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  • XP Activation Blows

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    I decided today to upgrade my desktop's BIOS. Of course, Windows decided that this was a big enough change that I needed to reactivate. Not suprising, but what was suprising was the trouble I had to get to in order to reactivate. Apparently, Microsoft changed the activation policy a while back so that you can't reactivate a copy of Windows over the net. Unfortunately, at least in my case, it didn't say this when I tried to activate, it simply hung forever on the "Detecting Connection..." screen. So, after about 20 minutes of waiting and retrying, I decided to try phone activation. That ended with the same result 3 times in a row. The automated attendant said, "Sorry, I couldn't activate your copy of windows" and hung up on me. So I do some searching online and no one seems to have any information on the problem except that you need to speak to a customer representative... unfortunately, none of the options given on the phone let you speak to any live customer representative. Not wanting to settle for a broken desktop, I tried calling again and mashing the 0 button. I had to wait about 30 seconds for all the messages to finish before it worked and I was informed that I was being transfered to a live representative. Finally, after entering a new product key and clicking a few buttons, they were able to provide me with a working code. Now, why in the hell was this so hard to get working? At the very least, Microsoft could add a little message after the failed activation that says, "If you are sure your installation ID is correct, please press 0 to speak to a customer service representative." Apparently, the rep I talked with knew I needed to enter a different product key simply by looking at the first couple numbers of the installation ID, so why can't the automated service make the same judgement and transfer me straight to a rep after this first 6 digits instead of making me say the whole thing and then hanging up on me?

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  • XBOX360#

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    Developers can now use C# for XBOX 360 programming. Sweet.

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  • DMCA Reform

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    The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has been wreaking havoc on consumers' fair use rights for the past seven years. Now Congress is considering the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA, HR 1201), a bill that would reform part of the DMCA and formally protect the "Betamax defense" relied on by so many innovators.

    HR 1201 would give citizens the right to circumvent copy-protection measures as long as what they're doing is otherwise legal. For example, it would make sure that when you buy a CD, whether it is copy-protected or not, you can record it onto your computer and move the songs to an MP3 player. It would also protect a computer science professor who needs to bypass copy-protection to evaluate encryption technology. In addition, the bill would codify the Betamax defense, which has been under attack by the entertainment industries in the "INDUCE Act" and the MGM v. Grokster case. This kind of sanity would be a welcome change to our copyright law.

    Last year we sent 30,000+ letters of support for the DMCRA, and the bill got a hearing on Capitol Hill. It's time to double that number - take action at the link below, then urge your friends and family to support HR 1201, too!
    [1] http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=115

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  • MySpace.Com does .NET

    4 Comments

      Aber Whitcomb, CTO, MySpace.com
    • 65m registered members (#2 trafficed site on net, passing google, ebay, MSN)
    • using SQL Server 2005 and ASP 2.0
    • next-gen portal, social networking platform
    • 9m members - converted to ASP.NET
    • saw significant perf gains
    • tool advantage of full OO
    • 17M members - launched middle tier cache with ASP.NET
    • 64bit asp.net, used huge amounts of ram, reduced server count
    • 26M Members - SQL Server 2005 64Bit
    • MySpace Home Profile page .NET 2.0 perf gains
    • Reduced CPU usage from 85% to 27%
    • Reduced web farm from 246 servers to 150

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  • Rapid Revolution

    2 Comments

    It seems that the people at Adobe/Macromedia just can't get it through their heads that the Flash player doesn't compete with the Windows OS as a platform, it competes with ASP.NET. If they want to get it up to par for desktop application development, they have a very long way to go, but they could start by making it so that you can launch a SWF file in standalone mode from explorer after you install the darn plugin on your machine.

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  • Josh Robinson Xbox > PS3

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    A while back, a guy named Josh Robinson, who was working on PS3 dev for Sony caused quite a bit of a stir when he mentioned that, from what he was hearing from people working with the XBOX360 and PS3, the XBOX360 was just plain better:

    "To hear people talk, you’d thing that a processor revolution was about to happen. So I’ve been pretty excited to say the least. Now in my opinion it doesn’t matter how good the PS3 is. If the XBOX 360 is better, then it doesn’t really matter how the cell processors work or how good they say it is. Realistically one of them will be better over all. Now I’ve spoken with people who are on the technical side of the PS3. I’ve also talked with people on the technical side of the XBOX 360. The consistent comment I am hearing from people on my end is, “The XBOX 360 is better”. They are saying that it is capable of just doing more. (shrugs) Now take that for what its worth. If you watch all the videos on the PS3 they will say how much more powerful it is than the XBOX and vice versa. Im just telling you what I am hearing. " [1]
    Well, he got fired for these comments, not suprisingly. PS3Week has an interview with him about this whole ordeal. [2]

    [1] http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27287

    [2] http://www.ps3week.com/blogs/ps3week.php?title=title_6&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

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