Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 24th Apr 2009 23:44 UTC, submitted by google_ninja
It's something lots of people here on OSNews have been waiting for. It's something we've talked about, something we've theorised about, and something we've declared as the future for Windows' backwards compatibility - and now it's here, and official. Over a month ago, Microsoft bloggers Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott have been briefed by Microsoft on a technology for Windows 7 called Windows XP Mode. Available as a free download for Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate users, it's a fully integrated and licensed copy of Windows XP SP3 in a VirtualPC-based environment, with full "coherence" support. In other words, it's Microsoft's variant of Apple's Classic environment, and it's coming to Windows 7, for free. Near-instant update: The Windows 7 RC will indeed be available publicly on May 5. TechNet/MSDN will get it April 30.
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RE[5]: Still worse than XP...
by darknexus on Sat 25th Apr 2009 18:37
in reply to "RE[4]: Still worse than XP..."
Member since:2008-07-15
You are describing a hard drive failure. Even if it is working now, it is just a matter of time before it dies again. I would highly recommend getting a new one, and until you do back everything up as rigorously as possible.
Not necessarily. I've seen similar things happen to NTFS filesystems, although in my case it was in Windows XP. Basically, if you're unlucky enough to have to reset or power off the system right as NTFS is closing a write to its master file table (mft), it can bring the filesystem down under the right conditions. It can also cause other interesting things if the MFT becomes just a bit corrupted due to this, e.g. used clusters end up being marked as free, causing random disappearances of files and/or folders, or portions of the pbr to be erased.
It could also be a failure on the motherboard, with the IDE or SATA controller crapping out (not sure which connector that drive used), or it could be the Vista motherboard drivers are buggy as hell. It could even be an unlucky power surge just at the wrong time that overloaded the surge protector and fried a portion of the OP's hard drive, I've had that happen once as well. That required a low level format of the disk before it would work properly again, as certain areas had to be zeroed out before they could be written to. This could explain what happened with your mbr, and the blue screen afterwards although that could very well be your motherboard drivers as well.
This is not a clear case of hard drive failure by a long shot.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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You are describing a hard drive failure. Even if it is working now, it is just a matter of time before it dies again. I would highly recommend getting a new one, and until you do back everything up as rigorously as possible.