Microsoft's Zune music player and online content store combo is "way
off launch" in Europe and the UK, the company has admitted. The
"earliest date" it might appear here? The end of 2007, or possibly even
2008, a Microsoft executive has revealed.
"The earliest date it will be in the UK is towards the end of 2007.
However, it could easily be 2008," Microsoft media and entertainment
alliance manager Dene Schonknecht said, according to UK trade paper New Media Age.
----
I'm so glad I ordered mine from the US I'll have it by the 20th :-)
In the office we've been building dual Xeon systems on the SuperMicro X6DH8-XG2 motherboard with 2 Seagate Momentus SATA RAID Hard Disks Mirror (RAID 1) for the operating system. Two weeks ago while at a client site we spotted a problem in that, Quicktime would not play .mov files from the C: Drive, it would just lock the system out. Quicktime .mov's would play from all other drives but not the main windows OS drive. Strange I thought, everything else will play on the c: fine.
After much install of Quicktime, Operating System images and video drivers I got to the point that I was just banging my head against a brick wall. Nothing would get QuickTime to play the files.
Until this morning when a colleague had the bright idea to have a look at the version number of the Raid Controller. I'm using the onboard Adaptec IC5HR SATA Raid controller, a quick search of the SuperMicro site and I found version 4.0.36.2 of the driver when what comes on the motherboard CD is 2.x.x.x. A quick rev of the driver and guess what Quicktimes now play on the raid.
UK copyright law should be changed to include a ‘private right to copy’
that protects users of ipod and other MP3 players, according to a new
report published today (Sunday) by the Institute for Public Policy
Research (ippr). The UK’s current copyright laws mean that millions of
Brits break the law each year when they copy their CDs onto their
computers.
ippr says that the forthcoming review of Intellectual Property,
set up by Chancellor Gordon Brown and chaired by Andrew Gowers, should
update the 300-year-old copyright laws to take account of the changes
in the way people want to listen to music, watch films and read books.
ippr recommends a legal ‘private right to copy’ that would allow
people to make copies of CDs, or DVDs for personal us. The report says
a new right would legalise the actions of millions of Britons without
any significant harm to the copyright holders.
The Government should reject calls from the UK music industry to
extend copyright term for sound recordings beyond the current 50 years.
The report argues that there is no evidence to suggest that current
protections provided in law are insufficient.
The Government should act to ensure that Digital Rights Management
(DRM) technology does not continue to affect the preservation of
electronic content by libraries. The British Library should be given a
DRM-free copy of any new digital work and libraries should be able to
take more than one copy of digital work. It also recommends that
circumvention of DRM technology should stop being illegal once
copyright has expired.
Mark Lloyd has been making some test renders for a film he's making based around a world in which the border between computer VR and the real world are some what blurred, below is a test of the first composites.
Police have released a CCTV image of the suspect A man has been defecating in trains across south-east England, causing damage costing £60,000 to repair.
British Transport Police have released CCTV images of the man, who has struck on at least 30 trains since August.
He waits until he is alone before committing the offence, smearing excrement inside carriages.
Adobe have released yet another new technology( excuse me but it looks a lot like Audition, Sorry I mean Cool Edit Pro , Whoops don't you mean Sound Edit 16 on Adobe Labs. So yes you've guessed its a sound editing tool at heart, Adobe Soundbooth
is a rebranding exercise for yet another on of their products.
The US is to
corral "like-minded" nations behind a global immigration database after
proving with a trial link to British computers that such an ambitious,
global plan is technically feasible.
Allies of the US have joined it in talks to formulate an
international policy framework that would allow the sharing of
immigration databases, effectively creating a global border control.
Their
aim is to stop criminals and other undesirable migrants at a
vast, biometric border that is likely to include, at the very least,
the EU countries, Australia, and Canada.
Troy Potter, biometrics programme manager for the US Department of
Homeland Security's biometric border control programme, told The
Register
only those countries "of like mind" would be allowed to join the
scheme: "People with similar goals, aspirations, laws and ability to
implement such a scheme.
"It's about keeping out folks from countries, to have more of a
global border per se," he said. "Shouldn't like-minded countries be
told when someone's been kept out of the US? That's a necessary next
step [because] immigration has become a worldwide issue.
Frank Paul, head of large scale IT systems at the European
Commission, hinted to an audience at the Biometrics 2006 conference
last week about EU support for such a scheme.
"We trust everyone enrolled in the US and they trust everyone in the
EU system. Then I don't see why the systems shouldn't be linked in the
future," he said.
Terrorists would be the prime target of the system. Terrorism had
been the reason the US government gave for setting up US-VISIT, the
immigration database for which Potter is biometric manager. The US
database had yet to snare a terrorist, and the Department of Homeland
Security has since been advertising it as a means of keeping foreign
murderers out of the country.
An international agreement for sharing immigration data would also
target criminals and "habitual immigration violators", Potter said.
"If there's a murderer in another country we would rather not have
that murderer in the US, especially if they are on the run," he said.
But he stressed the system would not finger normal people, or "Joe
Public". People's privacy would have to be respected, he said.
"We would violate the privacy laws of individual countries if we
shared data as we wanted to," said Potter, but added: "The last thing
we want is for someone who has changed their ways and then we keep
harassing them."
It could take years for the US and its allies to form an agreement
that deals with all the emerging privacy and legal concerns about
sharing immigration data. Other developments at the Department for
Homeland Security could complicate matters further. It is developing a
permanent link between immigration and criminal databases, while US law
enforcers also want links to civil databases so they can get a full
biographical history of people who catch their interest.
"There are fine lines and that's where these agreements are not
going to be easy. But this is not routine data sharing on everyone.
This is not big brother," said Potter.
Similar concerns have slowed the progress of the European Visa
Immigration System (VIS). A continent-wide version of the US plan,
legislation to allow the VIS is stuck between the European Parliament
and member states in the Council of Ministers.
The concern is that European efforts to share information for
immigration are being subsumed into a broader security effort that has
no legal obligation to Europe's proud data protection authorities. This
has created tension between member states and the European Parliament
over other controversial data sharing arrangements - the US trawling of
passenger name records and secret snooping on banking data handled by
SWIFT being two recent examples. In neither case is the EU's authority
to impose data protection laws that would protect citizens from being
caught up in the zealous hunt for terrorists being conducted by the
security agencies.
The European VIS is being built by European Commission civil
servants anyway, and will be completed in 2007. There will simply not
be any legal basis for the system to be switched on.
The US faces the same problem, said Potter: "
The
policy and legal
framework is not in place to do routine data sharing between countries.
but that's something we were discussing."
The UK's Home Office and US Department of Homeland Security have
already trialled a link between their immigration databases, which
Potter said was successful.
"It was a technical trial. It showed we could share data between
countries if agreements were there so we could do it," he said. "Our
biometrics were compatible...when the legal and policy framework
catches up, we can do it." ®
"Thanks to Sony's heavy handed tactics, popular game importer Lik-Sang is closing its doors.
All Lik-Sang customers are having their orders cancelled and refunded.
Any attempt to place a new order redirects your web browser to the news
of Lik-Sang's demise."
From the announcement: "'Today is Sony
Europe victory about PSP, tomorrow is Sony Europe's ongoing pressure
about PlayStation 3. With this precedent set, next week could already
be the stage for complaints from Sony America about the same thing, or
from other console manufacturers about other consoles to other regions,
or even from any publisher about any specific software title to any
country they don't see fit. It's the beginning of the end... of the
World as we know it', stated Pascal Clarysse, formerly known as the
Marketing Manager of Lik-Sang.com. 'Blame it on Sony. That's the latest
dark spot in their shameful track record as gaming industry leader. The
Empire finally won, a few dominating retailers from the UK probably
will rejoice the news, but everybody else in the gaming world lost
something today.'"
Many thanks to Sony for ruining it for the rest
of us. I hope that your business model makes up for the customer
goodwill you're setting on fire today. Now where am I going to put my down payment on a Wii
Now that I been running Media Centre Edition for a few months I have got a good collection of recorded programmes on my hard drive, so I turned on the google-fu and looked for a program to convert the Media Centre dvr-ms file format (MPEG2 with metadata) into something more manageable like a Wmv or Divx. Whiule divx doesn't support the dvr-ms format there are a number of bits of source code out there for converting dvr-ms to wmv. But before i got to the source I came across a utility DCUT for Media Centre Edition. The utilty intergates into the MCE and appers under 'More Programes' which is what you would expect as it has been written as a side project by a Microsoft Developer.It allows you not only to edit the dvr-ms files but also compress them to wmv format. Result I have got lots of lovely edited files and saved a shed load of space. Plus Dcut's conversion process runs with low priority, and doesn't adversely affect other MCE functions. So you can go one watching and recording while to slowly converts in the background.
Well it seems I've reached the 100 articles milestone and it looks like I'm not going to stop blogging any time soon. Due to Sunday being a bit of a boring day and that I'm still getting over my man-flu. I thought I'd test out the Google-fu and google'd my name and I was suprised to find my site at the top the of the google listings.
Well I've got to say at least they did seem to response 24hours after they said they would "next working day" which would have been Friday. But it would nice of Microsoft to have told there paying customers that they were going to have "maintenance" and not an outage. If it was a outage i wouldn't mind 'shit happens' but "maintenance" is normally planned and there is no excuse for not telling the customer there are not going to have Outlook services till next week, ok I can log into the web interface but it not as easy when your in a hotel room on expensive wifi, you want to be able to sync and go.
I like the bit about the refund of the support call...
Below is the email I recieved.
---
My name is (BLANK). I am from the Microsoft Office
technical support team. This is regarding the case number (NOT TELL). I have taken the ownership of this case
and I will be working with you on this case.
The msn server is
undergoing server maintenance that is the reason for this issue on your
computer. The servers are updated one by one.
Due to this reason you will not be able to use
msn accounts in outlook. However you
would be able to use the web-mail service of MSN.
So please bear with us till next week. We would send you
a mail and communicate to you when the maintenance is done. Sorry for this
inconvenience caused to you.
If you have used your free incident for this support it
will be returned back to you and if you have charged for this issue it will be
refunded. We will keep this case open for next week and keep you updated on the
status of the issue.
Thanks for using Microsoft Product Support
Services!
Flew to Finland this morning, not as cold as I thought it would be, nevermind. I'm told they don't get proper winters here anymore there is no moreicehockey on the lakes etc all due to global warming. Apparently they have just had the hotest summer in 100 year this summmer and it looks like its continuing. Anyway must sign off as the freebroadband @ freebroadband.radissonsas.com doesn't seem to be working and i'm using Sonera HomeRun at silly money for 60minutes. i've contacted them and hopefully they sort it if not as part of the Radisson 100% Guest Satisfaction Guarantee, i get to stay free.
1) You can house a company anywhere even in a Massachusetts Town house, just don't go how to the basement as there is a Trapdoor down there.
2) Six minutes is the average duration that someone watches a movie in a hotel room, you may ask how I found this out, well it was from a Sheraton Hotel rep in a Boston Logan Airport Bar. I wonder what they were watching and I wonder if they were male?
3) You can have your cake and eat it, There was a 2 for 1 deal on Jaffa Cakes at Tescos.
4) Exchange is the only way to go. After my Hotmail Plus account packed up again on Wednesday night and no response from Hotmail support for 48 hours.. There seems no more reason to keep it when your playing £14.99 for something that isn't supported. So I've moved all email over to my domain with Fasthosts.
5) In the highway code it says reflective road studs may be used with white lines.
White studs mark the lanes or the middle of the road.
Red studs mark the left edge of the road.
Amber studs mark the central reservation of a dual carriageway or motorway.
Green studs mark the edge of the main carriageway at lay-bys, side roads and slip roads.
Yesterday I decided to take the plunge and try Abobe Lightroom.. Thanks Gee It's avalible in two flavours PC and Mac.
The advertising says that its been built from the ground up by photographers for photographers, helping solve your unique workflow problems. Well I've got to say that it really does take the effort out of coverting, touching up, add metadata, archiving etc. These are all jobs that I had to do is different packages and it brings them all under one roof in a interface that isn't just easy to understand its logical too with the library, develop and print tabs these are all features that are understandable as people have been using them for years in photography.and with the addition of the web tab getting your pictures online couldn't be easier. Example of the added metadata. This was metadata I put in for the copyright for my Flickr account
This is a screen grab of the interface taken while I was touching up some images of AutoClav 1.1 from Infest 06 in Bradford. Click on the image to expand it.
Unless someone can point out another bit of software that does all this I think I may just be buying a copy when it's release.
Below are the two photographs that have been published in the Las Vegas travel guide made by Schmap.. A link to the guides are on the right. I'm quite chuffed that they chose my pictures. Schmap make searchable maps, playable tours and
reviews for hundreds of sights and attractions, hotels, restaurants,
bars, parks, theaters, galleries, museums. Check them out
I've been away for the last week in Boston, MA and New York, I've got to recommend Boston in fall the colours of the trees were amazing and you just know that the snow is coming in a few weeks. While we were in Boston I we went to see see MTI Films in Providence, you guys Rock!.[1] They make a product called Control Dallies hopefully we'll be able to do some crazy things with this great product.
Thanks
to your spontaneous generosity, we raised over $80.000 on behalf of
Robert Anton Wilson in less than a week. This means he can be taken
care of by family at home or, if need be, in a managed care facility
for over six months.
If at the end of six or eight months all
of this money has been spent on care - and Bob has chosen to carry on
living - we'll see about what other financial solutions might be
possible, including another plea to his reading public.
But for
the time being, save your pennies and pence, give yourselves and each
other a hearty "job well done," and get back to the good work of
helping people think smarter and act kinder.
Another web leak of Microsoft's next version of Windows
Mobile - codenamed 'Crossbow' - pictures have popped up on the web to show the
upcoming operating system's vista style graphics.
Crossbow is due to ship to OEMs in Q4 to allow them
plenty of time to get devices ready for the OS' introduction in late
Q1/early Q2 2007. Crossbow is expected to give gadgets more a better
telephony experience and to improve its messaging technology.
Then in Q4 2007, and Microsoft will release 'Photon', the follow up to
Crossbow, to developers.
Early/leaked images from Cubase SX4, now its looking like Ableton Live and as ever the loyal fanbase at cubase.net already has tens of pages of people saying how much it's going to suck...good boys.....control room patching is here and channel strip is here,
Most people know how much I feel that our chimp/ape/monkey cousins are closer to human than some people classed as human well someone Danny Wallace with the help of the Horizon team has made a programme about the subject here's the blurb off the bbc website
Tuesday 10 October 2006, 9pm on BBC Two
Danny Wallace is on a mission to convince the world that chimps are people too. He
believes the time has come to make our hairy relatives part of the
family. Our primate brethren share 99.4% of our crucial DNA and are more closely related to us than they are to gorillas. This being so, should they be afforded the same rights as people?
The reason for this scientific showdown is simple. If chimps can
communicate, cook and reason, then how different are they to humans?
Armed with the latest scientific evidence, Danny travels the globe to
quiz primatologists, philosophers and animal rights lawyers to
investigate whether or not chimps should be classed as people
Nvidia is have announced the world's first DirectX 10-compliant graphics chip, the GeForce 8800 (codenamed G80), shipping in the middle of November. However, despite the advantage of early launch, demand for GPU will depend on penetration rate of the Windows Vista OS and availability of new PC games supporting DirectX 10.
Updates include the Shader Model 4.0 support, DirectX 10 will improve visualization and rendering capabilities utilised in PC games, it also see a reduction in CPU overhead,. It means that content developers will get additional space to write bad code and waste cycles.
Nvidia expressed the doubt that ATI's next-generation R600 chip, which is also expected to support DirectX 10, may appear in the market before 2007. Nevertheless, ATI will continue benefit from its close relationships with Microsoft around the Xbox 360.
Since DirectX 10 is positioned as a Vista-only solution, with presumably no ability to work with previous Windows versions, Nvidia's move to launch the GeForce 8800 in November should rather be considered as a symbolic step.
So far, Microsoft only promised that Windows Vista will run DirectX 9.0, allowing to later upgrade it to DirectX 10 via Windows Update. When Microsoft releases a DirectX 10-capable OS, ATI will perhaps catch up.
Calls to 0870 numbers and infomation lines at an outlandish 9p per minute for telephone calls that are usually answered by a computer, 0870 might be best described as the international dialling code for rip-off Britain.
A web designer has complied a list to circumvent that national-rate numbers and is sharing the numbers. On his website www.saynoto0870.com currently it lists 5,000 firms that publicise expensive numbers that often cost three times the cost of a call to a landline number. All you have to do is enter a company name and the website reveals a local geographical number and sometimes even details of a free phone line for a business. So enjoy the cheap 0870 calls.
Two men have been arrested after more than 40 police officers raided two addresses in Kent early this morning. Police were supported by officials from the Ministry of Defence. Both are suspected of having weapons prohibited under the Firearms Act.
The officers were investigating the alleged sale of weapons over the internet. Both addresses are still being searched.
Detective Eddie Fox of Kent's organised crime unit said: "Today's action was part of an ongoing enquiry. A number of items are being ceased and removed from the two locations for analysis and examination but we can't specify what they are at this stage."
Earlier this summer the government was criticised by the splendidly-named Quadripartite Committee which oversees government export strategy. The Times reports MPs were influenced by comedian Mark Thomas who helped a group of school children set themselves up as arms dealers.
But it appears this investigation involves historic weapons and the MOD officials were on hand to advise on safety.
UK arms exports average about £5bn a year, according to the Campaign Against the Arms Trade researchers using government figures.
The UK government publishes some information on licenses granted for arms exports, but not enough to work out the value of the trade. There's government information on exports available here (pdf)
