From ZDNet:

Microsoft is planning to add a new, opt-in "super standards" mode to Internet Explorer (IE) 8 - a move of which some developers are critical.

IE Platform Architect Chris Wilson shared the details of how Microsoft plans to provide the greater standards compatibility, which it has promised for its next browser release via a January 21 posting to the IE Team Blog.

Wilson said Microsoft is planning to offer developers three modes in IE 8: the existing quirks mode, which will be compatible with current IE pages and applications; a "standards" mode, which will be the same as what's offered by IE 7 and "compatible with current content"; and a third, super standards mode that will require the insertion of a element to guarantee the highest level of standards compatibility.

More on this from Chris Wilson, IE Platform Architect

and Aaron Gustafson, member of the WaSP-Microsoft Task Force.

OK. I can see the writing on the wall. Can you?

From ZDNET

Reminder: Microsoft to push Silverlight to business users this week

"...but this week - specifically on January 22 - Microsoft will make its Adobe-Flash-alternative Silverlight available via WSUS, as well as via Microsoft Update (MU). In order to have Silverlight 1.0 pushed to users, admins will need to select it; it will be an optional, not automatic, download."

From the Silverlight Home Page

Microsoft(r) Silverlight(tm) is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows.

Some of that writing we were talking about, over at WikiPedia.

California and several other U.S. States have asked a District Judge to extend Microsoft's antitrust case settlement for another five years,[35] citing "a number of concerns, including the fear that Microsoft could use the next version of Windows [expected in approximately 2010] to 'tilt the playing field' toward Silverlight, its new Adobe Flash competitor", says a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article.

The "White Space" between your digital TV Channels seems to be Prime Real Estate for the uber-tech-companies.

This exploration of the white spaces is part of the general-spectrum "land rush" that is taking place as American TV evolves. As TV stations transition from their current analog signals to digital by early next year, there will be spaces between channels. These spaces are not currently regulated or licensed, and Microsoft, Google and other companies want to mine it for wireless broadband service.

The companies interested in the white spaces have formed an alliance, appropriately known as the White Spaces Coalition. The group includes Dell, Earthlink, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Philips.

I didn't expect to read this today:

Secunia has found that the number of security bugs in the open source Red Hat Linux operating system and Firefox browsers far outstripped comparable products from Microsoft last year.

From VNUNET:

Microsoft is reminding IT managers that the scheduled 12 February rollout of Windows Server Update Service will include an automatic upgrade to Internet Explorer 7.

Companies wishing to remain with IE6 have been offered guidelines explaining how to prevent the automated update taking effect.

If the update service is configured automatically to approve Update Rollups, IE7 will be downloaded and installed to workers' PCs when the release becomes available.

IT administrators will need to disable the auto-approval rule before the deadline to prevent the download.

Microsoft claimed that the move was prompted by security concerns.

Many companies will choose to remain with IE6 as some web-based applications experience issues running with IE7.

This is just plain eerie. (from Discover Magazine, via Gizmodo)

"We set up a situation common in nature - foraging with uncertainty," Floreano says. "You have to find food, but you don't know what food is; if you eat poison, you die." Four different types of colonies of robots were allowed to eat, reproduce, and expire.

By the 50th generation, the robots had learned to communicate - lighting up, in three out of four colonies, to alert the others when they'd found food or poison. The fourth colony sometimes evolved "cheater" robots instead, which would light up to tell the others that the poison was food, while they themselves rolled over to the food source and chowed down without emitting so much as a blink.

Some robots, though, were veritable heroes. They signaled danger and died to save other robots. "Sometimes," Floreano says, "you see that in nature - an animal that emits a cry when it sees a predator; it gets eaten, and the others get away - but I never expected to see this in robots."

From the Tech Blog over at the Houston Chronicle:

Remember how fast ME was swept under the rug? Think it might happen again with Vista?

Microsoft's executives insist the company listens to its customers. Many of those customers have indicated they'll skip Windows Vista and consider Windows 7 when it comes out.

Their wish is apparently Redmond's command.

Wolfgang Gruener at TG Daily says he's obtained a leaked road map for the next version of Windows, and it shows Microsoft has put the operating system on a faster track:

Several industry sources have confirmed to TG Daily that a very early version of Windows 7, previously code-named Blackcomb Vienna, already has been shipped to "key partners" as a "Milestone 1" (M1) code drop for validation purposes. A roadmap received by TG Daily indicates that the new operating system will be introduced in the second half of 2009.

Via Wizbang

REYKJAVIK, Iceland - Bobby Fischer, the reclusive chess genius who became a Cold War icon by dethroning the Soviet world champion in 1972 and later renounced his American citizenship, has died. He was 64.

Fisher died in a Reykjavik hospital on Thursday, his spokesman, Gardar Sverrisson, said Friday. There was no immediate word on cause of death.

Born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Fischer was wanted in the United States for playing a 1992 rematch against Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia in defiance of international sanctions. In 2005, he moved to Iceland, a chess-mad nation and site of his greatest triumph.

Garry Kasparov, the former Russian chess champion, said Fischer's ascent in the chess world in the 1960s and his promotion of chess worldwide was "a revolutionary breakthrough" for the game. But Fischer's reputation as a genius of chess was eclipsed, in the eyes of many, by his idiosyncrasies.

"The tragedy is that he left this world too early, and his extravagant life and scandalous statements did not contribute to the popularity of chess," Kasparov told The Associated Press.

From NEWSFACTOR.COM, by way of the InstaPundit

Publishing in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, the Stanford researchers have shown that by using silicon nanowires as the battery anode instead of today's graphite, the amount of lithium the anode can hold is extended tenfold.