Windows Home Server Tests Find Nearly 2400 Bugs

Microsoft acknowledges reports may delay consumer server's release.
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
Sunday, March 25, 2007 12:00 PM PDT
Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130116-c,servers/article.html

Microsoft's Windows Home Server developers have been inundated with bug reports on the under-construction consumer server software, which--when it was announced in January--was expected to ship this summer. There was no word last week from Microsoft whether the necessary fixes would delay that planned release.

Bugs Tallied
In an entry on Microsoft's Home Server blog, program manager Chris Sullivan said that the group has received nearly 2400 bug reports so far from beta testers, and still had 495, or about 21 percent of the total, classified as "active." In Microsoft nomenclature, an active bug is one still under investigation, pending a response or waiting to be investigated. "As you can see, we have our work cut out for us," said Sullivan. Of the bugs that have been addressed, Sullivan said that only 15 percent have actually been fixed. The remainder are issues that are in the server by design (13 percent), not reproducible (21 percent), will be postponed to later versions (11 percent) or likely won't be fixed (7 percent).

Slow Start Draws Rivals
Windows Home Server, which debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), will be Microsoft's first home-specific server software. In January, company executives said the software would ship before the back-to-school selling season starts in July and August, with a release to manufacturing deadline set for late June. The software, based primarily on Windows Server 2003 code, will connect to systems running Windows Vista and Windows XP for file sharing, media playing and backup; and to Mac OS X and Linux machines for file sharing.
Microsoft did not respond to a call asking for a status update on development, and whether the summer release schedule still holds.

Home Server won't be sold separately, as are other server-based operating systems from the company. Instead, computer makers will package the software as part of ready-to-go appliances. Hewlett-Packard, for example, will sell something it calls MediaSmart Server that runs Home Server on an AMD-powered system.

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Structure Of The Sun's Magnetic Field

Source: European Space Agency Date: March 25, 2007

More on:

Sun, NASA, Space Exploration, Northern Lights, Space Telescopes, Space Missions

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070323132406.htm

Science Daily — Hinode, the newest solar observatory on the space scene, has obtained never-before-seen images showing that the sun's magnetic field is much more turbulent and dynamic than previously known.

This image of the solar 'chromosphere' was obtained on on 20 November 2006 by the Hinode solar observatory, and reveals the structure of the solar magnetic field rising vertically from a sunspot (an area of strong magnetic field), outward into the solar atmopshere. The chromosphere a thin 'layer' of solar atmosphere 'sandwiched' between the sun's visible surface (or photosphere) and its outer atmosphere (or corona). The chromosphere is the source of ultra violet radiation. (Credit: Hinode JAXA/NASA/PPARC)

Hinode, Japanese for 'sunrise', was launched on 23 September 2006 to study the sun's magnetic field and how its explosive energy propagates through the different layers of the solar atmosphere.

"For the first time, we are now able to make out tiny granules of hot gas that rise and fall in the sun's magnified atmosphere," said Dick Fisher, director of NASA's Heliophysics Division. "These images will open up a new era of study on some of the sun's processes that effect Earth, astronauts, orbiting satellites and the solar system."

Hinode's three primary instruments, the Solar Optical Telescope, the X-ray Telescope and the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer, are observing the different layers of the sun. Studies focus on the solar atmosphere from the photosphere - the visible surface of the sun, to the corona - the outer atmosphere that extends outward into the solar system.

Thanks to coordinated measurements from the three instruments, Hinode is already showing how changes in the structure of the magnetic field and the release of magnetic energy in the low atmosphere spread outward through the corona and into interplanetary space.

"The release of magnetic energy is at the base of space weather," says Bernhard Fleck, ESA's SOHO and Hinode Project Scientist. "Complementing the SOHO data with those of Hinode will allow us to improve our understanding of the violent processes on the Sun that drive space storms. The synergies between the two missions will clearly boost our space weather forecasting capabilities."

Space weather involves the production of energetic particles and the emissions of electromagnetic radiation. These bursts of energy can black out long-distance communications over entire continents and disrupt the global navigational system.

"Hinode images are revealing irrefutable evidence for the presence of turbulence-driven processes that are bringing magnetic fields, on all scales, to the sun's surface, resulting in an extremely dynamic chromosphere or gaseous envelope around the sun," said Alan Title, a corporate senior fellow at Lockheed Martin, Palo Alto, California, and consulting professor of physics at Stanford University, Stanford, California.

By following the evolution of the solar structures that outline the magnetic field before, during and after these explosive events, scientists hope to find clear evidence to establish that magnetic reconnection – a process whereby magnetic field lines from different magnetic domains are spliced to one another and cause a reconfiguration of the magnetic field - is the underlying cause for this explosive activity.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by European Space Agency.