The Insider News

PCMag.com[^]:

Microsoft's failure to adhere to the European Commission's "browser ballot" requirement could result in formal charges, according to a new report. As noted by Reuters, EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told reporters in Warsaw that the organization is "working on" opening a formal proceeding against Microsoft for its browser missteps. Almunia said he does not expect the investigation to last too long since Microsoft has already acknowledged its mistakes, Reuters said.

Hal's (Im)Perfect Vision[^]:

Microsoft could have had most of the 107,000 Windows Phone 7.5 apps running on Windows 8 on day one. It would have been a fairly (read VERY) easy thing for them to do. It seems like arrogance on the part of Microsoft Windows Division President Steven Sinofsky is all that kept this from happening. And it could prove to be a fatal mistake on his part. But that isn’t what this posting is about. Despite Microsoft’s possible missteps, developers would be quite foolish to ignore Windows 8/RT’s new “Windows Store” applications.

Richard Banks - Agile and .NET[^]:

With Windows 8 being RTM’ed and a slew of new devices to be launched on October 26 (just a few weeks away) I can’t help but wonder where the new keyboards are. Sure, Microsoft has announced some new keyboards and mice, but they’re not gesture enables and have no charm keys on them. The keyboard is just a fairly standard keyboard with the new Windows logo on it. Boring!

Github[^]:

GitHub is a goldmine of resources for game developers. I'd like to introduce you to five open source projects that'll help you build your first, or next, amazing game. Check them out for your weekend projects, Game Jam entries, or day-to-day projects at work!

Erik McClure[^]:

I see a lot of people get excited about extreme concurrency in modern hardware bringing us closer to the magical holy grail of raytracing. It seems that everyone thinks that once we have raytracing, we can fully simulate entire digital worlds, everything will be photorealistic, and graphics will become a "solved problem". This simply isn't true, and in fact highlights several fundamental misconceptions about the problems faced by modern games and other interactive media.

The Next Web[^]:

Google today announced a huge change for Google Apps, including its Business, Education, and Government editions. As of October 1, users will no longer have the ability to download documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in old Microsoft Office formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt). Assuming the Google Docs included Google Apps will be following in the footsteps of the Google Docs available to consumers, this means that the search giant will still support exporting into these Microsoft formats: Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx), and PowerPoint (.pptx). Of course non-Microsoft formats will continue to be supported: ODT and RTF for documents, ODS and CSV for spreadsheets, SVG/PNG/JPEG for presentations, as well as PDF, TXT, and HTML for all three.

IEEE Spectrum[^]:

Since the dawn of the space age, more than 20 000 objects larger than a softball have accumulated in Earth’s orbit. About 1000 of those objects are spacecraft that carry active payloads, serving many valuable missions for mankind. But the rest could best be called junk, the by-product of thousands of launches and routine spacecraft deployments, nearly 200 explosions, and several collisions. And this junk poses a serious problem.