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The last two weeks have been rather busy both from quantity of news and competing time pressures, so I thought I would collect some short links to items worth noting that didn’t get separate posts of their own. The down side is that this post gets filed in a ton of categories as you can see above.
- MSN expects China to be top five market by 2010
- Todd Bishop covers Microsoft’s move into high performance computing at Supercomputing 2005, including the Bill Gates keynote and the Sheryl Crow party. He also scores an interview with Craig Mundie, “chief technical officer who ran a supercomputing company before joining Microsoft in the early 1990s.” The latest report is that Burton Smith who left Cray to join Microsoft last week will work for Mundie.
- Microsoft adds Firefox support for Microsoft Genuine Advantage validation.
- The very clever Microsoft virtual labs have been upgraded:
The team just re-launched the TechNet and MSDN virtual labs running on Virtual Server 2005 R2. Check out these sites if you want to test our new software, such as SQL Server 2005 integration services, Windows Server R2 or Visual Studio Team System, in a sandbox environment. Each session is 90 minutes and comes without install, strings attached, or price to participate.
- Microsoft says it won’t support SAML 2.0. It’ll stick with the WS-Federation web service protocols. More here.
- Hyperthreading hurts server performance, say developers:
Intel’s Hyperthreading Technology (HT) is being blamed for server performance problems.
With both SQL Server and Citrix Terminal Server installations, HT-enabled motherboards show markedly degraded performance under heavy load. Disabling HT restores expected levels, according to reports from within the IT industry.
- Paris accelerates move to open source and Vienna’s open source desktop migration takes off.
- Microsoft Taps Former Rational Heavyweight Ivar Jacobson to Lend Credence to Enterprise Tools Play
- Office 12′s slick new UI feature: “Live Preview” and Microsoft Office 12 Beta 1: Extreme Makeover
- New UI Font Coming to Vista, Office 12. It’s “Segoe UI” and I guess I’m going to need new specs:
Office 12 will primarily use the 8pt. version of the font, while Windows itself will use the 9pt. size.
- Vista Will Be Compatible with HD DVD but not in the first release.
- Better Website Identification and Extended Validation Certificates in IE7 and Other Browsers. See also Browser makers to give trusted sites a green look.
November 29th, 2005 at 9:17 AM
[...] You may recall that Toshiba, Intel, and Microsoft are backing the HD DVD format (although Vista will not support it initially), while Sony and the movie studios are supporting Blu-ray along with Dell and HP (although HP is waffling). Well, here’s the latest. [...]
December 5th, 2005 at 5:59 PM
[...] The last two stories I mentioned were Paris and Vienna. Now Ingird Marson at CNET describes the situation in Mannheim, Germany: In Mannheim, a preference for “open” standards–not cost–is driving the German city’s shift to Linux. [...]