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SonicStage is a discontinued software product from Sony that is used for managing portable devices when they are plugged into a computer running Microsoft Windows . It comprises a music player and library manager, similar to iTunes , Windows Media Player and RealPlayer . It is used to manage the library of ATRAC (.omg and .oma) and MP3 recordings on a PC.

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121-693: SonicStage was a requirement to transfer and manage music on all Network Walkman , NetMD and Hi-MD players, and the Clie handheld, before the product was dropped entirely outside of Japan in 2007. SonicStage was first used in Vaio PCs put on the Japanese market in October 2001, and superseded OpenMG Jukebox. Version 2 was found on 2004 model products, and Version 3 on 2005 model products (Sony introduced native MP3 support on its music players in 2005). The Sony Connect service

242-509: A home network ; and new multimedia tools such as Windows DVD Maker . Windows Vista included version 3.0 of the .NET Framework , allowing software developers to write applications without traditional Windows APIs . There are major architectural overhauls to audio, display, network, and print sub-systems; deployment, installation, servicing, and startup procedures are also revised. It is the first release of Windows built on Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing initiative and emphasized security with

363-454: A release to manufacturing (RTM) build is the final version of code shipped to retailers and other distributors, the purpose of a pre-RTM build is to eliminate any last "show-stopper" bugs that may prevent the code from responsibly being shipped to customers, as well as anything else that consumers may find troublesome. Thus, it is unlikely that any major new features would be introduced; instead, work would focus on Vista's fit and finish. In just

484-537: A 64-bit install media can acquire this media through the Windows Vista Alternate Media program. The Ultimate edition includes both 32-bit and 64-bit media. The digitally downloaded version of Ultimate includes only one version, either 32-bit or 64-bit, from Windows Marketplace. The maximum amount of RAM that Windows Vista supports varies by edition and processor architecture, as shown in the table. All editions except Windows Vista Starter support both

605-553: A Microsoft blog, there are three choices for OpenGL implementation on Vista. An application can use the default implementation, which translates OpenGL calls into the Direct3D API and is frozen at OpenGL version 1.4, or an application can use an Installable Client Driver (ICD), which comes in two flavors: legacy and Vista-compatible. A legacy ICD disables the Desktop Window Manager , a Vista-compatible ICD takes advantage of

726-463: A September 23, 2005 front-page article in The Wall Street Journal , Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin , who had overall responsibility for the development and delivery of Windows, explained how development of Longhorn had been "crashing into the ground" due in large part to the haphazard methods by which features were introduced and integrated into the core of the operating system, without

847-645: A Walkman in bags or pockets. In October 1985, the WM-101 model was the first in its class with a "gum stick" rechargeable battery. In 1986 Sony presented the first model outfitted with remote control, as well as one with solar battery (WM-F107). Within a decade of launch, Sony held a 50% market share in the United States and 46% in Japan. Two limited edition 10th anniversary models were released in 1989 (WM-701S/T) in Japan, made of brass and plated in sterling silver . Only

968-487: A blog entry which decried the development process of Windows Vista, stating that "The code is way too complicated, and that the pace of coding has been tremendously slowed down by overbearing process." The same post also described Windows Vista as having approximately 50 million lines of code , with about 2,000 developers working on the product. During a demonstration of the speech recognition feature new to Windows Vista at Microsoft's Financial Analyst Meeting on July 27, 2006,

1089-481: A boot PIN being required too. A variety of other privilege-restriction techniques are also built into Vista. An example is the concept of "integrity levels" in user processes, whereby a process with a lower integrity level cannot interact with processes of a higher integrity level and cannot perform DLL–injection to processes of a higher integrity level. The security restrictions of Windows services are more fine-grained, so that services (especially those listening on

1210-477: A clear focus on an end-product. Allchin went on to explain how in December 2003, he enlisted the help of two other senior executives, Brian Valentine and Amitabh Srivastava, the former being experienced with shipping software at Microsoft, most notably Windows Server 2003, and the latter having spent his career at Microsoft researching and developing methods of producing high-quality testing systems. Srivastava employed

1331-682: A digital music device when the latter is connected to the computer and detected by the software. SonicStage 3 does not play DRM-wrapped MP3 files directly from the device. The origins of SonicStage lie in OpenMG Jukebox, which was created for the Memory Stick Walkman (NW-MS7) and VAIO Music Clip, Sony's first digital audio players. It can transfer files in the newly developed ATRAC3 format to these players, or convert existing MP3 files to ATRAC3. Version 1.5 adds native support for ATRAC3plus and Windows Media Audio (WMA). An MP3 encoding plug-in

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1452-427: A direct effect on its development. This effort has resulted in a number of new security and safety features and an Evaluation Assurance Level rating of 4+. User Account Control , or UAC is perhaps the most significant and visible of these changes. UAC is a security technology that makes it possible for users to use their computer with fewer privileges by default, to stop malware from making unauthorized changes to

1573-473: A few days, developers had managed to drop Vista's bug count from over 2470 on September 22 to just over 1400 by the time RC2 shipped in early October. However, they still had a way to go before Vista was ready to RTM. Microsoft's internal processes required Vista's bug count to drop to 500 or fewer before the product could go into escrow for RTM. For most of the pre-RTM builds, only 32-bit editions were released. On June 14, 2006, Windows developer Philip Su posted

1694-485: A few hundred were built of each. A 15th anniversary model was also made on July 1, 1994, with vertical loading, and a 20th anniversary on July 1, 1999, with a prestige model. By 1989, 10 years after the launch of the first model, over 100 million Walkmans had been sold worldwide. 150 million units were manufactured by 1995. By 1999, 20 years after the introduction of the first model, Sony sold 186 million cassette Walkmans. Portable compact disc players led to

1815-550: A hybrid drive can be spun down when not in use. Another new technology called SuperFetch utilizes machine learning techniques to analyze usage patterns to allow Windows Vista to make intelligent decisions about what content should be present in system memory at any given time. It uses almost all the extra RAM as disk cache . In conjunction with SuperFetch, an automatic built-in Windows Disk Defragmenter makes sure that those applications are strategically positioned on

1936-424: A large horizontal pane that appeared under the toolbars. A new search interface allowed for filtering of results, searching for Windows help, and natural-language queries that would be used to integrate with WinFS. The animated search characters were also removed. The "view modes" were also replaced with a single slider that would resize the icons in real-time, in the list, thumbnail, or details mode, depending on where

2057-460: A large number of new application programming interfaces. Chief among them is the inclusion of version 3.0 of the .NET Framework , which consists of a class library and Common Language Runtime . Version 3.0 includes four new major components: These technologies are also available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 to facilitate their introduction to and usage by developers and end-users. There are also significant new development APIs in

2178-530: A limited subset of features planned for Longhorn, in particular fast file searching and integrated graphics and sound processing, but appeared to have impressive reliability and performance compared to contemporary Longhorn builds. Most Longhorn builds had major Windows Explorer system leaks which prevented the OS from performing well, and added more confusion to the development teams in later builds with more and more code being developed which failed to reach stability. In

2299-922: A new API, and is fully compatible with the Desktop Window Manager. At least two primary vendors, ATI and NVIDIA provided full Vista-compatible ICDs. However, hardware overlay is not supported, because it is considered as an obsolete feature in Vista. ATI and NVIDIA strongly recommend using compositing desktop/ Framebuffer Objects for same functionality. Windows Vista is the first Microsoft operating system: Some notable Windows XP applications and features have been replaced or removed in Windows Vista, including Active Desktop , MSN Explorer , HyperTerminal , Messenger service NetMeeting , NTBackup , and Windows Messenger . Several multimedia features, networking features, and Shell and Windows Explorer features such as

2420-604: A new ATRAC service ( LISMOオーディオ機器連携 ) of LISMO , the online music store provided by a Japanese mobile phone operator KDDI ( au ). There are some useful benefits to using LISMO, but little of value for non-LISMO users. The playable codecs are same as SonicStage Version 4.x, but encoding functions are only available for the ATRAC codecs. As of October 2008, 16 "au" phones (manufactured by Casio Hitachi Mobile Communications , Kyocera , Sanyo , Sharp , Sony Ericsson and Toshiba ) support LISMO's ATRAC service. SonicStage Mastering Studio

2541-495: A new user interface like SonicStage for LISMO . Version 5.0 released on October 9, 2008 in Japan. On 9 Feb 2009, version 5.1 was released. SonicStage V does not work with the Hi-MD/Net MD Walkmans, MP3-CD/ATRAC-CD players (such as CD Walkmans) and other old devices. At IFA 2007, Sony announced that SonicStage software would be dropped for all future Walkman products. Music management is instead done using drag and drop ,

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2662-446: A person as they were walking. In the 1970s, Brazilian inventor Andreas Pavel devised a method for carrying a player of this type on a belt around the waist, listening via headphones , but his " Stereobelt " concept did not include the required engineering advancements to yield high-quality sound reproduction while the tape player was subject to mechanical shock as would be expected on a person walking. Pavel later lost his suit claiming

2783-414: A piece of malicious software to compromise the system, or disable the encryption. BitLocker can work in conjunction with a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) cryptoprocessor (version 1.2) embedded in a computer's motherboard , or with a USB key. However, as with other full disk encryption technologies, BitLocker is vulnerable to a cold boot attack , especially where TPM is used as a key protector without

2904-554: A protected mode, which operates with lower permissions than the user and runs in isolation from other applications in the operating system, preventing it from accessing or modifying anything besides the Temporary Internet Files directory. Microsoft's anti-spyware product, Windows Defender , has been incorporated into Windows, protecting against malware and other threats. Changes to various system configuration settings (such as new auto-starting applications) are blocked unless

3025-532: A team of core architects to visually map out the entirety of the Windows operating system, and to proactively work towards a development process that would enforce high levels of code quality, reduce interdependencies between components, and in general, "not make things worse with Vista". Since Microsoft decided that Longhorn needed to be further componentized, work started on builds (known as the Omega-13 builds, named after

3146-565: A team. The name of the lab in which any given build originated is shown as part of the build label, and the date and time of the build follow that. Some builds (such as Beta 1 and Beta 2) only display the build label in the version information dialog (Winver). The icons used in these builds are from Windows XP. At the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in May 2003, Microsoft gave their first public demonstrations of

3267-489: A time travel device in the film Galaxy Quest ) that would componentize existing Windows Server 2003 source code, and over time add back functionality as development progressed. Future Longhorn builds would start from Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and continue from there. This change, announced internally to Microsoft employees on August 26, 2004, began in earnest in September, though it would take several more months before

3388-436: A year later. Windows Vista was succeeded by Windows 7 in 2009. Mainstream support for Windows Vista ended on April 10, 2012 and extended support ended on April 11, 2017. Microsoft began work on Windows Vista, known at the time by its codename "Longhorn", in May 2001, five months before the release of Windows XP . It was originally expected to ship in October 2003 as a minor step between Windows XP and "Blackcomb", which

3509-573: Is "authorized" to the user's account with the Connect Store for their country. Users from countries that did not have the Connect Store service were limited to one device/computer. In late 2005, Sony released the Connect Player software for use with their Walkman NW-A series released at the time. That too proved to be problematic to users, forcing Sony to apologize in January 2006 and temporarily take

3630-483: Is a brand of portable audio players manufactured and marketed by Japanese company Sony since 1979. The original Walkman started out as a portable cassette player and the brand was later extended to serve most of Sony's portable audio devices; since 2011 it consists exclusively of digital flash memory players. The current flagship product as of 2022 is the WM1ZM2 player. Walkman cassette players were very popular during

3751-522: Is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft . It was the direct successor to Windows XP , released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on November 8, 2006, and over the following two months, it was released in stages to business customers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and retail channels. On January 30, 2007, it

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3872-563: Is a new architecture with more advanced shader support, and allows the graphics processing unit to render more complex scenes without assistance from the CPU. It features improved load balancing between CPU and GPU and also optimizes data transfer between them. WDDM also provides video content playback that rivals typical consumer electronics devices. It does this by making it easy to connect to external monitors, providing for protected HD video playback, and increasing overall video playback quality. For

3993-523: Is a related Windows software package. It is a music editing tool and initially allowed users to turn analog sound sources into high-quality digital sound sources. It was first released in 2003 and was followed by version 2.0 in 2005. SonicStage was criticized for being user unfriendly and having numerous technical defects. It is only possible to move tracks from the music player to the PC's hard drive, and thereby from one music player to another, if each device/computer

4114-408: Is aimed at low-powered computers with availability only in emerging markets. Windows Vista Home Basic is intended for budget users. Windows Vista Home Premium covers the majority of the consumer market and contains applications for creating and using multimedia; the home editions consequentally cannot join a Windows Server domain . For businesses, there are three editions as well. Windows Vista Business

4235-450: Is all about: "bringing clarity to your world" (a reference to the three marketing points of Vista—Clear, Connected, Confident), so you can focus on what matters to you". Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin also loved the name, saying that "Vista creates the right imagery for the new product capabilities and inspires the imagination with all the possibilities of what can be done with Windows—making people's passions come alive." After Longhorn

4356-456: Is capable of running all editions of Windows Vista although some of the special features and high-end graphics options may require additional or more advanced hardware. A Vista Premium Ready PC can take advantage of Vista's high-end features. Windows Vista's Basic and Classic interfaces work with virtually any graphics hardware that supports Windows XP or 2000; accordingly, most discussion around Vista's graphics requirements centers on those for

4477-504: Is dimmed, and only the authorization window is active and highlighted. The intent is to stop a malicious program from misleading the user by interfering with the authorization window, and to hint to the user about the importance of the prompt. Testing by Symantec Corporation has proven the effectiveness of UAC. Symantec used over 2,000 active malware samples, consisting of backdoors , keyloggers , rootkits , mass mailers, trojan horses , spyware , adware , and various other samples. Each

4598-448: Is not the case with Vista, which includes more comprehensive wireless networking support. For graphics, Vista introduces a new Windows Display Driver Model and a major revision to Direct3D . The new driver model facilitates the new Desktop Window Manager , which provides the tearing -free desktop and special effects that are the cornerstones of Windows Aero. Direct3D 10, developed in conjunction with major graphics card manufacturers,

4719-857: Is specifically designed for small and medium-sized enterprises , while Windows Vista Enterprise is only available to Software Assurance customers. Windows Vista Ultimate contains all features from the Home and Business editions, as well as Windows Ultimate Extras . In the European Union , Home Basic N and Business N variants without Windows Media Player are also available due to sanctions brought against Microsoft for violating anti-monopoly laws ; similar sanctions exist in South Korea . Windows Vista includes four distinct visual styles: Computers capable of running Windows Vista are classified as Vista Capable and Vista Premium Ready . A Vista Capable or equivalent PC

4840-505: The 32-bit ( x86 ) architecture and the additional 64-bit ( x86-64 ) instruction set extensions, which Vista was the first consumer home release of Windows to support. Intel IA-64 Itanium support however is exclusively limited to the Vista-based Windows Server 2008 . The maximum number of logical processors in a PC that Windows Vista supports is: 32 for 32-bit; 64 for 64-bit. The maximum number of physical processors in

4961-915: The Luna visual style are no longer available. Support for the original release of Windows Vista (without a service pack) ended on April 13, 2010. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 was retired on July 12, 2011, and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 reached its end of support on April 11, 2017. Several Windows Vista components are upgradable to the latest versions, which include new versions introduced in later versions of Windows, and other major Microsoft applications are available. These latest versions for Windows Vista include: Windows Vista shipped in six different product editions. These were deviced across separate consumer and business target markets, with editions varying in features to cater to specific sub-markets. For consumers, there are three editions, with two available for economically more developed countries. Windows Vista Starter edition

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5082-799: The Sony Ericsson joint venture. Sony could not repeat the success of the cassette player in the 21st-century digital audio player (DAP) market. Rival Apple 's iPod range became a large success in the market, hindering Walkman sales internationally, though it fared better domestically. The Network Walkman for several years had paltry market share and had also been struggling against numerous other rivals such as Creative , Rio , Mpio and iRiver , although sales and share did eventually increase fivefold in 2005 and continued improving, but remained small. Its pricing policy, SonicStage software and lack of MP3 support in earlier years have been suggested factors of its performance. Its U.S. market share in 2006

5203-448: The "Walkman" brand to some transistor radios starting with the matching blue SRF-40 FM Walkman in 1980, and added a radio system to some Walkman cassette models starting with the model WM-F1 in 1982. The first model with Dolby noise-reduction system and an auto reverse function appeared in 1982. The first ultra-compact "cassette-size" Walkman was introduced in 1983, model WM-20, with a telescopic case. This allowed even easier carrying of

5324-584: The 1980s, which led to "walkman" becoming an genericized label term for personal compact stereos of any producer or brand. 220 million cassette-type Walkmen were sold by the end of production in 2010; including digital Walkman devices such as DAT , MiniDisc , CD (originally Discman then renamed the CD ;Walkman) and memory-type media players , it has sold approximately 400 million at this time. The Walkman brand has also been applied to transistor radios , and Sony Ericsson mobile phones. In March 1979, at

5445-478: The 40th anniversary. In 1989, Sony released portable Video8 recorders marketed as Video Walkman , extending the brand name. In 1990 Sony released portable Digital Audio Tape (DAT) players marketed as DAT Walkman . It was extended further in 1992 for MiniDisc players with the MD Walkman brand. From 1997, Sony's Discman range of portable compact disc (CD) players started to rebrand as CD Walkman . In 2000,

5566-554: The GeForce FX series on Vista was 96.85. Microsoft offered a tool called the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor to assist Windows XP and Vista users in determining what versions of Windows their machine is capable of running. The required server connections for this utility are no longer available. Although the installation media included in retail packages is a 32-bit DVD, customers needing a CD-ROM or customers who wish for

5687-466: The Internet around February 28, 2003. It was also privately handed out to a select group of software developers. As an evolutionary release over build 3683, it contained several small improvements, including a modified blue "Plex" theme and a new, simplified Windows Image-based installer that operates in graphical mode from the outset, and completed an install of the operating system in approximately one third

5808-557: The Longhorn project as "another Cairo" or "Cairo.NET", referring to the Cairo development project that the company embarked on through the first half of the 1990s, which never resulted in a shipping operating system (though nearly all the technologies developed in that time did end up in Windows 95 and Windows NT ). Microsoft was shocked in 2005 by Apple's release of Mac OS X Tiger . It offered only

5929-493: The Media Manager of PlayStation Portable , or Windows Media Player 11. In 2008, Sony created a lightweight Windows and Mac software called Content Transfer that provides drag and drop transfer from Windows Media Player and iTunes . SonicStage for LISMO is a stripped-down version of Japanese SonicStage CP, and is a part of the "LISMO Port" suite. Version 1.0 was released on February 1, 2008. SonicStage for LISMO developed for

6050-722: The NW-A700-series and NW-E00XF-series players as well as the NW-HD1 and NW-HD3. Sony released an MP3 Conversion Tool in 2007, which can be used to convert non-DRM protected ATRAC® format audio files stored on computers to MP3 format audio files. To run the MP3 Conversion Tool, the OpenMG Secure Module is required (included with SonicStage). The tool can be downloaded from Sony's eSupport page. Network Walkman Walkman ( Japanese : ウォークマン , Hepburn : U~ōkuman )

6171-739: The UK. Eventually, in the early 1980s, Walkman caught on globally and Sony used the name worldwide. The TPS-L2 was introduced in the US in June ;1980. The 1980s was the decade of the intensive development of the Walkman lineup. In 1981 Sony released the second Walkman model, the WM-2, which was significantly smaller than the TPS-L2 thanks to the "inverse" mounting of the power-operated magnetic head and soft-touch buttons. Sony applied

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6292-483: The US, which in 1982 led to the mayor of Woodbridge, New Jersey banning Walkman from being worn in public due to pedestrian accidents. In the market, the Walkman's success also led to great adoption of the Compact Cassette format. Within a few years, cassettes were outselling vinyl records, and would continue to do so until the compact disc (CD) overtook cassette sales in 1991. In German-speaking countries,

6413-503: The Walkman brand (the entire range) was unified, and a new small icon, "W.", was made for the branding. From 2012, Walkman was also the name of the music player software on Sony Xperia . It has since been rebranded to Music . On December 21, 1999, Sony launched its first digital audio players (DAP), under the name Network Walkman (alongside players developed by the VAIO division). The first player, which used Memory Stick storage medium,

6534-417: The Walkman had a great effect and it became ubiquitous. According to Time , the Walkman's "unprecedented combination of portability (it ran on two AA batteries) and privacy (it featured a headphone jack but no external speaker) made it the ideal product for thousands of consumers looking for a compact portable stereo that they could take with them anywhere". According to The Verge , "the world changed" on

6655-415: The Walkman idea as his own. Finally in 2003, with Pavel threatening to file infringement proceedings in the remaining territories where he held protective rights, Sony approached him with a view to settling the matter amicably, which led to both parties signing a contract and confidentiality agreement in 2004. The settlement was reported to be a cash payment in the "low eight figures" and ongoing royalties of

6776-413: The Walkman, the common device for portable music was the portable radio, which could only offer listeners standard music broadcasts. Having the ability to customize a playlist was a new and exciting revolution in music consumption. Potential buyers had the opportunity to choose their perfect match in terms of mobile listening technology. The ability to play one's personal choice of music and listen privately

6897-566: The Windows Aero interface. As of Windows Vista Beta 2, the NVIDIA GeForce 6 series and later, the ATI Radeon 9500 and later, Intel's GMA 950 and later integrated graphics, and a handful of VIA chipsets and S3 Graphics discrete chips are supported. Although originally supported, the GeForce FX 5 series has been dropped from newer drivers from NVIDIA. The last driver from NVIDIA to support

7018-571: The ability to import AACLC , as well as HE-AAC . The main downside is that a number of features, such as the ability to recover from corrupt track lists, are still missing. Restrictions on what non-administrator users could do were due to restrictions imposed by Windows XP and earlier; these restrictions are not present with Windows Vista and later. Version 4.3 (called SonicStage CP, for Connect Player ) adds Windows Vista compatibility (Vista 64-bit and Windows 7 64-bit are not officially supported but Sonicstage will run, though there are no drivers for

7139-528: The above restrictions are relaxed. SonicStage 3.4 allows tracks recorded via digital or analogue inputs on Hi-MD devices to be transferred back in WAV format. Also, files in Sony's proprietary ATRAC format can now be converted to WAV. Support for MP3 files in both SonicStage and 2005 model devices is unreliable. A 2005 model device may be unable to play low bit rate MP3 tracks. SonicStage will play ATRAC3 files directly from

7260-612: The audio being received by the speech recognition software being "incredibly distorted". Windows Vista build 5824 (October 17, 2006) was supposed to be the RTM release, but a bug, where the OOBE hangs at the start of the WinSAT Assessment (if upgraded from Windows XP), requiring the user to terminate msoobe.exe by pressing Shift+F10 to open Command Prompt using either command-line tools or Task Manager prevented this, damaging development and lowering

7381-849: The business-oriented versions like Windows 2000 (build 2195) or Server 2003 (build 3790). On November 16, 2006, Microsoft made the final build available to MSDN and Technet Plus subscribers. A business-oriented Enterprise edition was made available to volume license customers on November 30, 2006. Windows Vista was launched for general customer availability on January 30, 2007. New features introduced by Windows Vista are very numerous, encompassing significant functionality not available in its predecessors. Vista includes technologies such as ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive , which employ fast flash memory (located on USB flash drives and hybrid hard disk drives ) to improve system performance by caching commonly used programs and data. This manifests itself in improved battery life on notebook computers as well, since

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7502-569: The chance that it would hit its January 2007 deadline. Development of Windows Vista came to an end when Microsoft announced that it had been finalized on November 8, 2006, and was concluded by co-president of Windows development, Jim Allchin . The RTM's build number had also jumped to 6000 to reflect Vista's internal version number, NT 6.0. Jumping RTM build numbers is common practice among consumer-oriented Windows versions, like Windows 98 (build 1998), Windows 98 SE (build 2222), Windows Me (build 3000) or Windows XP (build 2600), as compared to

7623-617: The core of the operating system, notably the completely re-designed audio, networking, print, and video interfaces, major changes to the security infrastructure, improvements to the deployment and installation of applications (" ClickOnce " and Windows Installer 4.0), new device driver development model (" Windows Driver Foundation "), Transactional NTFS , mobile computing API advancements (power management, Tablet PC Ink support, SideShow ) and major updates to (or complete replacements of) many core subsystems such as Winlogon and CAPI . There are some issues for software developers using some of

7744-477: The creator of the driver can be identified. This is also on par with one of the primary goals of Vista to move code out of kernel-mode into user-mode drivers, with another example bing the new Windows Display Driver Model . While much of the focus of Vista's new capabilities highlighted the new user interface, security technologies, and improvements to the core operating system, Microsoft also adding new deployment and maintenance features: Windows Vista includes

7865-571: The day the Walkman was released. The Walkman became an icon in 1980s culture. In 1986, the word "Walkman" entered the Oxford English Dictionary . Millions used the Walkman during exercise, marking the beginning of the aerobics fad. Between 1987 and 1997, the height of the Walkman's popularity, the number of people who said they walked for exercise increased by 30%. Other firms, including Aiwa , Panasonic and Toshiba , produced similar products, and in 1983 cassettes outsold vinyl for

7986-457: The decline of the cassette Walkman, which was discontinued in Japan in 2010. The last cassette-based model available in the US was the WM-FX290W, which was first released in 2004. The marketing of the Walkman helped introduce the idea of "Japanese-ness" into global culture, synonymous with miniaturization and high-technology. The "Walk-men" and "Walk-women" in advertisements were created to be

8107-511: The device, it is not truly a portable application because it requires that the driver be installed on the computer. The most recent version (2.0) can be downloaded from here or here. There is also an older version (1.2) for older Network Walkmans available here. As mentioned in this forum, the VAIO Music Transfer software allows files to be dragged and dropped onto the player. It may still require SonicStage to be installed. It works with

8228-451: The device. The v2 library manager is "benign" in that it sits on top of what is already on the hard drive, and doesn't change what is already there (it will change a filename if the user has configured it as such.) Users can tell it an album exists in a directory, and import that group of files as an album without having the program change the header information in the tracks. From version 2.1 onwards, all newly created and managed tracks use

8349-413: The end, Microsoft chose Windows Vista as confirmed on July 22, 2005, believing it to be a "wonderful intersection of what the product really does, what Windows stands for, and what resonates with customers, and their needs". Group Project Manager Greg Sullivan told Paul Thurrott "You want the PC to adapt to you and help you cut through the clutter to focus on what's important to you. That's what Windows Vista

8470-483: The first time in Windows, graphics processing unit (GPU) multitasking is possible, enabling users to run more than one GPU-intensive application simultaneously. At the core of the operating system , many improvements have been made to the memory manager, process scheduler and I/O scheduler. The Heap Manager implements additional features such as integrity checking in order to improve robustness and defend against buffer overflow security exploits , although this comes at

8591-423: The first time. The Walkman has been cited as influencing people's relationship with music and technology, due to its "solitary" and "personal" nature, as users were listening to their music of choice instead of radio. It has been seen as a precursor of personal mainstream tech possessions such as personal computers or mobile phones. Headphones also started to be worn in public. This caused safety controversies in

8712-469: The graphics APIs in Vista. Games or programs built solely on the Windows Vista-exclusive version of DirectX , version 10, cannot work on prior versions of Windows, as DirectX 10 is not available for previous Windows versions. Also, games that require the features of D3D9Ex, the updated implementation of DirectX 9 in Windows Vista are also incompatible with previous Windows versions. According to

8833-461: The hard disk where they can be loaded into memory very quickly with the least physical movement of the hard disk's read-write heads. As part of the redesign of the networking architecture, IPv6 has been fully incorporated into the operating system and a number of performance improvements have been introduced, such as TCP window scaling . Earlier versions of Windows typically needed third-party wireless networking software to work properly, but this

8954-571: The hardware). As of October 2008, this is the latest version of the English (and other non-Japanese language) SonicStage. From March 29, 2013 onwards this version is no longer available for download from the Sony website. Version 4.4, released on January 10, 2008 (only in Japan), added HE-AAC transfer function for new Walkmans. SonicStage V is the final version of the Japanese SonicStage, and features

9075-414: The ideal reflections of the viewing audience. Sony implemented a marketing strategy, hiring young adults to walk around in public wearing a Walkman, offering nearby people to test out the product. Sony also hired actors to pose with the Walkman around the streets of Tokyo as an additional form of promotion. A major component of the Walkman advertising campaign was overspecialization of the device. Prior to

9196-449: The introduction of many new security and safety features such as BitLocker and User Account Control . The ambitiousness and scope of these changes, and the abundance of new features earned positive reviews, but Windows Vista was the subject of frequent negative press and significant criticism. Criticism of Windows Vista focused on driver, peripheral, and program incompatibility; digital rights management ; excessive authorization from

9317-434: The latest features from every development team at Microsoft was included. Typically, a team working on a certain feature or subsystem would generate their working builds which developers would test with, and when the code was deemed stable, all the changes would be incorporated back into the main development tree at once. At Microsoft, several "Build labs" exist where the compilation of the entirety of Windows can be performed by

9438-510: The market was quickly moving to 64-bit processors. While Microsoft had originally hoped to have the consumer versions of the operating system available worldwide in time for the 2006 holiday shopping season , it announced in March 2006 that the release date would be pushed back to January 2007 in order to give the company—and the hardware and software companies that Microsoft depends on for providing device drivers —additional time to prepare. Because

9559-482: The music player to the PC hard drive, and thereby from one music player to another. Some earlier models (such as some of the Net-MD line) could not even transfer voice recordings made by the user (with the player's microphone input) to their PC. Copy restriction is provided by a group of design features and software limitations. The main features being: In version 3.4, an intermediate update mostly for Hi-MD users, some of

9680-723: The network) cannot interact with parts of the operating system they do not need to. Obfuscation techniques such as address space layout randomization are used to increase the amount of effort required of malware before successful infiltration of a system. Code integrity verifies that system binaries have not been tampered with by malicious code. As part of the redesign of the network stack, Windows Firewall has been upgraded, with new support for filtering both incoming and outgoing traffic. Advanced packet filter rules can be created that can grant or deny communications to specific services. The 64-bit versions of Vista require that all new Kernel-Mode device drivers be digitally signed, so that

9801-521: The new Desktop Window Manager and Aero . The demonstrations were done on a revised build 4015 which was never released. Several sessions for developers and hardware engineers at the conference focused on these new features, as well as the Next-Generation Secure Computing Base (previously known as "Palladium"), which at the time was Microsoft's proposed solution for creating a secure computing environment whereby any given component of

9922-579: The new User Account Control; inordinately high system requirements when contrasted with Windows XP; its protracted development; longer boot time ; and more restrictive product licensing. Windows Vista deployment and satisfaction rates were consequently lower than those of Windows XP, and it is considered a market failure; however, its use surpassed Microsoft's pre-launch two-year-out expectations of achieving 200 million users (with an estimated 330 million users by 2009). On October 22, 2010, Microsoft ceased retail distribution of Windows Vista; OEM supply ceased

10043-413: The new development process and build methodology would be used by all of the development teams. A number of complaints came from individual developers, and Bill Gates himself, that the new development process was going to be prohibitively difficult to work within. By approximately November 2004, the company had considered several names for the final release, ranging from simple to fanciful and inventive. In

10164-405: The newer OpenMG Audio (.oma) format in place of the previous OpenMG (.omg) format. SonicStage added a batch conversion tool to convert older .omg files into .oma. Version 3 uses the header information in the tracks to get album, artist and track name information. The tracks are placed in the database according to what is in the tracks. When the header fields in a track are blank, the program imports

10285-480: The only Walkman-branded products still being produced today – although the "Network" prefix is no longer being used, the model numbers still carry the "NW-" prefix. The current product range as of 2022 are: Since 2017, Sony provided the Music Center for PC software on Microsoft Windows , designed for both content transfer and playback for Walkman and other audio products. Windows Vista Windows Vista

10406-442: The only time this partition is accessed is when the computer is booting, or when there is a Windows update that changes files in this area, which is a legitimate reason to access this section of the drive. The area can be a potential security issue, because a hexadecimal editor (such as dskprobe.exe), or malicious software running with administrator and/or kernel level privileges would be able to write to this "Ghost Partition" and allow

10527-474: The option to drop DRM on ripped files in SonicStage v3.3. SonicStage 3.4 includes an option to de-DRM an entire library (the larger it is, the longer it takes) allowing unlimited transfer and playback on PCs. Users can share non-DRM files with other people. The option to de-DRM files does not work on unplayable OMA files. SonicStage 3.4 can operate on Windows Vista after some manual driver installations. Adds

10648-471: The planned features for the final product, as well as a number of changes to the user interface, based largely on feedback from beta testers. Windows Vista was deemed feature-complete with the release of the "February CTP", released on February 22, 2006, and much of the remainder of the work between that build and the final release of the product focused on stability, performance, application and driver compatibility, and documentation. Beta 2, released in late May,

10769-406: The price of breaking backward compatibility with some legacy applications. A Kernel Transaction Manager has been implemented that enables applications to work with the file system and Registry using atomic transaction operations. Improved security was a primary design goal for Vista. Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing initiative, which aims to improve public trust in its products, has had

10890-456: The project in 2004. Many features were eventually reimplemented after the reset, but Microsoft ceased using managed code to develop the operating system. New features of Windows Vista include a graphical user interface and visual style referred to as Windows Aero ; a content index and desktop search platform called Windows Search ; new peer-to-peer technologies to simplify sharing files and media between computers and devices on

11011-501: The request of Masaru Ibuka , the audio department modified the small recorder used by journalists, "Pressman", into a smaller recorder. After many people praised the good sound quality evaluation, under the leadership of Akio Morita , SONY began to launch the Walkman in July 1979. Akio Morita positioned Walkman in the youth market, emphasized youth, vitality, and fashion, and created a headset culture. In February 1980, he began to sell Walkman to

11132-415: The sale of certain Walkman models. Sony cofounder Masaru Ibuka used Sony's bulky TC-D5 cassette recorder to listen to music while traveling for business. He asked the executive deputy president Norio Ohga to design a playback-only stereo version optimized for walking. The metal-cased blue-and-silver Walkman TPS-L2, the world's first low-cost personal stereo , went on sale in Japan on July 1, 1979, and

11253-539: The security of the Windows codebase, which is programmed in C , C++ and assembly . Longhorn became known as Vista in 2005. Vista in Spanish means view. The early development stages of Longhorn were generally characterized by incremental improvements and updates to Windows XP. During this period, Microsoft was fairly quiet about what was being worked on, as their marketing and public relations efforts were more strongly focused on Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 , which

11374-505: The slider was. File metadata was also made more visible and more easily editable, with more active encouragement to fill out missing pieces of information. Also of note was the conversion of Windows Explorer to being a .NET application. Most builds of Longhorn and Vista were identified by a label that was always displayed in the bottom-right corner of the desktop. A typical build label would look like "Longhorn Build 3683.Lab06_N.020923-1821". Higher build numbers did not automatically mean that

11495-541: The software off the market. Sony offers the MP3 File Manager for Network Walkmans as a very limited alternative to SonicStage. It only provides a simple drag-and-drop interface and is lacking many of the newer, more advanced features of SonicStage (such as the ability to transfer files back to the computer). The application is intended to be installed on the Network Walkman itself. Although it can be run directly on

11616-401: The software recognized the phrase "Dear mom" as "Dear aunt" . After several failed attempts to correct the error, the sentence eventually became " Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all ". A developer with Vista's speech recognition team later explained that there was a bug with the build of Vista that was causing the microphone gain level to be set very high, resulting in

11737-405: The store in 2016. Japan exclusively uses the mora service, and SonicStage continued to be released for Japanese customers until it was superseded by x-APPLICATION in 2013. SonicStage is closely tied to a requirement that the program guard against copyright infractions. Sony music players have a write-only design. Somewhat similar to an Apple iPod , it is not generally possible to move tracks from

11858-404: The system could be deemed "trusted". Also at this conference, Microsoft reiterated their roadmap for delivering Longhorn, pointing to an "early 2005" release date. By 2004, it had become obvious to the Windows team at Microsoft that they were losing sight of what needed to be done to complete the next version of Windows and ship it to customers. Internally, some Microsoft employees were describing

11979-469: The system. This was often difficult in previous versions of Windows, as the previous "limited" user accounts proved too restrictive and incompatible with a large proportion of application software, and even prevented some basic operations such as looking at the calendar from the notification tray. In Windows Vista, when an action is performed that requires administrative rights (such as installing/uninstalling software or making system-wide configuration changes),

12100-456: The time of Windows XP on the same hardware. An optional "new taskbar" was introduced that was thinner than the previous build and displayed the time differently. The most notable visual and functional difference, however, came with Windows Explorer. The incorporation of the Plex theme made blue the dominant color of the entire application. The Windows XP-style task pane was almost completely replaced with

12221-492: The track into the unnamed album (no name, no artist, no album). As a consequence, when importing tracks, many albums are placed into the album called "Unnamed". Tracks under digital rights management cannot be changed, and neither can tracks with a missing source link. As noted above, Version 3 lacks an "import album" feature. SonicStage v3 classifies tracks according to the album-related information present in their headers. 2 GB memory sticks are not supported. Sony added

12342-547: The use of "Walkman" became generic, meaning a personal stereo of any make, to a degree that the Austrian Supreme Court of Justice ruled in 2002 that Sony could not prevent others from using the term "Walkman" to describe similar goods. It is therefore an example of what marketing experts call the " genericide " of a brand. A large statue of a Sports Walkman FM was erected in Tokyo's Ginza district in 2019 in celebration of

12463-504: The user gives consent. Whereas prior releases of Windows supported per-file encryption using Encrypting File System , the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Vista include BitLocker Drive Encryption , which can protect entire volumes , notably the operating system volume. However, BitLocker requires approximately a 1.5-gigabyte partition to be permanently not encrypted and to contain system files for Windows to boot. In normal circumstances,

12584-401: The user is first prompted for an administrator name and password; in cases where the user is already an administrator, the user is still prompted to confirm the pending privileged action. Regular use of the computer such as running programs, printing, or surfing the Internet does not trigger UAC prompts. User Account Control asks for credentials in a Secure Desktop mode, in which the entire screen

12705-565: The world, and in November 1980, he began to use the non-standard Japanese and English brands globally. The Walkman has sold more than 250 million units worldwide. When Akio Morita was knighted in October 1992, the headline in the British newspapers The Sun and The Daily Telegraph was "Arise, Sir Sony Walkman" [Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, Paul du Gay] [1] The Compact Cassette

12826-401: Was 1.9%, placing it behind Apple, SanDisk , Creative and Samsung . In Japan its share in 2009–2010 was between 43 and 48%, slightly ahead of Apple. Meanwhile, Sony Computer Entertainment , a Sony division who are not involved in Walkman products, officially described their PlayStation Portable in 2004 as the "21st century Walkman". Walkman portable digital audio and media players are

12947-466: Was a huge selling point of the Walkman, especially amongst teens, who greatly contributed to its success. A diversity of features and styles suggested that there would be a product which was "the perfect choice" for each consumer. This method of marketing to an extremely expansive user-base while maintaining the idea that the product was made for each individual "[got] the best of all possible worlds—mass marketing and personal differentiation". Culturally

13068-520: Was branded as MS Walkman , shortly before the Walkman brand unification. Most future models would use built-in solid-state flash memory , although hard disk based players were also released from 2004 to 2007. They came with OpenMG copyright protection and, until 2004, exclusively supported Sony's in-house ATRAC format; there was no support for industry-standard MP3 as Sony wanted to protect its records division, Sony BMG , from piracy . Additionally, Walkman-branded mobile phones were also made by

13189-521: Was developed by the Dutch electronics firm Philips and released in August 1963. In the late 1960s, the introduction of prerecorded compact cassettes made it possible to listen to music on portable devices as well as on car stereos, though gramophone records remained the most popular format for home listening. Portable tape players of various designs were available, but none of them were intended to be operated by

13310-513: Was executed on a default Windows Vista installation within a standard user account. UAC effectively blocked over 50 percent of each threat , excluding rootkits. 5 percent or less of the malware that evaded UAC survived a reboot. Internet Explorer 7 's new security and safety features include a phishing filter, IDN with anti-spoofing capabilities, and integration with system-wide parental controls. For added security, ActiveX controls are disabled by default. Also, Internet Explorer operates in

13431-532: Was named Windows Vista in July 2005, an unprecedented beta-test program was started, involving hundreds of thousands of volunteers and companies. In September of that year, Microsoft started releasing regular Community Technology Previews (CTP) to beta testers from July 2005 to February 2006. The first of these was distributed at the 2005 Microsoft Professional Developers Conference , and was subsequently released to beta testers and Microsoft Developer Network subscribers. The builds that followed incorporated most of

13552-483: Was not completed until early 2006, and at the time of Microsoft's announcement, no firmware manufacturers had completed a production implementation which could be used for testing. As a result, the decision was made to postpone the introduction of UEFI support to Windows; support for UEFI on 64-bit platforms was postponed until Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 and 32-bit UEFI would not be supported, as Microsoft did not expect many such systems to be built because

13673-704: Was planned to be the company's next major operating system release. Gradually, "Longhorn" assimilated many of the important new features and technologies slated for Blackcomb, resulting in the release date being pushed back several times in three years. In some builds of Longhorn, their license agreement said "For the Microsoft product codenamed 'Whistler'". Many of Microsoft's developers were also re-tasked to build updates to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 to strengthen security. Faced with ongoing delays and concerns about feature creep , Microsoft announced on August 27, 2004, that it had revised its plans. For this reason, Longhorn

13794-517: Was released in April 2003. Occasional builds of Longhorn were leaked onto popular file sharing networks such as IRC , BitTorrent , eDonkey and various newsgroups , and so most of what is known about builds before the first sanctioned development release of Longhorn in May 2003 is derived from these builds. After several months of relatively little news or activity from Microsoft with Longhorn, Microsoft released Build 4008, which had made an appearance on

13915-534: Was released internationally and was made available for purchase and download from the Windows Marketplace ; it is the first release of Windows to be made available through a digital distribution platform . Development of Windows Vista began in 2001 under the codename "Longhorn"; originally envisioned as a minor successor to Windows XP, it gradually included numerous new features from the then-next major release of Windows codenamed "Blackcomb", after which it

14036-522: Was repositioned as a major release of Windows, and it subsequently underwent a period of protracted development that was unprecedented for Microsoft. Most new features were prominently based on a new presentation layer codenamed Avalon , a new communications architecture codenamed Indigo , and a relational storage platform codenamed WinFS — all built on the .NET Framework ; however, this proved to be untenable due to incompleteness of technologies and ways in which new features were added, and Microsoft reset

14157-542: Was reset to start work on componentizing the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 codebase, and over time re-incorporating the features that would be intended for an actual operating system release. However, some previously announced features such as WinFS were dropped or postponed, and a new software development methodology called the Security Development Lifecycle was incorporated to address concerns with

14278-474: Was sold for around ¥33,000 (or $ 150.00). Though Sony predicted it would sell about 5,000 units a month, it sold more than 30,000 in the first two months. The Walkman was followed by a series of international releases; as overseas sales companies objected to the wasei-eigo name, it was sold under several names, including Sound-about in the United States, Freestyle in Australia and Sweden, and Stowaway in

14399-460: Was sold on Sony's on-line stores (SonyStyle Japan: ¥ 1,590), for their Palm device called CLIÉ . This encoding function for WMA/MP3 was removed in SonicStage Version 2.0, which supports only the decoding function. This is the last version of SonicStage before native MP3 devices were introduced by Sony. MP3 is supported by converting the mp3 file to ATRAC format and downloading that file to

14520-515: Was the first build to be made available to the general public through Microsoft's Customer Preview Program. It was downloaded over 5 million times. Two release candidates followed in September and October, both of which were made available to a large number of users. At the Intel Developer Forum on March 9, 2006, Microsoft announced a change in their plans to support EFI in Windows Vista. The UEFI 2.0 specification (which replaced EFI 1.10)

14641-444: Was used to purchase recordings online, and could be accessed from within the SonicStage program. However, Sony announced that on 31 March 2008, its CONNECT download site would be going offline, affecting SonicStage users. In late 2008, Sony launched a new online music store called " bandit.fm " on a trial basis for a small number of markets. It was expected that Sony would launch bandit.fm globally, however Sony never did this and closed

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