The consumer preview of Windows 8 wasn’t the only operating system code Microsoft dropped today. The company also released the Windows Server “8″ beta, a work-in-progress version of the next generation of Microsoft’s general-purpose server operating system, which the company calls “possibly the most significant release of Windows Server ever.” Windows Server 8 is really [...]
AMD has made a $334 million bet on the energy-efficient “microserver” market. On Wednesday afternoon, the company announced that they have reached a $334 million agreement, to purchase SeaMicro, a successful microserver manufacturer. Launched in 2007, SeaMicro quickly gained attention for their ability to combine cheap, low-end processors that could handle Web-centric server workloads. The company [...]
Colorado federal authorities have decrypted a laptop seized from a bank-fraud defendant, mooting a judge’s order that the defendant unlock the hard drive so the government could use its contents as evidence against her. The development ends a contentious legal showdown over whether forcing a defendant to decrypt a laptop is a breach of the [...]
With the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, Microsoft unveiled test previews of new music and video apps. It’s a sign the company is trying to build viable competitors to iTunes and Amazon while taking advantage of the Xbox 360′s massive popularity and attempting to resurrect the moribund Zune service. Pre-installed in the Consumer Preview, Microsoft wants [...]
On Friday, a YouTube user named eeplox posted a question to the support forums, regarding a copyright complaint on one of his videos. YouTube’s automated Content ID system flagged a video of him foraging a salad in a field, claiming the background music matched a composition licensed by Rumblefish, a music licensing firm in Portland, [...]
Edmund McMillen, co-creator of the hit platform game Super Meat Boy, announced today that Nintendo of America has denied him a license to release his biblically inspired PC game The Binding of Isaac on the Nintendo 3DS. “After a long internal debate Nintendo has decided NOT to allow The Binding of Isaac on the 3DS,” [...]
With today’s release of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, we got our first hands-on experience with the brand-spanking-new Windows Store. The previously released Developer Preview showed an icon (or tile, in Windows 8-speak) for the Store, but clicking it didn’t lead anywhere. Now, you can actually download tons of apps that take advantage of the [...]
In the age of industrial agriculture, seeds are often purchased in bulk from corporate growers that use heavy doses of pesticides. They then travel many miles to a farm where climate, soil and pest conditions are dramatically different. As a result, crops often encounter new ailments that never impacted first generation seed plants, which may [...]
At first glance, Sony’s transition from disc-based media on the PSP to writable, proprietary flash memory cards for retail Vita games seems to come with a price for used game purchasers. When you place a used Vita game card into a second Vita system, the hardware presents you with a troubling message warning that “only [...]
Long Beach, California—Harvard’s Atul Gawande says that the solution to our expensive (and growing) healthcare problems is simple. What we need, he told the TED audience, is a system—a real system that emphasizes the importance of simplicity. How could the complexities of our healthcare system possibly be handled by increased simplicity? Gawande, who specializes in [...]