Microsoft makes a u-turn, Windows 7 testers to get free copy

In a surprise turn around, Microsoft announced today that Windows 7 technical testers will be receiving a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate. In recent weeks Microsoft has faced angry reactions from bloggers and beta testers when they originally announced the testers 'thanks' was the discounted pre-order offer.

Blogger Paul Thurrot claimed: "the painful thing here, for beta testers, is that they've been screwed" which demonstrated the reaction to the previous announcements.
In a blog posting at Microsoft's Windows Team Blog, Brandon LeBlanc confirmed: "to show our appreciation, members of the invitation-only Windows 7 Technical Beta Program will be eligible for a free, final copy of Windows 7 Ultimate." All current members of the English technical and international mini-beta programs are eligible for a full non-upgrade copy of Windows 7 Ultimate Edition. Testers can get access to their copy in one of two ways:
* Download a copy and product key via Microsoft connect, English downloads will be available August 6th and other languages will follow as they become available.
* Boxed retail copies are available in a limited amount and are being offered on a first come, first served basis. These copies will not be ready until October 22nd or later.
ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley recently highlighted the testing process and how the focus has been taken away from Microsoft's beta testers. Testers are no longer held in such high esteem it seems as Microsoft only supplied the same 2 public beta builds this time around. However, it's good to see Microsoft making a u-turn and admitting they were wrong to not provide a thank you to beta testers. Hopefully with Windows 8 Microsoft will focus on beta testers once again.

source: neowin.net

Technorati Tags: Windows 7,Free Copy,Microsoft

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Studios Sue to Stop Pirate Bay

Pirate Bay makes it easy for users to download copies of shows like "Desperate Housewives" and movies like "Gran Torino."

Millions of users have already taken advantage of Pirate Bay's directory of titles, and there is little that the service's operators could to do prevent those people from continuing to share illegally downloaded content.

However, legal action could force the operators to take technical steps to make it harder to share new files in the future, says Monique Wadsted, a Stockholm-based lawyer representing the Motion Picture Association. "What we want is to make them stop," she said.The major Hollywood studios requested that a Swedish civil court impose an injunction against the operators of file-sharing service Pirate Bay.

The studios are seeking to stop Pirate Bay's operators and its Internet-service provider from making copyrighted movies and TV shows easily available on the Internet. The studios are also asking for an unspecified fine.

Earlier this year, the studios won a victory in criminal court against Pirate Bay's operators for aiding copyright infringement. The litigation highlights the rapidly changing future of the service, which was sold last month to Global Gaming Factory X AB, the Swedish software company. The purchase is pending Global Gaming stockholder approval late next month.

More : wsj.com

Technorati Tags: Pirate Bay,Sues,Hollywood,Torrent

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China Puts Online Games That Glorify Mafia on Its Hit List

Whether it is religion, environmentalism or nonprofit charities, the Chinese government has always been wary of any organized activity it cannot directly control. 

Now there is an addition to the list: simulated organized crime.

On Monday, the Ministry of Culture issued a notice banning online games that feature Mafioso kingpins, marauding street gangs or any sort of hooliganism predisposed to organization.

The decree, which promises “severe punishment” for violators but fails to specify the penalties, also prohibits Web sites from including links to Internet games that glorify organized crime.

Such games, the ministry said, “embody antisocial behavior like killing, beating, looting and raping,” and their availability “gravely threatens and distorts the social order and moral standards, easily putting young people under harmful influence.”

By Tuesday, a number of popular games, including “Godfather,” “Gangster” and “Mafioso Hitman,” had been excised from the ether, although scores of other violence-laden games were still available.

The ruling is not entirely surprising, given the government’s war against Internet pornography and other sites that can be construed as “socially disruptive.”

This year more than a thousand Web sites have been shut down for “vulgar” content, although some critics complain that academic or public service sites that deal with sexually transmitted diseases have also been swept up in the juggernaut.

More : nytimes.com

Technorati Tags: China,Game,Online,Mafia

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ATI to launch DirectX 11 GPUs in seven weeks

For the past week and a half, we've been hearing rumors citing various dates for the launch of AMD's DirectX 11 graphics cards… ranging from GDC in China to newly invented delays that would push the launch window in to November.

However, all of these rumors are false, given that AMD has firmed its "Cinema 3.0/DirectX 11" launch. As tradition goes, the North American launch will happen in seven weeks in San Francisco on a very special place indeed - but we're not at liberty to say where the event will take place. All we can say is that it will be someplace that neither Intel nor nVidia would even remember.

ATI will catapult not one, but rather a complete DirectX 11 line-up into the orbit, ranging from $50 to the high end parts in their respective three-figure pricing brackets. Just like the Radeon 4000 series, consisting out of 4400, 4500, 4600, 4700 and 4800 parts, the new Radeon series will consist out of entry-level [Hemlock], mainstream [Cedar, Redwood], performance [Juniper] and high-end part [Cypress]. When it comes to codenames, you'll notice that all of these parts have codenames from plants, with some belonging into the same family [Cedar, Juniper, Redwood] Note that not all of these parts will be launched on the same day. Some parts might have to wait until Holiday season to get them in OEM-level numbers, but all in all - this is the strongest line-up ATI had in years. We might even dare to say strongest line-up ever from any GPU manufacturer.

According to information we have at hand, initial rumors about the names and specs proved true - these parts bring DirectX 11 compliancy from top to the bottom, and if you want to play upcoming DirectX 11 games [so far, there are six confirmed DX11 titles launching this year] in a budget less than $500, you have no other choice but to go ATI.

From : brightsideofnews.com

Technorati Tags: Ati,GPU,DirectX 11

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Expression® Studio 3 Top Features

Expression Studio 3 Released and available for download the trial version from Microsoft website. Featured are tools including Expression Blend 3, for interactive design and improving designer-developer workflow;  Expression Web 3, for building Web sites using standards such as PHP and HTML; Expression Encoder 3, for video-encoding; and Expression Design 3, for illustration and graphic design.

Top 10 Features

- SketchFlow revolutionizes the speed and efficiency with which you can prototype a vision for an application

- Rapidly demonstrate and iterate on ideas, application flows, screen layouts and functionality with your client using a SketchFlow prototype.

- Enable interactivity without writing code

- Bring an Expression Blend project to life by adding interactivity, animation and transitions using drag and drop Behaviors, powerful building blocks of interactivity, without writing code.

- Accelerate the design of effective UI with design time data

- Increases the speed and flexibility you can envision a user interface in Expression Blend through the effective use of sample data. Sample data can be seamlessly switched to a live data feed at any time.

- Streamlined design and development workflow

- Share projects, code, and designs for better productivity and quality. The smooth workflow between Expression Blend and Visual Studio help the delivery of superior results to your client, who today more than ever expect; compelling, cutting edge solutions to be delivered in rapid time and on budget.

- Professional tools save time creating Web sites that deliver results

- Expression Web features an advanced code editor with IntelliSense, an editable design surface, and includes Expression Design and Expression Encoder for creating graphics and encoding Silverlight video for Web streaming or podcast download.

- Advanced visual diagnostics speed debugging

- Debug Web pages with Snapshot Preview, which shows rendered page changes while you code, and SuperPreview, which displays your page on multiple browsers on your development machine.

- Rich standards-based Web design with the essential technologies

- Expression Web supports PHP, CSS, HTML/XHTML, XML, XSLT, JavaScript, ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, Silverlight (video, animation, and Deep Zoom), Windows Media, Adobe Flash, and Adobe Photoshop files.

- Prepare video for Silverlight

- Encode a wide array of video file formats, stream live from webcams and camcorders or screen capture your PC with Expression Encoder. Make simple edits to video files and enhance your media with overlays and advertising. Choose encoding settings including IIS Smooth Streaming, choose from a range of player templates and publish rich media experiences with Microsoft Silverlight.

- Team Foundation Server Integration

- Share your Expression Studio project files with those of your colleagues by using check in and check out functionality with Microsoft Team Foundation Server integration.

- Adobe Photoshop Importer

- Import your Adobe Photoshop files with full control over layers and objects straight onto the design surface of all Expression products to ensure maximum compatibility with any original artwork you need to integrate.

"Expression 3 introduces a broad range of new features such as SketchFlow in Expression Blend and SuperPreview in Expression Web. These features and others provide improved usability and productivity across the designer and developer workflow," a Microsoft representative said in a statement.

More info in this Web page, the triad download page also available.

Technorati Tags: Expression Studio 3,Features,Download

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Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 released to manufacturing

At last… RTM-ed…Windows 7 has been a tightly controlled product from its first days on the drawing board. The last milestone is proving to be no exception: On July 22, at precisely 4:40 p.m. ET, Microsoft announced it had released to manufacturing Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

What’s up with the weird hand-off time? It seems to be designed to coincide with CEO Steve Ballmer’s keynote address for Microsoft’s 13,000 or so field sales folks who are in Atlanta this week for the MGX conference. Unfortunately, the MGX folks are running late and Ballmer wasn’t yet speaking at 4:40… oh well.)
The Windows builds that are being released to manufacturing today were compiled over a week ago, on Monday July 13, company officials confirmed. Specifically, it’s build 7600.16385 that is the RTM version of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
There’s not much new left to say about either product. Very little has changed between the Release Candidate builds that went to the public in May and the RTM versions, testers who’ve been dabbling with leaked copies of the 16835 build say.
(Check out all of ZDNet’s Windows 7 coverage via our Special Report page. And if you are all about Windows Server, check out my colleague Jason Perlow’s coverage of the RTM of Windows Server 2008 R2 here.)
While Microsoft did a bunch of tuning and final testing in the last month-plus, the final Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 products won’t be very different from the last build testers saw, officials said. Microsoft’s intention was to keep the code base stable so that partners and customers could start testing on it months before the products went to manufacturing, officials said. While some testers welcomed that dependability, others were less-enamored of going to the trouble of testing with the feeling their input was going to make little difference.
PC makers will get the official bits from Microsoft by the end of this week, as Microsoft officials said yesterday. Those who want to download the official builds from Microsoft won’t be able to do so for another week plus (depending on whether you have an MSDN/TechNet, volume-license agreement or some other way of getting the bits earlier than the general availability date of October 22).
Speaking of October 22, that is the date Microsoft is considering to be its worldwide consumer launch of Windows 7. There will be a bunch of new hardware that has yet to be seen from a variety of manufacturers that will be preloaded with Windows 7 available on that date, said Mike Angiulo, General Manager of Microsoft’s Planning and PC Ecosystem team. (No word still on whether Microsoft will hold a single big launch, like it did with Vista in New York; I hear company officials are leaning away from going that route.)
The “business launch” of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is slated for November 9, officials said. (Actually, it’s going to be a triple-play launch of Win7/Win Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010, as Microsoft told its partners attending the Worldwide Partner Conference last week.) It sounds as if there will be a number of business launch events starting on that date and continuing for the next couple of months.

source: blogs.zdnet.com

Technorati Tags: Windows 7,RTM,Server 2008

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NVIDIA GeForce/ION Driver 190.38 WHQL-Certified Download

With support for OpenGL 3.1 and CUDA 2.3

Following a recent BETA release of the new GeForce 190.38 drivers for graphics cards and ION-based products, the Santa Clara, California-based graphics chip maker has released today the WHQL-certified version of the aforementioned drivers.

As you can expect from the majority of NVIDIA graphics drivers, the new release adds support for new applications, improves performance and delivers a series of fixes to known bugs. The

new release is available for download right here on Softpedia, providing support for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 users.

The new GeForce/ION driver release has been WHQL certified and provides support for all of NVIDIA's latest GPUs, ranging from the old GeForce 6-series to the more recent 200-series desktop GPUs and the new ION GPUs. As with the BETA release, the WHQL version adds support for OpenGL 3.1 API and the new CUDA 2.3, providing users with improved performance in GPU Computing applications. In addition, NVIDIA also included several new control panel features and numerous bug fixes.

The company's new GeForce 190.38 WHQL-certified release delivers an improvement over the features offered by previous ones. These drivers provide users with support for SLI technology and the PhysX System Software version 9.09.0428, as well as enable them to set the PhysX acceleration on a dedicated GeForce graphics card, improving performance over a single-GPU solution. The driver pack also includes the GeForce Plus Power Pack #3, providing users with a number of applications that are optimized for the GeForce GPUs.

For those looking to upgrade to the new WHQL-certified GeForce 190.38 graphics drivers we have put up the following links, offering support for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the most popular Windows operating systems, including XP, Vista and 7.

NVIDIA GeForce/ION Driver Release 190.38-WHQL for Windows XP 32-bit

NVIDIA GeForce/ION Driver Release 190.38-WHQL for Windows XP 64-bit

NVIDIA GeForce/ION Driver Release 190.38-WHQL for Windows Vista/7 32-bit

NVIDIA GeForce/ION Driver Release 190.38-WHQL for Windows Vista/7 64-bit

From Softpedia.

Technorati Tags: Driver,GeForce,NVIDIA,Download

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