Microsoft ‘Unveils’ RSS Icon

Internet Explorer 48 Comments
Microsoft has decided which icon it will use for RSS feeds in Internet Explorer 7. Now, I hear you say, so what? Well, the funny thing is, Microsoft teamed up with the Mozilla team on this one. They decided that it's in the user's best interest that both browsers use the same icon for RSS. And so it happened that Microsoft chose Firefox's icon.
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30 Years of Personal Computer Market Share Figures

  Submitted by Eric B Hardware 61 Comments
It's been a long, strange trip for the personal computer over 30 years. Ars takes a look back at the comings and goings of players in the PC market, from Altair to Zeta OS, to see how we got where we are today. "When you step back and look at the big picture, the overall dominance of the PC becomes clear. However, this was not always the case, and in fact it wasn't until 1986 that the PC platform first surpassed 50% market share. This was more than a decade after the first personal computer was sold."
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Thunderbird 1.5 Gets Ready to Fly

Mozilla, Gecko 41 Comments
The first version of the Mozilla Foundation's Thunderbird was a serviceable e-mail client; the latest version may be a great one. At first, Thunderbird Version 1.0 made a good impression. On a longer acquaintance, however, problems such as poor search functionality and memory leaks tarnished its reputation. Now, with Thunderbird 1.5 Release Candidate Two in hand, the program stands poised to regain its good name and far, far more.
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Open Forum in Massachusetts on ODF with MS Attending

  Submitted by Andy Updegrove Office 6 Comments
Bob Sutor from IBM, Alan Yates from Microsoft, Bill Sproull from Sun, Peter Quinn, MA CIO, and others sat elbow to elbow in the Massachusetts Senate Reading Room today and answered questions to a crowd of legislators, press and industry representatives about ODF and Microsoft's XML Reference Schema. Here's an unelaborated report of who said what, transcribed in real time as they said it, and a link to the full audio tape as well.
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LAME Mp3 vs FAAC AAC: Fight!

Multimedia, AV 107 Comments
This PDF compares the quality of various audio compression codecs run with various parameters. Overall, of all the audio encodings attempted which produced output at the same sample rate as the input, constant bitrate MP3's produced the highest quality files, exceeded only by variable bitrate MP3's at bitrates above 224kbps. In all cases AAC produced inferior quality results.
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Mr LUA Goes to Washington

Windows 19 Comments
The gospel according to LUA (least-privileged user account) took center stage at Microsoft's Security Summit East here with a pair of Redmond consultants pitching the idea of a well-funded security deployment repository to help developers create applications for non-admin users. The LUA principle, which promotes the use of accounts with fewer access rights than Administrator accounts, has been largely ignored by end users, but if Aaron Margosis and Shelly Bird have their way, code writers will have a central place to get tools and training to create least-privilege applications.
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Superior Linux Technology Not Stopping Microsoft

  Submitted by LinuxFanBoy Editorial 124 Comments
Today, we cannot know if people would still buy Microsoft products because the government protects the monopoly. What percentage of the market would Microsoft have in a fair market? The only way we can answer that last question is to stop manufacturers from preloading Windows. Until then, we do not have a free market. Microsoft has no way to prove itself otherwise, says LXer.
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Zaurus Pioneers Embedded Linux

Wireless 13 Comments
When the first announcements came out that a new Sharp Zaurus would "run Linux," the Linux community was abuzz with fascination and rumors. Years later, there are still handheld devices running Linux that draw inspiration and ideas from Sharp's work, even though the Linux-based Zaurus has faded to obscurity in the U.S. market. In this article Peter Seebach dismantles the Zaurus SL-5600 to get a better look into history. Elsewhere, Linux boots on Palm devices.
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Intel To Kick Off New Year with Yonah, Viiv

Intel 42 Comments
Yonah, a dual-core notebook chip based on a new design, will be released in January, said Keith Kresslin, director of mobile platforms marketing at Intel. It is expected to provide around 68 percent better performance than current Intel notebook chips, which sport one processing core. Computers with Yonah will also be better than PCs today at running many applications at once, he said.
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Updating KDE at the Appeal Initiative

KDE 62 Comments
"As the release of KDE 3.5 draws near , work is already underway at the Appeal project to integrate 3.5's major changes into the 4.0 series. Subprojects beneath Appeal's umbrella target simplified usability and progressive adjustments to the graphical user interface: The Tenor and Plasma projects will add functionality, while Oxygen and Coolness will enhance visual freshness."
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Vista Audio Stack, API

Windows 14 Comments
"Charles recently caught up with seasoned Niner, Larry Osterman, an SDE and 20 year Microsoft veteran, and Elliot H Omiya, a Software Architect and audio guru, to dig into the innerworkings of Vista's updated Audio Stack and new user mode API. Much of the guts of Windows audio have been moved up into the land of the user and this has consequences for both Windows audio developers at the API level and for Windows at the general programmability, reliability and stability levels."
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Sun Pours Niagara II All Over Great Lakes

Oracle and SUN 2 Comments
"It's all a gush in Sun Microsystems' low-end SPARC server business with code-names flowing toward El Reg at speed. Last week, we brought you the details on Niagara II, and this week we bring you Michigan and Huron. The 1U Michigan box will replace the 1U Erie system and boast twice as much memory support - up to 64GB. Huron will be the 2U replacement for Ontario and also double the memory support, stretching up to 128GB." Sun also released the open-source Java database.
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