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Wow. I was using NotePad++ for sometime. Hope this is different.
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When it comes to backing up and restoring your PC, Windows 8 took a few steps forward and a few steps back. Your settings and apps in the new tablet-y interface (yeah, we're still calling it Metro) are automatically backed up if you use a Microsoft account.... There's also a new backup tool on the desktop side of things, but this has its limits too.... One problem is neither File History nor the Metro restore feature are complete backup tools. The ability to clone and restore your whole PC, files, settings, and applications — by creating a System Image — is gone, or seemingly gone. Excellent backup tools are built in... you just need to know where to find them.
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Microsoft's Xbox adventure in Japan began years before Bill Gates' 2001 keynote speech. When the Xbox was being created in Redmond, Bachus and Seamus Blackley, the two Xbox co-creators who spent the most time in Japan, always knew the market would be a challenge. At the turn of the century Japan dominated the console games industry with a whopping thirty per cent of the market. Here's what went wrong. Rules that apply to you as an outsider don't necessarily apply to insider products.
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This project aims to allow any type of device to be controlled by a common web interface (IR, X10, etc.). Originally written by Daniel Myers, Alex Wilson, and Alex Zylman, this rewrite serves to improve extensibility by using a plugin architecture with a minimal core and plugins for features or protocols. Roll your own remote control for TVs, audio systems, lights... pretty much anything.
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Computer processors are, for programmers, almost magical devices that do their commanded bidding. However, delving a bit deeper and figuring out what is really going on inside the processor can be an incredibly rewarding experience, and can help programmers write well-performing code as well as understand how the code they write actually gets executed. In this code, I'll go over how a program goes from human-readable form (i.e. assembly language) into a processor and how the processor executes a program. From Computing with Transistors, a series of blog posts describing how computers work from the ground up.
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Today, the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) is announcing that it’s completed its three-year quest to finalize the HTML5 specification.... But despite the fact that the specification is now feature complete, meaning nothing more will be added to it, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done before HTML5 reaches the finish line in 2014, and there are unanswered questions about how the group plans to deal with video, an essential part of the web that has yet to see any clear resolution. Implementation is everything.
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I'm building a startup on HTML5 (in particular, HTML5 audio), and the state of things is ugly for 1 reason:
Politics.
Here's a sample, just from the HTML5 <audio> element:
- IE refuses to implement open-standard codecs (e.g. OGG) because they are best served by making proprietary codecs popular in order to starve their non-commercial competition, Firefox. It becomes a check in the feature list, one that's missing from Firefox.
- Firefox refuses to implement MP3 audio and other commercial formats because they refuse to implement commercial codecs.
- Safari on iOS cripples HTML5 audio[^] because they would rather developers build native apps where Apple gets 30% purchase price.
- About the only one who is playing nice is Google. Their only fault is they lie: on Droid 2.2 devices, they lie reporting they support HTML5 audio when queried programmatically, but in reality they supported 0 audio formats. Reporting HTML5 audio support, but 0 audio formats, is useless and deceptive.
This is just a sample of the headaches I've had to deal with; the real state of HTML5 is much messier. Still better than the alternative, though.
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You can also use the app for the requisite music playback, because no one wants to go in silence.
This could start a whole new genre of music and social media. What should they call a tweet from the loo?
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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The integrity of Windows Store applications is an important issue. It forms part of the value proposition to developers, of the store itself; not only does the store provide easy, reliable billing, distribution, and updating, it also provides at least some degree of protection against piracy and other kinds of exploitation. If Windows 8 can't provide this then competing platforms (such as iOS) and competing delivery mechanisms (such as the Web) become more appealing. Windows 8 apps can be hacked for piracy or ad removal. Should Microsoft do more?
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Anyway, we have to follow Windows 8.
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