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A judge has now found Microsoft guilty of infringing on a patent owned by i4i. The patent in question refers to Microsoft Word and it’s use of XML, the method of which i4i apparently patented back in 1994 (and had the patent awarded to them in 1998), whereas Microsoft received their patent just last week.

The amount awarded to i4i was the amount sought by the company; however, the amount can be increased based on whether or not investigations state that Microsoft had a willingness to use the software, even though the software giant had previous knowledge of the patent (an i4i lawyer claims that Microsoft emails prove this theory). Not only that, but a judge can award i4i a court order that would block any further violations of their patent.

Although Microsoft will never actually cease to sell Word, i4i can be a real hellion in the process. Microsoft could process the XML as plain text, or just remove XML entirely; however, i4i claims that it does not want to keep Word off of the shelves, rather, i4i just wants to make money force Microsoft to remove or edit products that infringe on their technology.

Microsoft says that it will now appeal the ruling that awards i4i damages, and Redmond also has a choice to apply for a stay on the ruling.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft Word fares in Office 2010, one of the flagship products of Microsoft, along with Windows 7. What do you think?

         Hello, I was searching my computer to see new features in Windows 7 and I foun this really helpfull feature, Record steps to reproduce a problem. Problem Steps Recorder (PSR) in Windows 7 is a great little tool to record the steps to reproduce a problem in the computer. The captured data is stored in a MHTML document which is enclosed in a zip file. You can send the zip file to someone else who can help you fix the problem. Heare you can see a video on it  Record Steps To Reproduce A Problem. Heare are some screen shots.

PSR

PSR

After 10 years of production, game engine changes and adaptations, and a laundry-list of development issues, Duke Nukem Forever is still not out. But hey, at least we get Duke Nukem 3D for the iPhone. That news might seem like winning 10 cents in the lottery, but after playing the game, you’ll feel it more akin to winning 10 cents in the lottery and then getting zinc poisoning.

dukenukem_original

Duke Nukem 3D for the iPhone, developed by Machineworks Northwest, is a straight port of the iconic 1996 first-person shooter. Sadly, the many hours of gameplay are rendered more a chore than a good-natured stroll down memory lane with your crazy gun-loving, chauvinistic friend Duke. Marred by a broken control system and the absence of multiplayer features or secret levels, Duke Nukem 3D for the iPhone gives a “mighty boot” to already beaten-down Duke Nukem fanbase.

Like the original, Duke Nukem 3D for the iPhone puts the player in the boots of Duke Nukem, a gun-toting, chauvinistic blond-haired muscleman who is humanity’s only hope to fight the alien invasion and save the female population of earth from enslavement. It’s a first-person shooter that was innovative at the time for its level of interactivity with the environment and the non-linear levels. (Duke at one point sports his trade-mark jetpack to take the fight vertical.)

In that vein, Machineworks Northwest deserves credit for staying true to the source material. The iconic hard rock soundtrack is back, as is Duke’s not-at-all-dated one-liners. He’s got his full arsenal of weapons, including an RPG launcher, shrink-ray, shotgun, and so on. The levels are all ported from the original, making Duke Nukem 3D one of the longest iPhone games to date. Multiplayer, sadly, is not available with the current release.

People often forget, but 12 years ago, Duke Nukem 3D was the controversial game on the market. It featured strippers, mutated cops in the form of pigs, thinly-veiled digs at its rival Doom franchise, and a chauvinistic, gun-toting macho man as the protagonist. All of these elements are now on the iPhone (here, the strippers have more clothes on) but the controversy surrounding the franchise is no longer due to the content of the games but the development staff behind those games. The ongoing saga of recently defunct Duke Nukem Forever developer 3D Realms has overshadowed whatever offensive chicanery Duke could ever hope to inflict.

Perhaps 3D Realms was afraid of releasing an unfinished product, and after playing Duke Nukem 3D for the iPhone, I can see why. Duke has always been a bit of a stiff, but the iPhone touchscreen controls make him maneuver like Frankenstein dipped in liquid nitrogen. The controls go from frustrating to functional to unbearable over the course of the first few levels. There are two control schemes—“digital” and “analog.” The analog essentially creates two joysticks, one to manipulate movement, the other to manipulate aiming. The default settings are very sensitive, so some fine-tuning of this setup is required before use. Even then it’s a clunky setup as you’ll constantly have to choose between moving, aiming, and using the action buttons to shoot, jump, and duck.

As awkward as this setup is, the digital setup is no better. Four movement axes line the bottom parts of the screen, each one responsible for movement or aiming along an X-Y plane. One axis controls Duke’s backward and forward movement, one controls his left and right aiming, etc. This setup is actually preferable during the beginning levels, where you’ll encounter obstacles and enemies predominantly on your visual plane. This setup becomes absolutely useless, however, when you enter the later stages and need to have Duke aim to take out enemies in the sky or jump around the map. Then it’s impossible to aim his gun upwards while moving him in any direction.

A note about the graphics: This is a pretty straightforward port of the original 1996 release, complete with the original art (and yes, even the same voice acting). But I did notice some blurriness when it came to the enemy units, and on such a small screen any detail loss gets magnified dramatically.

Sadly, there are also some noticeable holes currently in this version of Duke Nukem 3D that fans of the series will notice. There’s no multiplayer and the secret levels are unavailable (currently unlocking a secret level will lead you to the main menu rather than the level). According to Andreas Vasen, President and CEO of Machineworks Northwest, those features will be available in an upcoming add-on.

While the controls make the game almost unplayable, Duke Nukem 3D is still a cheap pickup for iPhone users nostalgic for old-school first-person shooter action or chauvinism.

Duke Nukem 3D is compatible with any iPhone or second-generation iPod touch running the iPhone 2.2.1 software update.

Adding your personal John Hancock is easy if you follow these simple steps:

1. Scan your handwritten signature into the computer and save in PDF format. You can either scan directly to a PDF via the scanner’s software or use Adobe Acrobat’s File -> Create PDF -> From Scanner command. Alternately, you can first scan your signature as a graphic and then convert it to PDF format. Whatever technique you use to get your signature into PDF format, the important thing is that it must be a PDF cropped to the size of the signature itself.

For best results, write your signature using solid black strokes such as those you’d get from a felt tip pen, and a little larger than normal.

2. Once you have your signature PDF ready and saved in a convenient, permanent location on your hard drive, open the Acrobat 9 Preferences and go to the Security pane.

3. Beside the Appearance block, click the New button to open the Configure Signature Appearance dialog box, and, in that box, title your new signature with a descriptive name, something along the lines of “With Hand Signature” or “My John Hancock” would be perfect.

Select Picture shows a preview of the selected file, in this case the scanned signature.

4. In the Configure Graphic section, select the Imported Graphic radio button and click the now available File button.

5. In the Select Picture dialog box, browse for and open the PDF containing your scanned signature. It will open in the Select Picture dialog to give you the opportunity to confirm visually that it’s the image you want. Once satisfied, click OK to return to the Configure Signature Appearance dialog. You’ll notice that your hand signature is now a part of the digital signature preview.

acrobatscan_original

6. Fine-tune the appearance of your digital signature by deselecting some of the checkboxes in the Configure Text section or changing options under Text Properties. To create a digital signature that is exclusively your handwritten signature, for example, uncheck all the boxes in the Configure Text section.

7. When you’re satisfied, click OK to save the digital signature appearance, and then OK again to leave Acrobat’s Preferences. Note that in the free Acrobat Reader you can sign documents in this fashion (if that option has been enabled by the PDF creator in the original Acrobat document), but you cannot create new signature appearances that include images.

With a large circular stamp on the front the retail box, Brave: A Warrior’s Tale is very clearly labeled as a Family Game. After slogging through its short duration, it’s clear only a certain kind of family might be well served by purchasing this product. It’s not necessarily for the pre-teen market, since, as any Xbox gamer could tell you, there are plenty of sprightly youths making a racket over their headsets in Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3 servers and efficiently putting to shame the skills of their elders in the process. No, Brave is more for someone who’s barely touched a videogame, someone who’s never felt the joy of a level up or the satisfying jolt of landing a headshot.

In that sense, I’m basically writing to parents for the purposes of this article, since any child for whom this game would be appropriate wouldn’t necessarily know to browse for reviews. They might not even yet know how to use a keyboard, or be able to climb into a desk chair. If you’re a regular player of videogames, bail out of this article now. If you’re somewhat new to the scene but would still prefer a challenge or something more mature, click back over to our game review tab. Brave is only for the innocent and uninitiated, and even so, only manages to offer up a few interesting morsels.
The game plays like a skim milk version of The Legend of Zelda that’s been left out in the sun for a few days. It strikes the pleasure centers of the brain that flash and buzz during the course of a normal gaming experience like a bike ride down a hot windy street on trash day. Sometimes you’re in the clear and coast forward and all seems well, but then you pass into a foul patch and regret turning down the road in the first place.

It’s a tale told mostly in flashback, as a group of Native American children listen to a village elder prattle on about adventures past against a dastardly Wendigo spirit. During the course of the adventure you’ll upgrade your abilities, at first using sticks on fire to light things and read cave paintings, then later on gaining magical powers, throwing axes, and bows and arrows to battle against wolves, spirits, and rock golems.

Since this isn’t a game meant to confuse the player, all stages are built to be simple to move through. Minimap highlights and a strangely non-specific hint system are there to prod you forward, but given the limited space of each stage it’s near impossible to reach the point where you’re not sure where to go. What will be more of a problem is actually performing some of the actions.

The game plays like a skim milk version of The Legend of Zelda that’s been left out in the sun for a few days. It strikes the pleasure centers of the brain that flash and buzz during the course of a normal gaming experience like a bike ride down a hot windy street on trash day. Sometimes you’re in the clear and coast forward and all seems well, but then you pass into a foul patch and regret turning down the road in the first place.

It’s a tale told mostly in flashback, as a group of Native American children listen to a village elder prattle on about adventures past against a dastardly Wendigo spirit. During the course of the adventure you’ll upgrade your abilities, at first using sticks on fire to light things and read cave paintings, then later on gaining magical powers, throwing axes, and bows and arrows to battle against wolves, spirits, and rock golems.

Since this isn’t a game meant to confuse the player, all stages are built to be simple to move through. Minimap highlights and a strangely non-specific hint system are there to prod you forward, but given the limited space of each stage it’s near impossible to reach the point where you’re not sure where to go. What will be more of a problem is actually performing some of the actions.

What it does have, however, is a touch of variety. In addition to battle arenas, Brave will jump in a canoe, ride astride an eagle, hack his way up the sides of icy cliffs with picks, and spear fish floating beneath the ripples of ponds. The changes of pace are nice. The fact that only some of the sequences work consistently well is disappointing. Climbing with picks, alternating button presses to initiate swings with each hand, is a bothersome process it’s difficult to imagine anyone having a good time with. The canoe sections feel as though you’re gliding across glass, and adequate would be the most flattering way to describe the flight controls.

It certainly doesn’t help that the Brave’s visuals are terrible. It’s colorful, sure, but its world is decorated with textures drab and lifeless enough to give a Gamecube the giggles (Hey there, Wii version). There’s also the issue of the game’s progression structure, which adheres to the oh-so-familiar go forth and find a bunch of pieces of an ancient gizmo that when combined can defeat the ultimate evil. Then do it again. Then, oh yes, do it again. Considering the short bit of time required to make it through to the end, it’s surprising this kind of repetition was necessary. There’ll come a point where new ideas stop being introduced and an avalanche of rehashed challenges tumble over you until the final battle is underway, at which point you’ll likely be glad the experience is finally over.

brave-a-warriors-tale

 You are Alex Mercer. What exactly that means is initially unclear because this is a man who has lost his memory, but awoken in a morgue to a world in which he possesses untold power. A viral outbreak has claimed Manhattan, forcing the island into a military quarantine. The infected citizens are undergoing radical, monstrous changes — none more drastic than Alex himself. This anti-hero finds himself with the ability to shape shift and absorb other beings. As the most powerful being on a closed island, the entire city is your playground. And it is a game world that feels unfinished. 

Prototype is a single player, open-world action game in the style of Crackdown or The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. You play as a man gifted with superhuman powers and the option to go most anywhere you like and do most anything you want once you get there. It’s sandbox gaming with a heavy focus on pure action.

Though you play as a man bestowed with superhero power, Mercer is anything but heroic. There are no moral choices here. Mercer has vowed to destroy those responsible for his current situation and he has the means to do it. To gain new powers or refill your health bar, you’ll literally absorb other living beings. Find yourself a little low on hit points and you can simply grab an innocent bystander, crush his or her head, and then consume them for a quick boost. If you find yourself in a pinch with attack choppers chasing you through the roads, you can absorb a person and morph into their likeness to blend in with the crowd. As you work your way through the game you’ll unlock new and ever more exotic powers. There’s an air dash and a glide move that help you quickly travel from one side of Manhattan to the other. There’s a massive elbow drop that can destroy a tank in one hit. There’s even a whiplash arm that can be used to latch onto passing helicopters to hijack them, Just Cause style. These moves give Prototype its personality. These are what set it apart from most other sandbox games and make it worth a look. Sure there are a few guns to fire and some tanks you can drive around, but the real draw here is the fact that you can turn your arm into a giant blade and then dice monsters with it. Or, if you’re a bit twisted, the draw is the fact that you can grab a person by the neck and simply run across the city with their flailing body in tow.

But how long can you do flying elbow drops onto tanks or throw people off of rooftops before it gets boring? The world itself here is far from the most engaging…

The answer to that will vary by the player, but obviously messing around with the powers isn’t all there is to do in Prototype. The storyline involves 31 missions including everything from simple seek and destroy affairs to stealthy infiltrations to escort missions and massive boss battles. Most of these missions are standard in design. In fact, if you’ve played many open-world games, you’ve probably played identical copies of these in the past. And since repetition is oftentimes the name of the game here, you can be sure you’ll be doing uninspired tasks over and over again.

prototype

 Quite often Prototype follows the design philosophy of everything and the kitchen sink. Instead of fighting a few enemies, the game tosses dozens upon dozens at you. Then it throws in a few tanks and helicopters as well as a couple dozen innocent bystanders for good measure. It’s a design that creates a lot of tension, though I found the action too chaotic at times. Even the policing system is dialed to the max and too aggressive. You can’t do something as simple as run through the city while leaping off of buildings without alerting the Strike Teams, at which point you’re forced into some shape shifting or combat. This can make the basic act of exploration more work than it should be. There is very little downtime to counteract the high stress of the missions.

Prototype’s design leans heavily on the fact that you can refill your health by consuming victims at any time. Some attacks can drain half of your health bar or more. Others juggle you in the air leaving you open to frustrating combos from enemies. And sometimes you’ll think you’ve dodged an attack only to get hit a few feet away anyway. But it’s OK, because you can always go get more health, right? Not really. The action heavy sequences involve barely surviving to the next checkpoint or running in and out of the action ad nausea trying to stay alive. Skilled players won’t have too much trouble, but Prototype’s chaos could quickly become overwhelming for others. I found several points of the game to be unnecessarily aggravating to the point where I would have turned Prototype off and walked away if I weren’t reviewing it.

Alongside the main quest is a set of side missions called events to tackle at your discretion. Beat them and you earn some Evolve Points (EP) used to upgrade Mercer’s powers. Radical smartly hands out EP like candy. Complete just a mission or two and you’ll quickly find yourself spending EP to grab new powers and abilities early and often. It’s hard to stop playing when you know you’ll get a new move by making it through just one more mission.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a whole lot of variety in these events and I often found myself wishing they made better use of Mercer’s vast array of powers. Those included here are dominated by things like checkpoint races and killing sprees — things that have been done so often as side missions in games like this that they’re hardly worth mentioning. It’s cookie cutter game design at this point. There is one exception: A mission that tasks the player with gliding long distances towards a bulls-eye. Why aren’t there more imaginative events like this? You can throw a person hundreds of yards. Why not include some sort of shot-put event? There was a real opportunity to get creative here, but instead too many of the side missions directly mirror the mindless killing or limited stealth of the main game.

Last week, a bug was discovered in the Windows 7 RTM (build 7600) that was distributed to TechNet and MSDN subscribers. The bug occurs when a user (with administrator privileges) runs the “chkdsk /r” command on a non-system drive, and causes the following:

• “chkdsk.exe” consumes a lot of memory (over 90%)
• the computer becomes non-responsive and crashes

Unsurprisingly, the news had spread on various forums and blogs very quickly. Some described the bug as a “showstopper”, while others claimed that it could derail the Windows 7 launch. There are also several screen shots that have been posted on the internet.    

memory-usage-after-running-chkdsk-command

Microsoft has responded to the issue through the Engineering Windows 7 blog in an article discussing how they deal with bug reports, focusing on the ‘chkdsk.exe’ bug. Microsoft said that they didn’t find any reported crashes of ‘chkdsk’ after looking through crash telemetry and existing bug reports:

We first looked through our crash telemetry (both at the user level and “blue screen” level) and found no reported crashes of chkdsk. We of course look through our existing reports of issues that came up during the development of Windows 7, but we didn’t see anything at all there. We queried the call stacks of existing reported crashes (of all kinds, since this was reported) and we did not find any crashes with chkdsk.exe running while crashing.

Then they had to face the fact that they were unable to reproduce the bug despite all of the tests that they’ve conducted to try to do so:

We then began automated test runs on a broad set of machines—these ran overnight and continued for 2 days. We also saw reports related to a specific hardware configuration, so we set up over 40 machines based on variants of that chipset, driver, and firmware and ran those tests. We were not hitting any crashes (as mentioned, the memory usage was already understood). Because some were saying the machines were non-responsive we also looked for that in manual tests and didn’t see anything. We also broadened this to request globally to Microsoft folks to try things out (we have quite a few unique configs when you think of all of our offices around the world) and so we had several hundred more test runs going. We also had reports of the crash happening when running without any virtual memory—that could be the case, but that would not be an issue with this utility as any program that requests more memory than physically available would cause things to tip over and this configuration is not recommended for general purpose use (and this appears to be the common thread on the small number of non-reproducible crashes).

Meanwhile they tried checking forums and external blogs to gather more information about the bug but failed to find any technical details or a crash dump. Microsoft says it will keep on working on it until they are satisfied that they have systematically ruled out the crash or defined the circumstances where it can happen.

I’ve tried running the command on my F drive (using “chkdsk /r F:“) and did notice a surge in the memory usage (by “chkdsk.exe), however didn’t witness a crash. Do think this is really a ‘critical’ problem? Or is it just making a storm in a tea cup (in other words, giving it a lot of unnecessary attention)?

Hello this is Robert the founder and creater of StormShadow productions. Everybody knows I have a youtube well I posted a new video macking a contest and you can winn a psp1000 you can go to my youtube page or gust click the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOzPBPhShE0. I will anounce the winner on Saturday so please go on the video and it will explain everything. Well that was all for today so peace out.

Well if you don’t know my I am alsow on youtube there I have all my tech videos and tutorials. I like to make videos about tech stuff. My main intrest is computers so I made a youtube showing some cool and easy tutorials. If you have a youtube please subscribe my so I will make more videos often. So this is basicly all so peace out!

Microsoft confirmed late on Friday that it plans to kill off the Windows 7 ‘E’ version for Europe.ballot screen to showcase different browsers that end users can select. Earlier this week Microsoft officials confirmed this ballot screen will be available for XP and Vista users too.CNET those who pre-ordered Windows 7 ‘E’ through a recent discount offer will get the full version, as Microsoft had promised. Microsoft will now be selling Windows 7 upgrade copies and a higher-priced full version (for those without a previous copy of Windows) similar to the rest of the world.

In a statement a company official confirmed Windows 7 E is no more:

In the wake of last week’s developments, as well as continuing feedback on Windows 7 E that we have received from computer manufacturers and other business partners, I’m pleased to report that we will ship the same version of Windows 7 in Europe in October that we will ship in the rest of the world.

One reason we decided not to ship Windows 7 ‘E’ is concerns raised by computer manufacturers and partners. Several worried about the complexity of changing the version of Windows that we ship in Europe if our ballot screen proposal is ultimately accepted by the Commission and we stop selling Windows 7 ‘E’. Computer manufacturers and our partners also warned that introducing Windows 7 ‘E’, only to later replace it with a version of Windows 7 that includes IE, could confuse consumers about what version of Windows to buy with their PCs.

Microsoft has proposed to the EU, the idea of a

According to  CNET those who pre-ordered Windows 7 ‘E’ through a recent discount offer will get the full version, as Microsoft had promised. Microsoft will now be selling Windows 7 upgrade copies and a higher-priced full version (for those without a previous copy of Windows) similar to the rest of the world.