Talynebear

Comic by: Doovenile

At TechEd North America today, Microsoft unveiled a host of features coming in Windows 8.1 that should make the operating system more appealing to business users. Windows 8.1 is a free update to Windows 8 that will ship later this year.

On top of bringing back a Taskbar-visible Start button, Windows 8.1 will give enterprises a lot more control over the operating system's appearance. Chief among these controls is the ability to boot straight to the desktop, a feature found in prerelease versions of Windows 8 but not officially supported in the final version. Additionally, IT departments can now exact more control over the Start screen, fixing its layout and prepopulating it with tiles for corporate apps.

At its most extreme, this will allow IT departments to turn Windows 8 machines into kiosks, booting into specific Metro apps. If the built-in capabilities aren't sufficient, Microsoft will be releasing an embeddable version. The catchily-named Windows Embedded 8.1 Industry will be for use in things like point-of-sale systems and ATMs.

Aurich Lawson

Graham Syfert is a local Florida lawyer who has been defending people caught up in Prenda purported copyright suits. Last we heard from the defense attorney, he appeared to have settled some cases with the porn trolling outfit. Nearly two weeks ago, Syfert told Ars that he was still involved in two more Florida Prenda-related cases: Sunlust Pictures v. Nguyen, and First Time Videos v. Oppold.

The latter case was initially filed back in July 2012 against a Florida man named Paul Oppold. Oppold was accused of downloading an unauthorized copy of a First Time Videos (FTV) pornographic film which was being represented by Prenda.

On Monday, Syfert continued his defense of Oppold, filing a damning motion. The motion includes a 31-page affidavit and related exhibits (compressed .ZIP archive) that offer a detailed analysis and a startling conclusion about one of the primary Prenda lawyers, John Steele. According to the filing, Steele

Comic by: worksucks

Comic by: Boat

MWE Lab's Emperor 1510 LX—don't call it a chair.

MWE Labs

Science fiction is filled with cherished seats of power, workstations that put the universe a finger-touch or a mere thought away. Darth Vader had his meditation pod, the Engineers of Prometheus had their womb-like control stations, and Captain Kirk has the Captain's Chair. But no real-life workstation has quite measured up to these fictional seats of power in the way that Martin Carpentier's Emperor workstations have.

The latest "modern working environment" from Carpentier's Quebec City-based MWE Lab is the Emperor 1510 LX. With a retractable monitor stand that can support up to five monitors (three 27-inch and two 19-inch), a reclining seat with thigh rest, a Bose sound system, and Italian leather upholstery, the Emperor 1510 LX looks more like a futuristic vehicle than a workstation.  And it's priced like a vehicle, too—it can soon be yours for the low, low price of $21,500.

Tale of the Scorpion

In 2006, Carpentier was slaving away as a web designer when he reached a breaking point. He was tired of his tangle of cables, the struggle to manage multiple monitors, and the horrible ergonomics that came with a standard computer desk. Inspired by the emperor scorpion, Carpentier modeled his workstation after its tail, with the monitors suspended at the stinger.

Comic by: demoniohorrible

Comic by: Unknown

Bruce actually knows the feel, except like the rest of us we've purged that whole mess from our collective consciousness.

Comic by: strangelilvampyr

Comic by: Stillie

Comic by: (via Tastefully Offensive)

Comic by: (via Fat Awesome)

Little was shown of the upcoming series, but Master Chief will be live on small screens soon.

Microsoft and 343 Industries announced plans for a live-action Halo TV series in partnership with Steven Spielberg at the unveiling event for the company’s new console, the Xbox One. The TV series heralds Microsoft’s intent to merge its console as much as possible with live TV, though it also represents the company's intent to to become a source for content as well as vector, as the series will be exclusive to the Xbox One.

Bonnie Ross, head of 343 Industries, made an appearance at the event to namecheck the success of the Halo-centric Web series Forward Unto Dawn as an integral step toward making the jump to a full series. Spielberg called the series "an amazing opportunity to be at intersection of mythmaking and technology."

Microsoft and 343 Industries did not specify how, if at all, the new series will fit with Forward Unto Dawn or the game series. Forward Unto Dawn, which was also a live-action show, centered on the experiences of cadet Thomas Lasky and was released over two months last fall. The series ran as five 20-minute episodes and cost just under $10 million to produce.

Google I/O didn't give us the Android update we were expecting—or did it??

Andrew Cunningham

Google covered a lot of ground in its three-and-a-half-hour opening keynote at Google I/O yesterday, but one thing it didn't announce was the oft-rumored next version of Android. However, persistent rumors insist that the elusive Android 4.3 is still coming next month—if that's true, why not announce it at I/O in front of all of your most enthusiastic developers?

The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem.

Consider the full breadth of yesterday's Android-related improvements: you've got an update to the Android version of Google Maps, due this summer, that incorporates some of the features of the iOS version and the new desktop version. There's a WebGL-capable version of Chrome for Android and an entirely new gaming API. A shotgun blast of improvements are coming to the Google Play Services APIs. And that's to say nothing of the products that affect Google's services across all supported platforms: Google Play Music All Access (say that five times fast), Hangouts, and Search improvements.

Comic by: lquinox14

One of D-Wave's chips.

D-Wave

Back in 2007, a company called D-Wave made waves by claiming it had built a 16-bit quantum computer at a time when most academic labs could only manage a handful of bits. What they demonstrated, however, wasn't a quantum computer in the sense that most people use the term. The company has since started calling its device a "quantum optimizer." Although it's not a general-purpose quantum computer, the hardware does seem to be capable of tackling some computationally hard challenges.

The actual performance of the hardware and the software that controls it (called, somewhat ironically, the Black Box) hasn't really been described in detail. That situation seems to be changing this week, as a pair of academic researchers will be presenting a set of problems tackled both by D-Wave's hardware and by software running on more traditional computers. The results generally show D-Wave's equipment performing well, but it doesn't always beat the more mundane computers.

In a quantum computer, a set of qubits are both entangled and placed in a superposition state where they have a mixture of the two possible values (zero and one). The system is manipulated to perform a calculation, and then the actual values held by the qubits are read in order to provide the solution.

Comic by: ThePartyhasyettoarrive

Comic by: MemeCreator8l