We recently reached the 1 billion mark in internet users. This video presents an interesting introduction to some of the complexities we face as we look forward to the future of the internet and computers in general. As more and more devices connect to an ever growing network we really do have to rethink how we have built the network itself and possibly consider new ways of getting us from 1 billion to 1 trillion.

Trillions from MAYAnMAYA on Vimeo.

Posted in: General News by Tim /
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Modern Warfare 2 is a perfect example of why porting games directly from one system to another doesn’t work, especially if it’s from console to PC.

When porting games to other systems, the game needs to be scaled or changed to compensate for the differences in hardware capabilities.

Read about how Infinity Ward basically shot themselves in the foot with PC gamers.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/11/pc-modern-warfare-2-its-much-worse-than-you-thought.ars

Posted in: Video Games by Dan Tavenner /
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House Resolution 558 declares the week of December 7 (in honor of Grace Murray Hopper’s birthday) to be National Computer Science Education Week:

RESOLUTION

Supporting the increased understanding of, and interest in, computer science and computing careers among the public and in schools, and to ensure an ample and diverse future technology workforce through the designation of National Computer Science Education Week.

Whereas computing technology has become an integral part of culture and is transforming how people interact with each other and the world around them;

Whereas computer science is transforming industry, creating new fields of commerce, driving innovation in all fields of science, and bolstering productivity in established economic sectors;

Whereas the field of computer science underpins the information technology sector of our economy, which is a significant contributor to United States economic output;

Whereas the information technology sector is uniquely positioned to help with economic recovery through the research and development of new innovations;

Whereas National Computer Science Education Week can inform students, teachers, parents, and the general public about the crucial role that computer science plays in transforming our society and how computer science enables innovation in all science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines and creates economic opportunities;

Whereas providing students the chance to participate in high-quality computer science activities, including through science scholarships, exposes them to the rich opportunities the field offers and provides critical thinking skills that will serve them throughout their lives;

Whereas all students deserve a thorough preparation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education, including computer science, at the elementary and secondary levels of education;

Whereas these subjects provide the critical foundation to master the skills demanded by our 21st century workforce;

Whereas computer science education has a number of challenges to address, including distinguishing computer science from technology literacy, providing adequate professional development for computer science teachers, exposing K–12 students to computer science concepts, and attracting more participation by females and underrepresented minorities to the field;

Whereas Grace Murray Hopper, one of the first females in the field of computer science, engineered new programming languages and pioneered standards for computer systems which laid the foundation for many advancements in computer science; and

Whereas the week of December 7, in honor of Grace Hopper’s birthday, is designated as “National Computer Science Education Week”: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives—

(1) supports the designation of National Computer Science Education Week;

(2) encourages schools, teachers, researchers, universities, and policymakers to identify mechanisms for teachers to receive cutting edge professional development to provide sustainable learning experiences in computer science at all educational levels and encourage students to be exposed to computer science concepts;

(3) encourages opportunities, including through existing programs, for females and underrepresented minorities in computer science; and

(4) supports research in computer science to address what would motivate increased participation in this field.

Posted in: General News by Eric Smith /
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Windows 7 was a cinch to install.

The problem last weekend? The download off of MSDN wasn’t complete, it was missing about 400MB. I tried downloading 3 other times and the MSDN downloader would never get the entire file for some reason or other.  Possibly due to my machine cutting it off when physical drive space ran low.

Once installed, 7 automatically went out and downloaded any drivers it needed which was just my ATI video driver.

Not much to say here, the installer took care of everything and required almost no input until the point at which the network, time zone and user info were requested.

Total install time: ~15 min

That includes 2 required reboots and a third that was entirely my fault. I booted off the disk after the first reboot which made me have to reboot the machine again.

Lesson of the Week:
“A required CD/DVD device driver is missing. If you have a driver floppy disk, CD, DVD or USB flash drive, please insert it now. Note. If the windows installation media is in th which is oddly surprising that Microsoft can write an OS that has problems.e drive, you can safely remove it for this step.”

This error is caused by either a corrupt download or ISO burn.

Posted in: crtl-alt-del by Dan Tavenner /
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My experience with Windows 7 has been aggravating, and I didn’t even make it 2 steps into the installer.

My goal: Turn my desktop into a machine dual-booting Win7 64-bit and XP 32-bit.
Progress: FAIL

To be specific, this was using Windows 7 (64-bit) RTM off of the MSDNAA site. A 90-day trial of WIn7 (32-bit) did not have the following problem, presumably because I could launch the installer from XP (32-bit) instead of having to boot into the installer, this is unproven yet.

I put the disk into the DVD-rom drive, reset my desktop and boot into the 7 installer. The disk loads windows files needed from the installer and then you’re greeted with a background image. At this point you might as well leave for 10 minutes and actually accomplish something instead of staring at the installer’s background. By the way, after a weekend of trying to get the installer to work, I’ve concluded that Microsoft added that cool-blue background with a small green plant leaf and white hummingbird as an attempt at calming people and keeping them from burning 7 on the spot.

So you’ve waited the 10-15 minutes and are now at the language/region selection screen. You hit next and are greeted with the main install screen where you unknowingly hit the Install button and are greeted with yet another 10-15 minute wait as setup loads. So wait, if setup is loading just now…what was loading in that previous 10 minute pause?

Anyway, finally setup has loaded all the way, at which point you can say hello to the error message you’ll be looking at over the next few days. If you’re lucky, you’ll get right through this part without ever getting this message:

“A required CD/DVD device driver is missing. If you have a driver floppy disk, CD, DVD or USB flash drive, please insert it now. Note. If the windows installation media is in th which is oddly surprising that Microsoft can write an OS that has problems.e drive, you can safely remove it for this step.”

Now apparently there are a few fixes for this. Including booting and installing off a 4gig USB drive, installing and earlier beta build of WIn7 and then upgrading to RTM and other similarly rediculous ideas. On top of this, I’ve seen people that had this error with Vista64.

So at the end of the weekend, I can only guess that Microsoft has yet again slacked on the drivers for even the most basic devices.
-Here ends my (hopefully informative) rant

Fixes/Workarounds I’ve tried:

• Feed the installer any 64-bit mobo driver I could find (it only took the ATI raid driver as hardware compatible, I don’t use raid)
• Search for ATA ATAPI updates (only ones for XP which doesn’t help, couldn’t find a 64-bit update/driver)
• Give it cdrom.sys from Vista 64-bit (didn’t have cdrom.inf to go with it which I’m guessing is why it didn’t recognize the file)
• Give it a XP 32-bit install disk to pull drivers from (I was desperate)

I’ll be trying again next weekend with different approaches, stay tuned.

Update: http://csclub.uis.edu/?p=218

Posted in: crtl-alt-del by Dan Tavenner /
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