Over at Download Squad, we learned that the game Tetris is 25 years old today. Seems like it hasn’t been that long, but I bow to the demands of the calendar.
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While there, we see that baseball manager, and Twit(terer) Tony LaRussa seems to have brought a lawsuit against Twitter because someone was pretending to be him on that service. Who knew anyone took this stuff that seriously? Maybe Tony should start his own social networking site. He could call it Whiners.
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Over at Technology for Mortals, reviewer and former ZDNet columnist George Ou gives his very favorable opinions of the Asus Eee PC 1008HA, which looks like a MacBook Air, but without the high admission charge.
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Unfortunately, the Microsoft dollar has effects that are wide ranging, so a site like ghacks, that would normally steer clear of such things, is reporting on the highly publicized, and moneyed Bing.
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From the site For Free on Internet, we learn how to obtain a totally free, though not latest revision, copy of Everest Ultimate Edition. Those not familiar with this will be happy to find that it is a benchmarking software similar, and some say superior, to SiSoft Sandra.
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While on our travels of overseas sites, we must stop by VNUNet, as it is a very good place for articles about things that require getting the straight scoop, without any exaggeration. It is also a great place for getting full-version software, totally free, and without nags or other entanglements. Sometimes you will have to leave an e-mail address, but that helps you further, because then upgrades from the same producer are thrown at you as a registered user, for much less. for example, this link, gets you the very latest version of Ashampoo Burning Studio, which is very good, and devoid of all the baggage of the latest Nero builds.
as 4 Free on the Internet puts it –
For your information : Ashampoo’s marketing is very aggressive-in-a-positive-way after becoming their client . You’ll always receive by mail impressive discount offers for upgrades . So if you’ll like Ashampoo Burning Studio 2009 you’ll have the opportunity to upgrade to the latest Ashampoo Burning Studio 8 ( and not 2008 ) for just a few bucks .
Enjoy !
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When we make our way to Neowin , where unprofessional journalism looks better, We find a story that Microsoft is closing down Hotmail access through Outlook Express on September 1, 2009. No loss for many, but lots of people swear by it. I’ll never know why. Instead, download the Windows Live Mail, along with the other live offerings, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised. The software is still in beta, and freezes on my single core machines every now and then, but I’ve never lost anything, not one time. It’s a small annoyance that hopefully they will work out soon. Interface A, Convenience A, Execution B-, Price Free. How can you beat that. (it also works well as an aggregator, if you have several accounts. It works nearly as well as Outlook 2003, but with limited scheduling and calendaring. This seems to have been coming for a time.
If you’re still using Outlook Express for checking your Windows Live Hotmail, listen up. Microsoft will be cutting off your access in three months. On September 1, 2009, the support for Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV), the protocol that Outlook Express and a handful of older clients currently use to access Hotmail, will be discontinued.
As Neowin reported in April of last year, Microsoft originally planned to cut off access for Outlook Express users on June 30, 2008. However the WebDAV protocol got a stay of execution after users complained that it was too soon. Microsoft’s management agreed and gave users another year to make the migration. Microsoft has stated that these changes are necessary to support the larger and larger mailbox sizes that Hotmail supports. The say that that due to WebDAV’s age, it can no longer keep up with the demands placed on it.
Outlook Express was last included with Windows XP. Windows Vista includes Windows Mail, but it does not feature the direct Hotmail connection features that were present in Outlook Express. Windows Vista users who wish to connect to their Hotmail accounts can use Windows Live Mail, which uses Microsoft’s new favored protocol, DeltaSync. Users of Outlook Express who wish to continue using the client can reconfigure the client to connect using POP3, which was added to Hotmail in March 2009.
So, if you want, you can be stubborn, and still use Outlook Express, but give the Live Mail a try, you might like it a lot!
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At Tech Connect, we see that perpetual blowhard Steve Ballmer is at it again, this time threatening to move Microsoft work off shore –
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, has spoken out about how he feels that higher taxes will have consequences that he believes Washington have yet to consider. Ballmer says that if Congress enacts President Obama’s plans to impose higher corporate taxes, a sensible thing for Microsoft and other multi-nationals to do would be to move jobs offshore.
“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said, according to Bloomberg News. “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S.”
Last month, the president announced a plan to rewrite tax law by preventing U.S.-based multinational companies from “deferring” and keeping profits offshore, which can lower their tax bills.
Business groups have opposed the president’s plan strongly, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says it will “impede growth in the U.S. economy, (and) cause the loss of jobs.” The National Foreign Trade Council called it “counterproductive.”
Microsoft employs about 95,000 people worldwide, and about 56,500 in the United States.
Call me a reactionary, but it sounds like just another way for Microsoft to justify layoffs here.
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And of course, we had the Microsoft decision engine, Bing go Live, or did Live go Bing? Either way, lots of dollars were involved. An obscene amount, if you believe the trades. What will be interesting is when people (the unwashed masses) decide that Bing is just another search engine, and perhaps not as good as Google.
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and of course, if you want to get the best browser, for all major platforms, there is –
