DirectX started out as a rogue operation at Microsoft.  Back in 1995, the future of gaming at Microsoft was something called WinG.  But a group of renegades at Microsoft had a different vision and created DirectX.  Now, at 10, DirectX has evolved into quite a powerful, fully featured, game development environment.

GameDaily Biz has an interview with Chris Donahue at Microsoft over the past and future of DirectX and what it'll mean as Longhorn approaches.

Over on the WinCustomize.com news page I gave my two cents on today's ruling.  Based on the poll I saw on News.com, 2 out of 3 people disagree with the ruling.  What a shock.  "But...I don't want to have to pay for other people's work..I want it for free.." 

I know a lot of people who pirate software, games, music, movies, etc.  I don't harp to them about it.  What ticks me off are the companies that actually make a business model out of serving pirates.  eDonkey and Kazaa and the like made millions of dollars by enabling people to steal other people's stuff.

And in turn, they have harmed consumers in ways most people don't realize. Copy protection has gotten nastier, DRM has become a household term, and licenses have gotten more and more restrictve.  Not that such schemes don't get cracked -- they do -- but the record industry (whom I'm no fan of either) and the like have figured out that those who don't pirate can be made to buy more stuff with more DRM to make up for those who would have bought stuff but were able to download it for free from Kazaa or something.

Such services cheapen the value of hard work too.  The other day I read someone complaining how WindowBlinds was "too expensive".  It's twenty bucks for crying out loud.  That's just a bit more than a Pizza dinner.  A decent cooking knife costs $50. An AutoScanner is $140 (and I can tell you with some experience that the production/profit margins on these things is pretty significant). Cheap shoes are $50.  Stuff costs money.  Yet we'll see someone complain that a software product that took years to perfect that people run every day for years that costs $20 is too expensive.  And why? Because places like Kazaa have made software look worthless. 

People will complain about paying $40 for a game that took two years to develop and provides support to the user but you rarely hear the same people think twice about paying $40 for a small box of legos where the buyer will never interact with the company.  Places like Kazaa and their ilk devalue intellectual property.  And the results hurt us all in ways that people don't realize. 

Software piracy isn't as huge of a deal as many make it out to be, but the mainstreaming of it through these peer-to-peer services were steadily making piracy something that even the newbie down the street was able to do which definitely takes revenue away from hard working software developers, musicians, etc.

Today was a big win for those of us who value intellectual property.  Companies like Grokster and Kazaa and others who profit off of enabling people to conveniently steal software, music, videos, etc. are now on notice thanks to today's Supreme Court ruling on the issue.

The Supreme court found that peer-to-peer providers are indeed liable for how users make use of their network.  I for one am pretty pleased with this outcome on a number of levels.

A few years ago, Napster took the world by storm. Its developer was hailed as a visionary and the company became a household name.  But many developers, including us, were pretty unhappy with the whole thing. Automated piracy is not revolutionary or innovative.  Many companies (including Stardock) had thought of such file sharing concepts in the past but did not invest in them because it would be difficult to keep people from pirating.  But companies and individuals with fewer scruples not only went forward with such ideas but profited greatly from them and won both fame and fortune.

These companies exist, IMO, purely to profit from people pirating other people's work.  Perhaps these guys will find real jobs now and earn money honestly.

The Supreme Court wrote:

"There is no evidence that either company (Grokster or StreamCast) made an effort to filter copyrighted material from users' downloads or otherwise impede the sharing of copyrighted files," Souter wrote. "Each company showed itself to be aiming to satisfy a known source of demand for copyright infringement, the market comprising former Napster users."

While the court will, in future cases, need to clarify some of the elements of its ruling, I think this is a big win for people who create intellectual property.  I don't have a huge angst about piracy per se, but I have a lot of angst about companies in the business of profiting from it.

Scientists have found a way to bring people back from the dead. Sort of.  The first successful test subjects were dogs which were drained of all their blood, replaced with saline solution that was just above freezing and then revived 3 hours later with no brain damage.

This could be a boon for battlefield casualties as well as for those in accidents where a lot of blood has been lost.  There is also great potential for this to be used to put someone into hybernation for the long term to prevent someone from dying.

Paul Boyer has concluded his icon-a-day series, the most extensive on-line icon creation tutorial ever!  And as an encore, he has packaged them up using IconPackager 3 (which, btw, is a free upgrade for IconPackager 1/2 users).

Icon Package

Icon-A-Day Tutorial Index

The Dangeruss project is now underway.  Russ Schwenkler, one of the all time great skinners has consented to let us update his entire library of WindowBlinds skins to use the latest/greatest features.  And the person doing the update it one of today's greatest skinners, Mike Bryant.   Already, two skins are done. Envision and Liquid 2.  For the rest of the summer, you will see Dangeruss Skins being updated bringing the best of Russ's classic style with MikeB's state-of-the-art talent.

Softpedia has an interesting article about Longhorn.  Is Microsoft's Longhorn design proactive or reactive?  That is, is the development of Longhorn based on Microsoft's own vision or is it playing "me too" to Google and Apple?  And as a result, is Microsoft gambling the future of Windows by seemingly hastily refocusing on these feature?

Personally, I think Microsoft has more than enough talent on hand to do what needs to be done.  Windows XP is a very solid OS, and SP2 makes it quite secure in the bigger scheme of things.  So what "problem" does Longhorn really need to solve? I can think of 3 basic problems in Windows XP that Longhorn needs to address:

1) Search.  It's ridiculously time consuming to find stuff in Windows XP.

2) Display.  Monitor resolution is being held back by the OS.  I want to be able to run at 2800x1600 someday but what good would that do me? I wouldn't be able to see anything on Windows XP, it would be tiny.  I want to be able to run at very high resolutions and have my GUI, text, icons, scale appropriately.

3) Security. SP2 does a pretty good job overall on tightening things up. But sometimes I feel like it's a bit hacked.  I just want my network stuff secure. I want to know I can surf the net and read my email without worrying that someone's installed a key-logger on my machine or something.

I think Microsoft can deliver on all 3 items.  But I too worry that Microsoft's desires to compete a little bit with everyone may distract it from these core things.  RSS integration? Who cares. Fancier Media Player? Whatever.

Microsoft is announcing the results of a long-running study that pits Linux vs. Windows 2003 Server and finds Microsoft Windows to have an overall lower cost of ownership and better security. Wipro surveyed 90 companies in the U.S. and Western Europe with 2,500 to 113,000 employees where both the Windows and open source operating systems were simultaneously being run. When the costs of updating are distributed across the size of the environment and evaluated on a per-asset basis, the study shows Microsoft software to be less expensive to patch than open source equivalents. These findings confirm what many customers are experiencing in their deployment scenarios.

Source: Neowin.net

James McDaniel does a radio show on gadgets (hardware and software).  This month he's covering WindowBlinds along with flash backs of After Dark (the screen saver) and some talk on the Xbox.  Check it out.

Microsoft is planning to support RSS in many of the programs it will be bundling with Longhorn such as the much anticipated IE 7.  But is this a good thing? Some fear Microsoft will end up embracing and co-opting the RSS standard. Read the whole thing.