Google’s $500 M. budget for defending YouTube?

The wave of rumours flooded the IT community, and the player everybody talks about right now isn’t anyone smaller than Google with his new acquired videosharing portal YouTube. Google Inc Chief Executive Eric Schmidt on Tuesday denied a widely circulated rumour that his company had set aside $500 million to settle copyright claims by media companies as part of its deal to acquire video-sharing site YouTube Inc. Speaking to more than 500 Internet industry insiders at the annual Web 2.0 Summit, Schmidt said an anonymous blog post asserting YouTube has reserved $500 million for legal claims, out of the $1.65 billion take-over price, was “not true.” Web and sports entrepreneur Mark Cuban, an outspoken critic of the Google-YouTube deal, late last month posted a claim from an anonymous blogger that he had inside information on the secret reserve plan.

In a two-part question, Battelle, organizer of Web 2.0 Converence in San Francisco, asked whether Google’s deal included a secret reserve for legal claims and, secondly, what progress Google was making in striking licensing deals with media companies to avoid threats of legal action. “The former is not true,” Schmidt said in response to the question of whether a “very large sum of money was set aside to buy peace” between YouTube and big media companies. “The latter is,” the Google CEO continued. “We have visited as many media companies as we can” to reach copyright licensing deals that can insulate both YouTube and Google, he said. Television and video producers, along with music labels, are angry that pirated versions of their copyright programming are frequently posted by people to YouTube’s site and have become a prime attraction of the video site. We all know YouTube is full of licensed, but is there someone who wants to start the war?

Windows Vista finally Gold

Microsoft announced today that Windows Vista has been released to manufacturing. Vista will mark the first big shift in Microsoft consumer operating systems in over 5 years. According to Neowin, the RTM version of Vista will be available for MSDN subscribers sometime after November 10, while businesses should begin receiving their copies on or shortly after November 30. Vista will be launched into the retail sector on January 30, 2007.

With Vista, Microsoft promises increased security with an improved firewall and Windows Defender and User Account Control. Other fresh additions include integrated desktop search, Internet Explorer 7.0, Windows Sidebar, Windows Sideshow, built-in system diagnostics, improved gaming support, fully integrated Speech Recognition as well as support for Windows SuperFetch, Windows ReadyBoost and Windows ReadyDrive.

Windows Vista will be available in four distinct retail versions:

• Windows Vista Home Basic, $199/$99.95 (full/upgrade) - Provides a basic platform for home users who want to keep tabs on email and Internet activity. Comes standard with Vista’s new Search Explorer, Sidebar and Parental Controls.
• Windows Vista Home Premium, $239/$159 - Builds on Home Basic by adding the Windows Aero interface, Windows Media Center functionality, Windows Tablet PC technology and integrated DVD burning.
• Windows Vista Business, $299/$199 - Supports the Aero user interface, offers improved document managing and Windows Tablet PC functionality.
• Windows Vista Ultimate, $399/$259 - Vista Ultimate combines the functionality of Vista Home Premium and Vista Business.

And then one special version: Windows.Vista.Corporate.Edition.CRACKED-SomeGroup for $0.00

Microsoft adds 3D Maps into Live Search

Microsoft on Monday took the wraps off Virtual Earth 3D, a new version of the company’s mapping application that enables users to “fly” through three-dimensional models of cities from directly within their Web browser - complete with virtual billboards. The idea is that users can type a query into Windows Live Search and click on the “maps” tab to bring up results in a local context, with the ability to view two-dimensional aerial and bird’s-eye imagery, or the new 3D models offered by Virtual Earth. As part of the change, Windows Live Local is being re-branded Windows Live Search Maps.

The service is poised to compete with Google Earth, a standalone application that complements the search giant’s online mapping service. But Microsoft says its offering takes the concept to another level, by bringing the virtual world closer to the physical world. Instead of grey scale boxes of buildings like in Google Earth, Virtual Earth 3D uses photographs to create realistic, textured buildings. Microsoft says it developed the cameras it uses to capture the images in house, as well as creating an algorithmic program to build the textured 3D models. The only glitch on this nice new features is that 3D maps are now offered only for 15 cities in the USA. Kinda big glitch…

Flash code donated to Mozilla by Adobe

There are still quite surprising news in the world of tough software & internet business: Adobe announced at the Web 2.0 conference on Tuesday that it was donating the scripting language engine from Flash to the Mozilla Foundation, where it will become an open source project called Tamarin as well as being integrated directly into the Firefox Web browser. Specifically, Adobe is opening up its ActionScript Virtual Machine, which forms the core of Flash Player version 9. The most recent release in June added improved debugging, faster start times, full runtime error reporting, and better performance. The code is the largest contribution to Mozilla since the organization was founded in 2003. The basic idea of the effort is to accelerate the development of the standards-based language in order to promote the development of rich Web applications, along with making them run more smoothly in Firefox.

“Now web developers have a high-performance, open source virtual machine for building and deploying interactive applications across both Adobe Flash Player and the Firefox web browser. We’re excited about joining the Adobe and Mozilla communities to advance ECMAScript,” commented Mozilla Corporation CTO Brendan Eich. Great partnership…

Alcohol Version 1.9.6.4629 is out

Alcohol Software has updated it’s Alcohol 120% to version 1.9.6.4629. Changelog is as following, containing some nice new features:

- SPTD driver version 1.35.
- Full Windows Vista RC2 (Build 5744) compatibility 32Bit and 64Bit editions.
- RMPS V2, a totally new generation of our RMPS feature
- Option to install Alcohol with or without Virtual drive function.
- EWSS (Enhanced Weak Sector Scanner).
- Shell Context Menu support in all x64 platforms. (XP, Windows Server 2003 and Vista RC2).

The most interesting new feature, even if not stated in changelog, is that now it’s possible to burn a disc and use the disc instead to mount an image on a virtual drive. The cracked version isn’t out yet, the last one is four weeks old release Alcohol_120_v1.9.5.4521-DIGERATI.

Microsoft Office 2007 finished

Microsoft has wrapped up development of its forthcoming Office 2007 productivity suite and released the code to manufacturing. The application is slated for release to businesses on 30 November, together with Windows Vista and Exchange 2007. The consumer launch is scheduled for early next year. Office 2007 was originally scheduled for release by “late 2006″ but the product’s roll out was moved back to coincide with the forthcoming launch of Windows Vista. The productivity suite has been in beta since November last year and has since been downloaded by more than 3.5m people, touted Microsoft.

The suite’s main new feature is a user interface that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates unveiled last year at the Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles. The interface is designed to change with the current task being performed, which Microsoft expects will better inform users of the available features. Internal Microsoft research had shown that the features most requested by users were already available in the software but were difficult to find. Office 12 will also offer new business intelligence tools to help employees find and analyse information. I was playing a bit with some beta version of this new Office and although it takes some time to get used to these new functions, they make working with this much easier…

NVidia Forceware 93.71 WHQL Drivers

A new WHQL Forceware graphics drivers v93.71 (dated November 2nd, 2006 - download - Win2k/XP ~ 40.5MB) are available for download from the official NVIDIA download page. As always, updating to this version is highly recommended for all owners of newer graphic accelerators. Some changes from release notes:

• Single-GPU Issues Resolved (Error message occurs when running the NVIDIA Control Panel Television Setup Wizard.)
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400: After changing the color settings from the NVIDIA Control panel, the settings revert to the default.
• GeForce 7950 GX2, NVIDIA Control Panel: The Multi-GPU performance mode default is set to Custom when initially creating a new application profile.
• GeForce 7950 GX2: In the NVIDIA Control Panel, Multi-GPU antialiasing modes are available when Multi-Display rendering mode is selected.
• GeForce 7900 GT: The new NVIDIA Control Panel lists the product name as GeForce 7900 GT/GTO, instead of the correct GeForce 7900 GT.
• GeForce 7600 GS, NVIDIA Control Panel/Classic Control Panel: HDTV component-out output is split vertically when applying the 1080i resolution.
• GeForce 7600 GS, GeForce 6150/6100: During video playback in VMR mode, video is corrupt and shaky when noise reduction is enabled.
• GeForce 6800 GT 256MB: Windows Media Player 10 video becomes corrupt when rotating the screen while playing a video.
• GeForce 6600 128MB: Windows Media Player 10 crashes when changing the resolution while playing a DVD.
• GeForce 6600 128MB: The secondary Dualview monitor flickers while playing any NTSC DVD.