The World of Windows

Mortal Kombat is a best-selling series of fighting games created by Ed Boon and John Tobias in 1992. Mortal Kombat began as a series of arcade games, which were picked up by Acclaim Entertainment for the home console versions. Now Midway Games exclusively creates home versions of Mortal Kombat. It is especially noted for its digitized sprites (which differentiated it from its contemporaries' hand-drawn sprites), and its high levels of blood and gore, including, most notably, its graphic fatalities—finishing moves, requiring a sequence of buttons to perform, which, in part, led to the creation of the ESRB. The series itself is also known for replacing the rough c sound with the letter "K", thus deliberately misspelling the word "combat," as well as other words with the hard c sound within later games in the series. Draw the line in the sand! It's the showdown the tech world has feared: Microsoft's upstart Windows 7 versus Linux...

Windows Vista has a different bootup configuration than earlier versions of Windows. Instead of using a simple Boot.ini file as in Windows XP, Vista has a special Boot Configuration Data (BCD) database to hold all the relevant bootup parameters, and to allow compatibility with new bootup methods. However this change  also ma kes boot configuration and editing much more tricky. Editing the boot configuration is particularly important if you've installed a dual boot setup of Vista as covered in the previous chapter. For the most part, you should not need to edit or alter the Vista boot configuration unless you're troubleshooting a system problem, attempting to use more than 4GB of RAM, or you want to alter specific parameters or repair a dual boot or multiboot setup. There are several ways you can view and modify your Vista boot configuration, and each is covered in more detail below. BCDEDIT. BCDEdit is a built-...

Keyboard shortcuts are combinations of two or more keys that, when pressed, can be used to perform a task that would typically require a mouse or other pointing device. Keyboard shortcuts can make it easier to interact with your computer, saving you time and effort as you work with Windows and other programs.  Most programs also provide accelerator keys that can make it easier to work with menus and other commands. Check the menus of programs for accelerator keys.  If a letter is underlined in a menu, that usually means that pressing the Alt key in combination with the underlined key will have the same effect as clicking that menu item. Pressing the Alt key in some programs, such as Paint and WordPad, shows commands that are labeled with additional keys that you can press to use them. Dialog box keyboard shortcuts. The following table contains keyboard shortcuts for use in dialog boxes. Press this key To do this: Ctrl+Tab Move forward through tabs...

Turbo Scroll also puts in an appearance for Pictures for a nice enhancement in large libraries – hold down the left or right buttons on the remote to transition into a user experience which allow you to fast forward through pictures – let go of the button to move to that point in the gallery. I’ll take a moment to note the static screen captures here don’t really do Turbo Scroll justice – the animations are quite nice. Picture Details bubbles up many of the simple photo editing features in Windows Media Center as well as allows you to rate the picture. In prior versions the slideshow disappeared from view when you pressed the Green Button and the only way to return was to use the back button (if the slideshow was still on the backstack) or go back through the library to start fresh. Now the slideshow is persisted as an experience in Now Playing including picture transitions – you can select to easily return back to the full screen slideshow. [That’s m...

Windows Media Center (codenamed "Freestyle" during development) is an application with a 10-foot user interface design to serve as a home-entertainment hub for the living-room TV. It is included in Windows XP Media Center Edition, premium editions of Windows Vista (Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate), and Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate). It is designed to be controlled by special remote controls which prominently feature the Green Button (similar to the logo to the right), but can also be operated with a mouse and/or keyboard. This button is used to either launch Media Center from Windows or to return to the Start Menu from within the application. Media Center plays the computer user's pictures , videos , and music from local hard drives , optical drives , and network locations. It then categorizes them by name, date, tags, and other file attributes. Media managed through Media Center can also be relay...

7 of the world’s most powerful tech companies have been accused of forming an antitrust conspiracy to suppress the compensation of their employees by entering into “no poach” agreements. Today, a San Jose judge heard a motion to dismiss a class action civil lawsuit in which former employees seek damages from defendants Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, and Lucasfilm. The damning evidence against the defendants from a 2010 Department of Justice investigation that I first uncovered last week, as well as the plaintiffs’ opposition statement indicate there is more than sufficient evidence for the dismissal to be denied and the case to proceed towards trial. If the defendants lose to or settle, tens of thousands of full-time employees with the companies between 2006 and 2009 could be compensated. [Update 4:30pm PST 1/26/2011: Judge Lucy Koh says "This case is moving forward...this case is going to survive the motion to dismiss." That means the defendants' motion ...