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(credit: DeviantArt user: Tincho555)

The shambling, ghostly shell of a company that shares its name with the classic game maker Atari went to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) this week to defend its exclusive rights to video games with Haunted House in the title.

The oral hearing at the USPTO yesterday came about when Atari opposed a proposed trademark for Haunted House Tycoon, an upcoming game that small developer Hazy Dreams of Infinity tried to trademark back in 2011. In its opposition notice, Atari suggested that its 1982 game Haunted House had become "well-known among the public and the trade" due to "widespread and extensive use."

Atari does have some valid current interest in its right to the 35-year-old game name. Haunted House is on iOS as part of the Atari's Greatest Hits collection, and the game became available through Microsoft's Game Room service starting in 2010. Atari also rebooted the franchise in 2010 with a remake of the same name, which it still sells as a Windows download.

The new Pen Workspace. (credit: Microsoft)

At its Build developer conference a few weeks ago, Microsoft announced the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, a major update for Windows 10 due this summer. One of its biggest aspects was substantially reworked and improved pen support ("Ink" in Microsoft terminology) intended to make pen applications easier to find and use and to make stylus use more powerful. A new Windows build that provides the first access to these new features, version 14328, has just been promoted to the fast ring.

The core of this new support is the Windows Ink Workspace, a panel that provides instant access to pen-powered apps. Pressing the eraser button on a Surface Pen will show the panel instead of its current action (which opens OneNote). The Anniversary Update also comes with a trio of new pen apps: Sketchpad, a sketching app; Screen sketch, a screenshot annotation app; and a new Sticky Note app.

New Sticky Notes. (credit: Microsoft)

The new build contains a lot more than just Ink improvements. The Start menu has been revised to make All Apps permanently visible, and in tablet mode, All Apps is now full-screen. Also in tablet mode, the taskbar can autohide without being autohide in desktop mode. The taskbar clock now shows on all monitors on multihead systems, and the calendar now shows your appointments. The Action Center notification system has had its layout refined to show more notifications and now includes rich Cortana notifications.

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An artist's rendering of the Space Launch System rocket. (credit: NASA)

This week, the US Senate's Appropriations subcommittee overseeing spaceflight put forward its blueprint for NASA's FY2017 budget. The top-line number looks promising at $19.306 billion—a $21 million year-over-year increase.

Yet the Senate plan exposes two potentially fatal flaws with NASA's Journey to Mars. Namely, the US Congress continues to place funding for the Space Launch System rocket and Orion space capsule before all other elements of NASA's exploration program. And by raiding other areas of NASA's budget, notably Space Technology, it is hamstringing the agency's ability to carry out the journey.

There is an old-time expression to characterize what is happening here: eating the seed corn. In a different era, a farmer's family might be forced to eat its seed corn for the next growing season to survive a long winter. This few weeks of sustenance would then doom the family during the next planting season, leaving them with no seeds to put into the ground. This sort of budget eats NASA's seed corn for the Journey to Mars.

(credit: Anthony Ryan)

Microsoft has withdrawn its regulatory complaints against Google across the globe—a matter of months after Redmond retreated from its fight over the ad giant's alleged abuse of dominance in the search market in Europe.

A spokesperson for the European Commission's competition chief Margrethe Vestager confirmed to Ars that her office was aware of Microsoft's decision to back out of the case.

“The Commission takes note of the announcement. We continue to investigate the conduct of Google as part of our ongoing formal probes, based on the facts, the evidence and EU law. The substantive analysis in an antitrust case is not affected by the number of complainants nor their identity,” Brussels' spokesperson Ricardo Cardoso told Ars.