement signed with Microsoft permitted the use of their Chinese character fonts in Windows 95 only; Microsoft clearly disagreed with that.

Microsoft immediately announced they would appeal the ruling.  “Microsoft respects intellectual property rights,” the company said in a statement.  “We use third party IPs only when we have a legitimate right to do so.”

We have yet to see whether this ruling will affect the small but significant number of sales of Chinese Windows versions in other parts of the world.

Perhaps this Microsoft spokesperson was hoping they had not heard of the little problem with the Windows 7 flash drive tool.

“By winning this case against an internationally well-known company like Microsoft, it shows that China, although still a developing country, is taking positive steps to protect intellectual property rights,” Zhongyi’s lawyer Ling Xinyu told Reuters.

Actually, I think it shows that the Chinese are not above taking advantage of the streak of lawsuits that Microsoft has been involved in. Misery loves company.

For many years, China has been considered a copyright ‘backwater,’ where scant heed was paid to such niceties.  However, China is a signatory to the two primary international agreements of copyright - The Berne Convention and also The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (which guarantees copyright holders exclusive control over their works for their lifetime plus 50 years).  As a signatory, China has begun to take a much stronger and internationally accorded stance on the issue.

Like Taiwan, China has moved from a defensive position where domiciled organisations were the recipients of such legal actions to a more proactive posture where they are the clear owners of intellectual property and are prepared to defend those holdings.

The case was first filed in April 2007 and represents a very significant impact upon Microsoft’s activities in China.

Zhongyi is still studying the ruling and has yet to decide whether to pursue monetary compensation from Microsoft, spokesman Lan Fei told Agence France-Presse.

Though Microsoft will not do it, I would like to see the Chinese operate without Windows – legal Windows that is, when trying to interact with the rest of the world. Removing any way for China to have a legal copy of Windows using Chinese script, along with vigorous enforcement of antipiracy  laws would certainly improve the trade balance in a hurry.

Red Star Linux indeed.

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There are three reasons why lawyers are replacing rats as laboratory research animals. One is that they are plentiful, another is that lab assistants don’t get so attached to them and the third is that they will do things that you just can’t get rats to do. Blanche Knott

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That last part is becoming harder all the time, as people try to stuff too many heat-producing devices in too small a space. Multiple graphics cards that use the power that used to be enough for an entire system, CPUs that are using less power at idle are still using more power than ever when stressed, and no way to get every system using liquid cooling because of expense and complexity means that some things need to change.

One of the things that could help is that the common computer tower could be widened from approximately 7 – 8 inches to 10 (on average) would allow more systems to use the larger heatsink and fan combinations being engineered by the more aggressive designers.

The newest style for CPU HSF combinations is the tall vaportube and fin design, which keeps gaining more tubes and more closely spaced fins. The design allows great cooling, as well as usually being placed in an advantageous way to cool the power transistors which supply the motherboard. But the latest designs are so tall that if used in many cases, the case side must either be modified, or left off the case, which causes problems for the rest of what resides there.

Maximum PC shows another of these designs, a new entry from Scythe, which is an up and coming supplier of accessories for the PC. It is called the Mugen 2, and is absolutely huge, taking what its predecessor had and building upon it.

They just keep getting bigger and bigger. Now that CPU air-cooling manufacturers have seemingly settled on the skyscraper school of heatsink design, there seems to be a competition over who can cram the most cooling fins into the largest area. Scythe’s Mugen 2 air cooler, the follow-up to its popular Mugen series, is one of the largest coolers of this type that we’ve ever tested. But can it match the cooling power of its slightly smaller cousins, such as Thermalright’s U-120 eXtreme?

The Mugen 2 is a hefty hunk of a cooler, at 5.1 inches wide, 5 inches deep (with the included 12cm fan), and 6.2 inches high; it weighs nearly two pounds. It’s not the heaviest cooler we’ve ever tested, nor the most unwieldy, but its girth could certainly prevent you from installing it in all orientations on all motherboards. We had trouble fitting it in some orientations on our EVGA 680i SLI board—our usual preference being to install the cooler fan parallel with the rear exhaust fan. On our board, though, there wasn’t room; we resorted to attaching the cooler fan perpendicular to the rear exhaust fan. Thankfully, this didn’t seem to impact performance, as the Mugen 2 performed slightly better in our tests than the Thermalright U120-eXtreme—about 2.25 C cooler at both idle and full CPU burn.

and

The Mugen 2 ships with mounting brackets for LGA1366, 775, and AMD boards; the first two use the same bracket and backplate but different screw holes. Support for the new LGA1156 socket wasn’t available at the time of this review, but the company states it is in the works. Installation requires motherboard removal or a motherboard tray with a backplane cutout. Each of its five copper heat pipes rises into its own separate stack of cooling fins, allowing airflow between the stacks.

Perhaps case makers should start supplying scoops, like hood scoops for muscle cars, so that the cooler can be accommodated and a fresh supply of cool air will be available to keep the CPU cool.

It will also provide a place to put a case badge, like the ones that used to appear in the days of the 386, or, on muscle cars in the 1970s.  Instead of 426 Hemi, it could say Phenom II X4 965.

Huge, and effective, if you can get it in.

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Giving a 3 year run for Windows 7 means the end of 2012 will be the projected release date for Windows 8, which will give holdouts that much more time to become accustomed to the idea of moving away from XP. It will also give Microsoft time to see how it might need to change plans according to he numbers still using XP.

Is Microsoft finally switching to a different programming model? It used to be that we only had previous Microsoft efforts to judge how much could be accomplished in each unit of time, but now, with the various large distributions of Linux we can see how much can be accomplished by a loose woven group of programmers, and wonder what Microsoft could accomplish if pressed.

gHacks fills in the blanks -

Microsoft has released two roadmaps at this years Professional Developer’s Conference (PDC 2009) which both suggest a Windows 8 release in 2012. This confirms earlier rumors that Microsoft’s next desktop operating system after Windows 7 would be released in three year’s time. To be more precise, the roadmaps that Microsoft showcased at the conference show the Microsoft server releases over the years. The first of the two roadmaps does mention Windows 7 (but not Windows Vista) along with Windows Server 2003 and 2008 releases.

The 2012 release is codenamed Windows 8 and Microsoft does not explicitly state that this will also be the release year of the new operating system although that is generally assumed by everyone.

Windows 8, which is currently only a codename for the new operating system (did not they say so previously when asked about Windows 7 as well?), will be major released opposed to the release updates Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.

Our thanks to Stephen Chapman for publishing those two Windows roadmap images. Check out the Windows 8 News website for the latest news and rumors about Microsoft’s upcoming operating system Windows 8.

The pictures show what is described above, and show the 2yr, 4yr cycle that Microsoft seems to want to follow. It is hard not to think of the Intel tick-tock model, though Microsoft’s clock is somewhat slower.

Will Microsoft be able to keep the pace? It has proven in the past that deadlines are simply not something that it worries about much. A deadline is no big deal when you’re the only game in town.

The thing is, though still the big boy on the block, Microsoft is no longer the only game in town.

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Quote of the day:

There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don’t know what it’s a plan for.

- Fred Hoyle

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