Microsoft plans to make several significant tweaks to the next beta of Windows Vista to make a key security feature less annoying to users. In response to widespread criticisms that the implementation of the UAC (User Account Control) feature triggers too many privilege elevation prompt pop-ups, the software maker will make changes in Windows Vista RC1.

Vista and Office 2007 have many new fonts. NeoSmart takes a look at the ten most popular Vista and/or Office 12 fonts with screenshots, sample usages, and a critique of each font, one-by-one. These 10 fonts are the latin-based scripts that ship with Vista and/or Office 2007. My take: Microsoft has created some very beautiful fonts here. I especially like Segoe UI; it looks stunning when in use in Vista.

Protothreads are an extremely lightweight, stackless, thread-like programming abstraction designed for severely memory constrained embedded systems that may have as little as a few hundred bytes of RAM. Protothreads are designed to replace event-driven C code with sequential programming but without the memory overhead of full multithreading - a protothread requires only two bytes of RAM. Protothreads are implemented in ANSI C, does not require any machine code, and is therefore highly portable. Version 1.3 adds the possibility to determine if a protothread is blocked, has yielded or has ended, and can be downloaded here. Also be sure to read how protothreads work, under the hood.

How do you elicit high-quality information from information sources that are subject to deletion, distortion and generalization? According to Jim Arlow, the answer is generative analysis, which is a new approach to learning object oriented analysis that teaches you how to deal with these and other real-world human issues of software engineering. Also, Mike Kelly examines a recent testing experience that should have worked: plenty of scripted test cases, plenty of time developing and testing the scripts. So what went wrong? Plenty.

Dell has gone mad and designed this really weird portable computer that's not really a laptop. Cnet has a set of pictures of the Dell XPS M2010. "Dell's new XPS M2010, which starts at $3500, includes two hard drives with up to 120GB capacity each, a Core Duo processor and 4GB of dual-channel (667MHz) memory."

The Danish parliament has agreed to make the use of open standards mandatory in all government agencies. "Parliament directs the government to ensure that the use of information technology, including software, within public authorities is based upon open standards. No later than January 1st, 2008, the government should introduce and maintain a set of open standards that can serve as inspiration for other public authorities. Hereafter, open standards should be a part of the basis for public authorities' development and purchase of IT software, with the aim of furthering competition. The government should ensure that all digital information and data that public authorities exchange with citizens, corporations and institutions are available in formats based on open standards."