Yes, this is an affiliated ad and I get some revenue from any sales with this link, but I wanted to pass on the deal. I am sure other companies will be offering competing deals, but be sure to compare what you get before making your purchase. Regardless of where you buy the game, retailers will be fighting for your dollars and will be throwing some swag your way when you make your purchase. Don’t buy the game by itself when you can get some goodies with it.
The Windows 8 team has posted a bit on the new Windows 8 boot time optimization. One of the major factors in judging a PC’s speed is it’s boot time, and Windows 8 looks to make some huge increases in speed. I have upgraded to an SSD on my main Windows 7 machine and am very happy with my boot speeds, I would love to test out Windows 8 (hopefully a public beta soon) booting from the same SSD.
Now here’s the key difference for Windows 8: as in Windows 7, we close the user sessions, but instead of closing the kernel session, we hibernate it. Compared to a full hibernate, which includes a lot of memory pages in use by apps, session 0 hibernation data is much smaller, which takes substantially less time to write to disk. If you’re not familiar with hibernation, we’re effectively saving the system state and memory contents to a file on disk (hiberfil.sys) and then reading that back in on resume and restoring contents back to memory. Using this technique with boot gives us a significant advantage for boot times, since reading the hiberfile in and reinitializing drivers is much faster on most systems (30-70% faster on most systems we’ve tested).
I know I’ve made fun of Apple in the past, and I’ve claimed that Apple users aren’t as smart as Windows and Linux users. But, running across an old knowledge base entry over at Apple’s site has changed my mind. They are extremely smart and know more than the average user.
Microsoft has announced a new edition of the Xbox 360 console. Decked out in Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 3 graphics and new power on and disk tray sounds, it looks and sounds pretty badass. The new machine comes with two themes controllers as well as the MW3 game, and a 320GB hard drive. Also available are a MW3 themed bluetooth headset and individual wireless controllers.
This limited edition console includes a customized console with graphics from the game, along with two custom wireless controllers, a 320GB hard drive, a copy of “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3,” as well as custom sounds when the console is turned on. Here are the .WAV files of they what they sound like: power on/off and disk tray eject.
As the PC turns 30 years old, PC World asked industry leaders, including Bill Gates, their thoughts on the PC – past, present and future. One thing I disagree with, and I have for the past 20 years every time it is brought up, is that the end of the desktop PC is here. The desktop PC is always going to be relevant as long as we have desks. It is where we work, where we get things done. Tablets, laptops, netbooks don’t have the horsepower or the screen size or the ergonomics of a desktop PC to be a replacement. Nor does it have the enthusiast crowd following (yet).
"The PC has improved the world in just about every area you can think of," Gates said. "Amazing developments in communications, collaboration and efficiencies. New kinds of entertainment and social media. Access to information and the ability to give a voice people who would never have been heard. All of these have their roots in what the PC made possible, amplified and extended by other devices.
"But we’re still falling short in some areas," Gates added. "Education is one example, where the impact of technology lags behind almost every other part of society. There’s so much more that can be done to utilize technology in engage students, help teachers, and customize learning for each child."
Happy Birthday to the old IBM PC. I remember using a couple of these in the mid/late 80’s when others were using 286’s. Yea, I was jealous! I moved on, though, and went to a 386 then 486, then went the AMD route and a short stint with a Cyrix “Pentium Killer”, then back to an Intel/AMD cycle. The IBM PC brings back some great memories. I wouldn’t mind having another one of those things as part of my collection. 
I read a post over at WPCentral this morning, and thought I’d share. They found a nice “skin” case for your Windows Phone 7 device (among others) that covers the whole device. It even includes a wallpaper (background) to match. So, it looks like it is a nearly 100% covering skin.
I’ll be ordering one of these shortly, myself!
This is always going back and forth, and they always have different winners and losers. For the time being, though, researchers at Black Hat have said that Microsoft has better security than Mac’s OSX, although OSX Lion has made many improvements. There are always those that say that Windows is so insecure, but Windows 7 has proven many people wrong since it’s release. It is the most secure version of Windows, even when tested.
Escalating privileges remains a problem on both operating systems, Stamos says, with OS X having more potential soft spots than Windows 7. But when it comes to network vulnerabilities, Apple is the loser. "OS X networks are significantly more vulnerable to network privilege escalation," he says. "Almost every OS X server service offers weak or broken authentication mechanisms."
The recent S&P downgrade of the US Government to AA+ has given Microsoft a heads up. They are one of four US companies that still command a AAA credit rating from S&P, and they are the only tech based company. What is this country doing? Apple has more cash than the US. Microsoft has a better credit rating. We can only blame ourselves on this one. Although, (political side rant incoming) after September 11th, we were all American’s. Now that this has come about, we are so divided and placing blame on everyone else buy ourselves. I guess that old saying is true – “United we stand. Divided we fall.”
It’s a sea change from the early 1980s, when the top rating was coveted. Back then, 60 U.S. corporations held the title. By 1995, half as many were rated AAA.
Today, it’s only four: Microsoft, Exxon Mobil, Johnson & Johnson and Automatic Data Processing. (This is excluding some financial and government-affiliated organizations.)
Microsoft seems to think that the mindless, nameless Jersey Shore “people” would be a great inspiration for your avatar on Xbox LIVE. You can get “The Situation” (WTF?!) Abs, or “Snooki” (Smart one, she is) hair. Does he always wear a womans belly shirt? I try and think of Xbox gamers as being a bit smarter than the Jersey Shore demographics. We have opposable thumbs.
