Nintendo Entertainment System: 25 Years Old

By DustinPosted on

How many still have their old Nintendo Entertainment System? I know I do. Years of memories from this system, and I can still say I enjoy playing some of the games to this day (although, using an emulator). Tomorrow, October 18th, marks the 25th birthday of the United States release of the immortal NES. What memories do you have of this awesome system (other than seeing it and then buying a Sega Master System?).

On October 18, 1985, Nintendo of America officially debuted the U.S. version of its first-ever home videogame console, the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was an overhauled version of the company’s Family Computer, which had parlayed its rocky launch in Japan into a nationwide phenomenon in short order. The arrival of the NES was a stealthy attempt to defibrillate an American home gaming market that had lain dormant for nearly two years. In time, the success of the NES made Nintendo a powerhouse and confirmed that gaming was a legitimate medium rather than a passing fad.

Competitors Say MS Security Essentials is Not Enough

By DustinPosted on

Microsoft’s main competitors, notably ESET, Symantec and Avast, have claimed that Microsoft’s Security Essentials is not enough protection for small businesses. Microsoft recently changed their EULA to allow small businesses with under 10 PC’s to run MSE for free. I have used to extensively, and the protection is better than a lot of others, including paid anti-virus software. Not to mention it uses less resources.

That said, Symantec thinks Microsoft’s approach is poor. “While we applaud any vendor that heightens small business awareness around the need for computer security, it’s clear that today’s threats have moved beyond the capabilities of the product Microsoft is offering,” Symantec told Ars. “The perception that freeware vendors have created is that free, basic security is enough to protect customers from today’s online threats. The reality is that the number and sophistication of Web-based viruses and malicious code continues to rise, resulting in small businesses needing more than just a signature-based antivirus product to fully protect their critical information.”

Microsoft Not Buying Adobe

By DustinPosted on

According to sources, Microsoft is definitely NOT buying Adobe, confirming this rumor as just a rumor. Which would be good news, really, as Adobe and their bug ridden, bloated PDF Reader would be a horrible match with Windows. Updates already come too fast with Windows, they shouldn’t add 2 new daily updates with Adobe. And don’t get me started on their CPU hungry, slow, 32-bit Flash.

In any case, it is not a big surprise at this point if longtime rivals like Adobe and Microsoft (MSFT)–which makes a competing video technology called Silverlight to Adobe’s Flash–talk about trying to stop the explosive growth of Apple, especially in the mobile space.

7 Ways Windows Phone 7 Is Better

By DustinPosted on

Business Insider has a look and offers their opinion on why Windows Phone 7 is better than the iPhone. While I don’t really care for the iPhone, I do love Android, and both offer a lot of great features. The WP7 may be better for some, but the iPhone is still a strong competitor and to deny that would be stupid. I am sure that the iPhone is much better for a lot of people (a lot of Teenagers go for the Apple products over others, just because of the name).

Yes, but Microsoft’s making a point about Phone 7’s design, which lets you do more stuff without constantly navigating between apps. The best example is the People hub, shown here. This looks like a normal contact list, like the iPhone and every other smartphone has. But each contact’s image is automatically updated from their most recent Facebook image. Click on each one, and you get a wealth of options: you can make a call, send an e-mail or text, post on their wall, view pictures they’ve recently posted, and so on. Everything you want to do is based around that person, not locked up in different apps.

Windows Phone’s Given To AT&T Staff

By DustinPosted on

About 100 AT&T staff got a shiny new Windows Phone 7 device at an event in Minneapolis. Microsoft has been pushing it’s wares onto people to get people using it, and getting the word of mouth machine running strong. I am looking into trading in my Android powered phone for a good WP7 device. I’m just waiting for Microsoft, or others, to come out with the applications that I want.

Meanwhile, the company has spent about $400 million in an effort to market is new Phone 7 OS. Google and Apple are integrating phone functionality with e-mail and other software packages and are eating into business areas previously dominated by Microsoft. The company now aims to attract more customers to its software with the advertisement.

Aerofoil Battery Life Extender Software Updated

By DustinPosted on

Aerofoil has a new version out. If you run a laptop or netbook and want to extend your battery life, you can use this software to disable things when you are on battery power. Very useful for many people on the go!

Aerofoil extends Vista and Windows 7 notebook battery life by:

  • Allowing you to manually disable Aero Glass.
  • Optionally managing Aero Glass user interface.
  • Optionally managing sound muting.
  • Optionally managing your chosen power plans.
  • Optionally managing Windows Sidebar.
  • Optionally showing a quick hibernate button.
  • Changing icon colour to show whether on battery or AC.

    • Microsoft Kodu: Game Programming for Kids

    By DustinPosted on

    My son enjoys playing video games, but like myself at his age, he isn’t content is just playing them. He want’s to program his own. My argument for owning a TI/99A and Commodore 64 back in the day instead of an Atari and NES (although, I had both, along with a few others) is that if you didn’t like a game, you could try your hand at making a better one. I didn’t do too bad, and I really wish I would have stayed in programming, but stopped just after high school after learning the basics of C.

    Microsoft has had their Kodu programming system out for a while, and I have looked at it briefly. How To Geek has a nice writeup on how to get started in this simple to use game programming (very little code, if any, is needed) and design software. If you have kids that want to design games, this is a great place to start.

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    S. Korea Pushing Gigabit Internet By 2012

    By DustinPosted on

    Who cares really that South Korea is going to have most of their internet customers on gigabit connections, the world is going to end in 2012, anyway… I care. I live in the US where internet speeds crawl compared to the rest of the world. 56k dialup is still a recent memory. Even our fiber optic connections are under 50Mb, and that is rare to find fiber unless you live in a MAJOR city. The MAX I can get is 7Mb DSL. No cable internet, no fiber. Previously, ironically in a much smaller town, I was able to get 10Mb. That’s not that fast compared to many other countries. The US is putting money into bailing out private business but has no plans on updating their communications infrastructure, which in turn would bring in more skilled jobs. Sorry to get political here, but with a lot of major technology companies in the US (Cisco, Microsoft, Intel), and the founding place of the Internet to begin with, we sure are lacking in the technology department lately.

    It is not aiming at 100, 200 or even 500 megabits per second (Mbps). Instead it has devised a national plan for 1,000Mbps connections to be commonplace by 2012.

    Inside Story On Kinect

    By DustinPosted on

    Wired has the inside story on how Kinect came to be, from Project Natal until today, just weeks away from being available. Kinect looks like a great accessory, even with the high price tag. You know it takes a lot of technology to get all this accomplished!

    The problem wasn’t vision. It was the task’s sheer impossibility. Finding cameras that could map a living-room in 3D was easy. Getting one reliably to decode the flailing limbs and shouts of 40 million Xbox users was a whole other dream. To pull this off, the hardware would require software “brain” capable of interpreting what the team calculated was a crushing 1023 spatial and aural variables at any given moment. And it would have to do this on the fly, with no perceptible on-screen lag.

    First x64 Rootkit in Wild

    By DustinPosted on

    The TDL3 rootkit was labeled “the most advanced rootkit ever seen in the wild” several months ago. That in itself was bad news. Now, the rootkit has been found in the wild with an x64 variant. Make sure to keep your anti-virus updated, and don’t go to sites that normally drop these kind of attacks.

    The dropper is being dropped by usual crack and porn websites, but we soon expect to see it dropped by exploit kits too, as happened to current TDL3 infections.