Day: August 29, 2007

The next big release of Microsoft’s server OS is going to be a mite late!

Microsoft Delays Windows Server 2008, Needs ‘More Time to Bake’

“In the clearest sign to date that not all is well in the state of Redmond, Microsoft cheerfully announced this morning that the release date for Windows Server 2008 is being pushed back to Q1 2008. Citing the delay as a part of an ‘open and honest dialogue about the development process of a product of this magnitude,’ a spokesperson for the Windows Server development team posted on its company blog this morning, just after 11:00 am Eastern time, that WS2K8 will likely be one of the features of a rollout event that was already scheduled for February 27, originally slated to feature Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. The reason, the spokesperson said, had something to do with barbecue. ‘Why? Well, as you know, Microsoft’s first priority is to deliver a great product to our customers and partners,’ the spokesperson wrote, ‘and while we’re very happy with the feedback we’re getting and the overall quality of the latest product builds, we would rather spend a little more time to meet the high quality bar that our customers and partners deserve and expect.’ Then quoting something program manager Alex Hinrichs told her, she added, ‘It’s like a brisket. It just needs a little more time to bake.'”

Wow. If it is true. Wow.

‘We have broken speed of light’

“A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light – an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time. According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second. However, Dr. Gunter Nimtz and Dr. Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory. The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons – energetic packets of light – travelled ‘instantaneously’ between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart. Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences. For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving. The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws. Dr. Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: ‘For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of.'”