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Okay, so a few days ago in the Intellectual Property Rights Education thread, I posted: http://ms-os.com/Themes/AlmostGlass/images/icon-quote.gif CannotResolveSymbol wrote:I really like what companies like Altera or Freescale have done...**have a freely available student version of their software that's eitherrestricted for non-commercial use or has reasonable limitations thatwould prevent its use in a commercial environment but still allow fullaccess to all the features that a student would need. I'm seeingmore and more companies taking this approach, too:* I just found outyesterday that Autodesk has student versions of many of their productsavailable for free download, and Adobe's making a first step into thiswith their freely available Flex Builder. I just wish Microsoftwould jump onto this bandwagon, too...* The Visual Studio ExpressEditions are a good start, but some of the artificial limitations(especially around VC++, with the lack of MFC support and around thelack of extensibility in all the products) would make a full-blownversion of Visual Studio quite appealing. And now we come to this morning...* the latest news from Channel 8? http://ms-os.com/Themes/AlmostGlass/images/icon-quote.gif Channel8 wrote:Bill Gates talks about Free Software, Students, and Technology How would you like a free copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008? How about the entire Microsoft Expression Studio? Not enough...... how about Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and more? For once, something that sounds too good to be true really is this goodand really is true. Starting today (or soon in some areas), studentsworldwide will be able to download our professional development and design tools for free! It's called DreamSpark and it is upon us. Microsoft really did it!!!* I'm amazed, especially considering that Microsoft's previously limited access to these development tools to MSDN Academic Alliance members. :D* Yay Microsoft and Jeff's team!* Now if only I could get verified as a student (waiting on JourneyEd to send me the link or tell me what else I need to do; my school's not on the list for automatic verification). More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9Tu5CPVoP8 More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Orange has the HTC Shift Mobility Site, AL - 7 minutes ago Users can easily switch between Microsoft Windows Mobile and the fuller Microsoft Windows Vista mode, at the touch of a button. ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

Just wondering who is happy with their online drive provider (i.e. filesanywhere, drivehq). More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

I am taking a C++ class and at the same time, I am dissecting Quake 3's InvSqrt() function. Anyway, I have two questions, both of them are compiler related. For my C++, I have an assignment where I need to write a program that will take another program's (or perhaps its own) source and reformat it. I am a bit more advanced than my peers and I want to implement support for things that the assignment does not require, such as for loops and switch statements. Because of that, my professor suggested that I write a scanner to extract the tokens from the source code and then reassembly them in a nice neat manner.* I am not familiar with compiler theory (although I did learn a bit of formal language theory in my discrete mathematics class), so would someone be so kind as to point me in the right direction so I can get started? Since I have began dissecting Quake 3's InvSqrt() code, I have improved it (although most of the things I did were done by other people before me, I just essentially put them toegether) to make it more accurate and easier to understand, hopefully without compromising any of its speed by using a union (someone at gamedev.net beat me to this, according to his numbers, the code is 20%-33% faster with a union, depending on whether or not you account for the loop overhead that running the same code in a loop a hundred million times imposed) to make it faster, using a better constant (provided by Chris Lomont), adding a second Newton approximation and using appropriate commenting (i.e. I am clearly indicating in the source code that the initial guess is a Taylor Series approximation and that the steps following it are Newton approximations) to make it easier to understand. With these changes, its output is almost identical to the output of the built-in functions (i.e. 1.0 / sqrt(x)) and is suitable for replacing instances of the built-in functions (of the form 1.0 / sqrt(x)) in just about all applications on 32-bit systems (64-bit systems might need another Newton approximation, although most applications will not need the extra precision). Now, I am curious as to how fast my new function is compared to the original function Quake function and I would like to work out the actual number of cycles necessary to compute it, the original function and the built-in functions. I have disassembled the code in Visual Studio (and some of the things Visual Studio is doing do not make any sense to me, as it appears to be send stuff in addition to the result back to main memory) but I cannot find any documentation on how many cycles instructions the Intel Core 2 Duo. I also am having trouble finding out whether or not the built-in sqrt() function is an assembly instruction or actual code. Would someone please point me in the correct direction on this? More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

ok about 5 minutes ago I totally lost the fraking plot - if there is a god please help me find one piece of working hardware magically combined with software before I find myself swinging from a bridge ... My failing keyboard combined with a wireless adapter that won't stay up results in Mallet->Keyboard=pieces of happiness. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2193/2276323156_b6be8124a1.jpg?v=0 I think besides Vista a mac or at least osx is the only other real option - anyone get much experience with virtual machines on that? still gotta keep my day job with .net ;) I just want something fast that works - not posting to bash what I'm running now, I'm out of bash right now. More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

I can't seem to find any tutorials anywhere on creating a dialog box with PHP and AJAX. Does anyone here know of a tutorial or have a snippet that will get me started? Much thanks! More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Microsoft concedes, posts Vista SP1 to TechNet, MSDN Computerworld, MA - Feb 15, 2008 By Gregg Keizer February 15, 2008 (Computerworld) Microsoft Corp. kept its promise and released Windows Vista Service Pack 1 yesterday to subscribers of its ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Get back your Search after installing Vista SP1 Geekzone, New Zealand - 50 minutes ago I for one love Windows Vista Search option and has helped me a lot. Its really better than Google Desktop Search and integrates very well with your Vista. ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Get back your Search after installing Vista SP1 Geekzone, New Zealand - 4 minutes ago I for one love Windows Vista Search option and has helped me a lot. Its really better than Google Desktop Search and integrates very well with your Vista. ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> No update from Microsoft on Vista SP1, Media Center problems ZDNet Blogs - 51 minutes ago Following reports of installation problems by some users attempting to deploy the final version of Windows Vista Service Pack (SP) 1, Microsoft is still not ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

Anyone familiar with CONTEXT_INFO?* I am using C# and am trying to pass a string in.* I belive the variable insists on binary information so i've been trying to convert from string to binary with no luck.* Any ideas how i can get a 20 character or less string into this sql sever varaible then have it converted back to string within my trigger within the dbase? Thanks More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> No update from Microsoft on Vista SP1, Media Center problems ZDNet Blogs - 17 minutes ago Following reports of installation problems by some users attempting to deploy the final version of Windows Vista Service Pack (SP) 1, Microsoft is still not ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

give it time, PG rated so watch anywhere :) ok so maybe I'm exaggerating ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Microsoft Pushes Out Windows Vista SP1 Prerequisites On Patch Tuesday DABCC.com (press release), FL - Feb 16, 2008 Along with the monster patch batch it issued yesterday, Microsoft Corp. also prepared Windows Vista users with what it said are the last two prerequisite ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Tweaking Out Performance Before Vista SP1 NetworkWorld.com, MA - 24 minutes ago If you are running on a under spec'd machine or you just want to squeeze out that list little bit of performance from Windows Vista, there are some simple ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

Interesting post on eliminating static-ness from languages by Gilad Bracha. Thoughts? C More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

123456 value abcd I don't know why it was done like this (to stop XmlDocument/Xpath)? But it made me smile none the less. More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

Miguel de Icaza is well known for his work on Mono, the open source implemenatation of .NET. He and his band of merry developers have written a Silverlight implementation that runs on Mono called Moonlight. They really are a creative and talented bunch. I wanted to chat with him about why he is so adamant about free software and why he chooses to implement OSS versions of our .NET technologies. Miguel is very smart. He's also very passionate about software. You've met Dragos Manolescu before. He's one of Volta people (the Live Labs side of the team) and is a computer scientist who has experience in the open source world and an interesting perspective on the tensions between profit-making business and free software given his years in the consulting business where he mangaged both proprietary and open source accounts. This is a very*interesting and casual conversation (there is no battling here, no arguing, but there is debate, of course...). We don't go too deep into the Open Source conundrum (check out Port25 for more heady OSS stuff, from Microsoft's perspective, anyway...) Enjoy! Low res version here. Listen to the podcast(MP3) Listen to the podcast(WMA) Download the Video Watch the Video More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

In this interview John Hart, QA Lead on the Visual Basic Team, shows us the new DataRepeater control that has just been added to the latest Power Packs release on the Visual Basic Developer Center. Power Packs are free Add-Ins, Controls, Components, and Tools for you to use with Visual Basic to make developing applications even easier. The new DataRepeater control allows you use standard Windows Forms controls to display rows of your data in a scrollable container giving you more flexibility and customization than standard grid controls. Enjoy, -Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community http://channel9.msdn.com/Photos/383940.jpg Watch the screencast(WMV) More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

Is there a place I go to download Vista SP1? More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

and some teams are not happy. Read what the guys at the Renault team have to say regarding the Microsoft' software and its predecessor. http://www.formula1.com/news/features/2008/2/7366.html Seba More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

In the latest episode of the Windows Weekly podcast, Leo and I discuss Vista SP1 on MSDN, Yahoo still looking for other suitors, Apple TV Take 2, Flickr/Picasa/Live Photo Gallery, Firefox 3 Beta 3, and photo books! More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

Max does a great job showing how to go about building a PC over on channel8. He did a really great job editing the video and leaving in the really useful parts. Take a look: http://channel8.msdn.com/Posts/2019/ :D Now I want to go and build a machine like that.....if only I had the 4 grand. Btw, congrats Trix and Lloyd! :| More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

What does 'Microsoft', 'Yahoo' and 'Google' have in common? Have you ever noticed ? They all have the alphabet 'O' twice. They all have 2 Os . And 'O' is the the only alphabet found in all 3 names. And no other alphabets are found common in each other. There may be many more company names containg 2 Os , but these 3 are always in the news. More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds