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reliability posts

Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft

Microsoft releases updated Vista reliability, stability and compatibility pack

Windows UpdateYou know, we're starting to think that by the time Microsoft actually gets around to releasing Windows Vista SP1, all the major updates will already have been made available as update packs and hotfixes.

Microsoft has just released yet another compatibility, reliability, and stability pack for Vista. Here are some of the highlights:
  • Extended battery life on mobile devices
  • Improved stability of computers that use a UPS
  • Improves reliability when opening a startup application menu
  • Improves wireless network service stability
  • Shortens startup time
  • Shortens recovery time after a period of inactivity
  • Fixes a compatibility issue with some third-party anti-virus apps
The latest update comes in two varieties: an x86 download and an x64 download.

[via Bink.nu]

Filed under: Social Software, Search

Color coding Wikipedia entries based on author reputations

Wikipedia color codingYou can't trust everything you read on Wikipedia. Of course, the same is true of the newspaper or pretty much anything else you read. But since pretty much anyone can edit Wikipedia entries, readers really have to take entries with a grain of salt.

Computer engineering associate professor Luca de Alfaro at the University of California, Santa Cruz has developed a tool that help you relax your skeptical genes a bit. His program color-codes phrases in Wikipedia entries based on the author's reputation.

de Alfaro's program will analyze 40 million edits on Wikipedia's 2 million English language pages. The text on those pages in then colored in varying shades of orange. You should pull out the salt shaker before reading the deepest orange phrases.

How does it analyze an author's reputation? By determining how infrequently someone has bothered to change or correct your article. The longer your original text stays up, the more reputable you are deemed. This works great for a large site like Wikipedia where users from around the globe are regularly reading and updating. It probably wouldn't be nearly as effective on a smaller, less active wiki.

Right now there's a demo page up and running that has scanned 1,000 pages.

[via Boing Boing]

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

View more Time Wasters

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