Windows 95 code apparently killed Windows 9 before it got started

What's in a name? Quite a lot, apparently

Microsoft's decision to name its new operating system Windows 10 (rather than Windows 9) certainly came as a surprise, with many people suggesting that it was done to place more distance between itself and the not-so-well received Windows 8.

Now, one Reddit user has claimed to know the actual reason behind the curveball. Posting in the /r/technology subreddit, a self-proclaimed Microsoft developer going by the name of Cranbourne wrote that it was done to avoid conflict with third-party code that searches for "Windows 9*".

Cranbourne reckons that such code isn't referring to Windows 9, but rather Windows 95 and Windows 98, with the asterisk acting as a wildcard.

Early testing by Microsoft developers apparently revealed it would cause enough of an issue due to the oodles of programs that would search for code related to those two platforms, causing the company to take the "pragmatic solution" by moving to Windows 10.

Here is the post in full:

"Microsoft dev here, the internal rumours are that early testing revealed just how many third party products that had code of the form:

if(version.StartsWith("Windows 9"))

{ /* 95 and 98 */ } else {

and that this was the pragmatic solution to avoid that."

It seems like a plausible explanation, though we are taking it with a pinch of salt, but the question looks set to run judging by Microsoft's non-answer that it gave to Gizmodo, which recieved the following statement when questioning the claim:

"Windows 10 carries Windows forward into a new way of doing things. It is not an incremental change, but a new Windows that will empower the next billion users."

That totally clears that up, then.

Via Neowin

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Pressure is on: eBay needs to deliver after PayPal's spin-off

The split is a logical progression for PayPal, but eBay needs to show that it's also a smart decision for its core e-commerce business as Amazon lures away sellers.

It's time for eBay to focus on what it did best in the past: online shopping. Getty Images

eBay has a lot to prove.

The online auction house and e-commerce company announced Tuesday that it will spin off its PayPal payment service into a separate company next year. The move is designed to let both companies operate more efficiently, without the distraction of an additional, and very different, business.

But the split also puts a magnifying glass on eBay's ability to compete on its own without PayPal as its growth engine for revenue. A pioneer in Internet e-commerce through online auctions, the 19-year-old eBay has struggled in recent years to hold on to share of the market, with Amazon luring away sellers and sales.

Analysts see the spin-off as a chance for eBay to regain its footing and find ways to grow its business. eBay's e-commerce businesses had sales of $7.69 billion last year, up from $6.93 billion.

"This spin-off makes strategic sense," Robert W. Baird analyst Colin Sebastian said in a research note. The split creates "two large-scale Internet pure-plays, poised to benefit from scale, early leadership positions online, significant technology investments and the freedom to compete more aggressively in constantly changing markets."

The deal also appeases one influential investor, billionaire activist Carl Icahn, who has been calling for the past year for eBay to spin off PayPal but backed off earlier this year after eBay added one of Icahn's candidate picks to its board. Icahn holds 0.82 percent of eBay's shares.

"The mere fact that it will get Carl Icahn off their back means that eBay management will be less distracted," said James Angel, associate professor of finance at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. "That they can spend more time on the core business is a good thing."

Icahn said Tuesday he was happy with the planned split. "It is almost a 'no brainer' that these companies should be separated to increase the value of these great assets and thus to meaningfully enhance value for all shareholders," he said in a blog post. "It also continues to be my belief that the payments industry, of which PayPal is an important part, must be consolidated - either through acquisitions made by PayPal or a merger between PayPal and another strong player in the industry."

There is keen interest in how the faster-growing PayPal (from 2012 to 2013, sales have grown there 18 percent, versus 11 percent at eBay) would fare as an independent company. The split lets PayPal maneuver through the payments industry, which is undergoing a massive transition into mobile services. Several companies, including Google, Amazon and, most recently, Apple, have increased their mobile payments investments. Without another layer of management to oversee its decisions, PayPal can develop it services faster, expand its role beyond the preferred payment method for any eBay competitors and take on Apple's upcoming mobile payment service, Apple Pay.

In returning to its roots, eBay will need to demonstrate it can continue to dominate in e-commerce, which is also going through changes because of the explosion of mobile shopping and the rise of online marketplaces like Amazon and China's Alibaba Group.

"The key thing is for eBay -- is it nimble enough?" Angel said.

Amazon presents the biggest risk to eBay's ambitions. The online giant, which pulled in revenue of $19.34 billion in the second quarter, continues to expand, recruiting sellers who are drawn to its extensive shipping and delivery network through Amazon fulfillment services. Boosted by its Prime subscription program, Amazon has had a 2 percent year-over-year increase in site visits, while the number of visitors to eBay fell 4 percent in August, according to a Cowen & Co. survey of 2,500 US customers.

Additionally, the split could take away investors' confidence in the eBay. Moody's downgraded its rating for eBay, saying the smaller company now has weaker credit and marking it as a potentially risky investment.

eBay has tried to innovate in recent years under CEO John Donahoe, who has been at the helm since 2008. The San Jose, Calif.-based company has focused on making its service easier to use on smartphones, started managing Web storefronts for different brands and tried to expand its reach by offering fixed-price purchases in addition to auctions to get away from its image as a digital flea market.

Donahoe has even tried to boost its image by attracting fashion brands, promoting its eBay Local same-day delivery service at Fashion Week and creating a boutique-like experience for specialty fashion brands on its marketplace.

eBay''s marketplace revenue did rise by 9 percent, to $2.17 billion, in the second quarter, despite a cyber attack on user data, prompting the company to urge customers to change their passwords. But the bulk of eBay's growth has come from its PayPal unit. The payments unit's revenue rose 20 percent, to $1.95 billion, accounting for about 45 percent of eBay's total revenue.

For eBay to show that it can grow without using PayPal as a crutch it will need to focus on what made it successful in the first place: being a good platform for commerce, with eager, loyal shoppers and retailers who see opportunities to grow.

Says Gartner analyst Jeff Roster, "Now it comes down to execution."

Donna Tam Donna Tam covers Amazon and other fun stuff for CNET News. She is a San Francisco native who enjoys feasting, merrymaking, checking her Gmail and reading her Kindle. See full bio

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'Man in the Moon' gets a new origin story

Many have assumed the craters roughly forming the shape of a human face on the moon's surface were formed by space rocks, but new research supports the claim that it came from within our only natural satellite.

Three different views of the Man in the Moon. NASA/Colorado School of Mines/MIT/JPL/Goddard Space Flight Center

There's a scientific debate underway about the origins of perhaps the most visible man around, and no, it has nothing to do with a certain president's birth certificate. For many years, researchers have reached different conclusions about what formed the feature often referred to as the "Man in the Moon," and this week new NASA data supports the theory that magma from within the moon itself, not an asteroid strike, created that famous face.

Scientists know the dark, vaguely face-like basin as the Procellarum region that stretches nearly 1,800 miles in diameter.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Colorado School of Mines and other institutions used gravity data from NASA's GRAIL probes that orbited the moon in 2012 to create a map of the Procellarum region that showed the rims of the basin are actually more angular than circular or elliptical, as one would expect from an asteroid impact.

This led the team to explore a less cosmically confrontational origin story for our biggest satellite's largest persona.

"Instead of a central circular gravity anomaly like all other impact basins, at Procellarum we see these linear features forming this huge rectangle," said Jim Head, a Professor of Geological Sciences at Brown University and one of the authors of the new paper, in a release. "This shape argues strongly for an internal origin and suggests internal forces."

Those internal forces could have been a plume of magma that rose to the surface, then cooled and contracted, creating formations that could easily be misidentified as impact craters.

"How such a plume arose remains a mystery," said Professor Maria Zuber of MIT in another release. "It could be due to radioactive decay of heat-producing elements in the deep interior. Or, conceivably, a very early large impact triggered the plume. But in the latter case, all evidence for such an impact has been completely erased. People who thought that all this volcanism was related to a gigantic impact need to go back and think some more about that."

That's the equivalent of an academic smackdown against those from the asteroid impact origin story camp, like the authors of a 2012 paper in Nature Geoscience who analyzed the composition of the rock in the basin to support the notion of an ancient impact crater.

But if it's true that the Man in the Moon is really the product of cooling lava many eons ago, it also affects the work of the late J.R.R. Tolkein (yes, the "Lord of the Rings" and "Hobbit" guy) who once wrote in a poem titled "The Man In The Moon Came Down Too Soon" that the guy up there once chose to abandon his lunar post because "in his heart he longed for Fire."

Perhaps it's poetic license that Tolkein's man in the moon may have longed for that which he was created from, or maybe it's just one of those ironies that comes after the fact from greater understanding through science. I imagine that if the Man in the Moon were to leave, it would be because he finally got sick of being blasted by asteroids, something that continued to happen after he was formed, regardless of which origin story you believe.

Eric Mack Crave freelancer Eric Mack is a writer, radio producer, and podcaster based in Taos, N.M., but he lives in Google+. He's also managing editor of Crowdsourcing.org and has written e-books on both Alaska and Android. E-mail Eric. See full bio

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Apple iPhone 6 teardown: Design changes make device easier to repair

Bill Detwiler cracks open the iPhone 6, explores the internal hardware, and explains how Apple made the phone easier to repair.

With its larger screen and rounded edges, the iPhone 6 is a dramatic departure from the exterior design that Apple introduced with the iPhone 4. But along with the outside changes, Apple also made lots of tweaks on the inside, which make the iPhone 6 faster, able to store more data, and easier to open and repair.

Unlike the similar-looking iPhone 5 and 5S, there's no mistaking the iPhone 6 for one of Apple's previous handsets. Its 4.7-inch display is larger than anything Apple has released before, its case is much thinner, and the rounded edges give it a distinctive look.

Bill Detwiler/TechRepublic

For more information on the iPhone 6, including performance and battery life benchmark tests, check out Scott Stein's full CNET review.

Unfortunately, many of the iPhone 6's design changes are also hidden within the device and are only visible once you crack it open.

For more teardown images of the iPhone 6, check out the full Cracking Open gallery on TechRepublic.

Relocated Home button cable makes repairs easier: Cracking open the iPhone 6 is actually easier than opening previous iPhones. You'll still need to remove the two Pentalobe screws along the bottom edge with a special screwdriver, but Apple relocated the ribbon cable on the Home button, which means you no longer need to worry about tearing it when popping open the front panel.

Bill Detwiler/TechRepublic

Interior design very similar with lots of small changes: The overall hardware layout is the same as on the iPhone 5S. Inside the case, there's a speaker and Lightning connector assembly at the bottom, battery along the left side, main circuit board along the right, and the camera assembly at the top. Attached to the front panel are the display, front camera and sensors, earpiece speaker and the Home button. Despite these big similarities, there are lots of small changes. A new metal plate and attached cable sit behind the screen. The vibration motor was moved from the top of the device to the bottom. The power button has been relocated from the top to the right side. There's a small, removable component connected to the upper-left corner of the main logic board, which appears to be an antenna. And these are just some of the more noticeable changes.Redesigned system board: The main system board is similar in general shape to the boards in previous iPhones, but it has a larger section that runs horizontally across the top of the phone. Unfortunately, the shields that cover the iPhone 6's motherboard are soldered in place -- obscuring our view of the new A8 processor, M8 motion tracking chip and most of the other chips. As I wanted to put this phone back together in working order, I left the shields in place during our teardown.

Bill Detwiler/TechRepublic

Higher capacity battery: The iPhone 6 has a 3.82V, 1,810mAh, 6.91Wh battery, compared to the iPhone 5S' 3.8V, 5.92Wh, 1,560mAh battery and the iPhone 5's 3.8V, 5.45Wh, 1,440mAh unit. iSight camera covered with metal bracket: During our teardown of the iPhone 5S, we discovered that the rear-facing camera was covered with a thin, rubber flap. Apple replaced this flap with a metal cover on the iPhone 6.New vibration motor: On the iPhone 5S, Apple used a rotating-mass vibration motor. On the iPhone 6, the company switched to a linear-actuator vibration motor.More storage available: Although the entry-level iPhone 6 still comes with a measly 16GB of storage, the top-end model has twice the storage capacity (128GB) of the iPhone 5S (64GB).

Bill Detwiler/TechRepublic

There's nothing revolutionary about the iPhone 6, but Apple definitely took a big leap forward with its design and construction -- a bigger screen, new body and lots of new or relocated components. I'm also glad they made the phone easier to open and repair.

For more teardown images of the iPhone 6, check out the full Cracking Open gallery on TechRepublic.

Bill Detwiler Bill Detwiler is Managing Editor of TechRepublic and Tech Pro Research and the host of Cracking Open, CNET and TechRepublic's popular online show. Prior to joining TechRepublic in 2000, Bill was an IT manager, database administrator, and desktop support specialist in the social research and energy industries. He has bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Louisville, where he has also lectured on computer crime and crime prevention. See full bio

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Android Silver may not be dead after all

Is Android Silver going to have a shiny future?

You'd be forgiven for thinking Android Silver wasn't going to happen - one of its 'chief architects' has left Google and the company reportedly put it on hold not so long ago.

But there might be hope yet. According to TKTechNews both Motorola and HTC have built devices that were originally planned to be among the first Android Silver handsets, and the site goes on to say that according to its sources Google may yet launch them under Android Silver.

So it might be on hold but it's possibly not been abandoned altogether. An alternative possibility is that these new phones will be sold as Google Play Editions instead.

The idea that Motorola had already developed and manufactured an Android Silver phone makes sense, given that the company is also rumoured to have a large and somewhat confusing product line up, with some phones possibly not launching.

We're not entirely hopeful about Android Silver's prospects, as other rumours suggest that Google was struggling to get interest from device makers.

But this new information at least suggests that there's a chance, so if you were holding out for a wider selection of high-end stock Android devices you probably shouldn't give up on the idea just yet.

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