Microsoft ‘donates’ proprietary wheels, without the cars
Summary: Attacks on adoption of Free software continue as Microsoft claims to be “donating” software using entities that its former staff occupies
MICROSOFT is dumping software again. As usual, Microsoft describes it not as “dumping” but as “donations”. The way it comes about is particularly interesting.
First, another Microsoft person takes over an external group (very typical, as we recently wrote about Microsoft and NGOs), this time the “Grameen Technology Center”. He is pretending to help the poor whilst only tying the Grameen Foundation to his beloved Microsoft.
Grameen gets new tech center director, partners with Microsoft
The Grameen Foundation today named David Edelstein as the new director of its Seattle-based Grameen Technology Center.
Edelstein had been the director of information and communication technology innovation at the center, and like his predecessor, also has experience at Microsoft.
Grameen Foundation and Microsoft Announce Initiative to Expand Value and Use of Technology for Microfinance
Software giant Microsoft Corp. (Microsoft) is giving $1 million worth of software grants to non-government microfinance institutions (MFI) to help them modernize and expand their financial services to more poor households in the Philippines.
MICROSOFT Corp. said it’s willing to give away for free more than $1-million worth of software to encourage microfinance groups to adapt technology and make poverty alleviation programs and services more efficient.
They haven’t learned what happens when hiring from Microsoft, have they? This is similar to what Microsoft did to NComputing before capturing it and then using it to dump Windows on developing countries. As BNET puts it this week:
So why are the folks in Redmond working with NComputing? For the same reason that they have to make a go of the growing disaster known as Windows Mobile: They don’t have a choice.
Actually, NComputing did have a choice. About 40% of their deployments were based on GNU/Linux. Maybe that’s why Will Poole had to come from Microsoft; eventually, those two companies married.
St. John, founder of online game firm Wild Tangent and a former Microsoft games evangelist, will serve as president and chief technology officer at hi5. He will be responsible for its product development, technology, network operations and audience acquisition.
Moving on to other new examples of dumping, recently we used Nicaragua, Argentina [1, 2] and Brazil [1, 2] to demonstrate the rapid migration to GNU/Linux in Latin/south America. Well, Microsoft has just announced that it’s dumping (“donating”) software on “Latin America and the Caribbean”.
“This is again marketed to the public as “Unlimited Potential”, which is just a euphemism for EDGI.”What a coincidence!
This is again marketed to the public as “Unlimited Potential”, which is just a euphemism for EDGI. They are dumping something that blocks competition and costs nothing, then call “charity”. What a nerve they have.
Look who they target — exactly the same places that Microsoft sees as strategic and they equate copying of software to “donations”.
Twenty-five nonprofit organizations in the region will receive a combined $1.925 million (U.S.) in cash, and another 155 institutions will receive software donations equivalent to $5.413 million (U.S.) in an effort to support regional work-force development, promote micro-entrepreneurship through professional and technology skills training in CTCs, and strengthen the nonprofits’ own IT infrastructure.
About 13,500 total vouchers are available at Maryland offices, with 6,000 vouchers each for the certification exams and basic training and 1,500 vouchers for professional training.
Microsoft Elevate America is providing more than 1 million vouchers throughout the country as part of its effort to train 2 million people over the next three years, according to Microsoft’s Web site.
These rich online learning resources, including virtual labs, provide hands-on experience with Microsoft software.
They are getting them “hooked” on Microsoft software while pretending that this is something beneficial. Why don’t journalists start covering this properly by highlighting Microsoft’s motives?█
“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”
Summary: A look at some of Microsoft’s latest publicity tricks and deceitful moves
MICROSOFT has just found an interesting entity to collaborate with. That would be AARP, which someone once described to me as a politically-motivated organisation. “Keep in mind that there are many “charities” that are politically motivated organizations masquerading as 501c corporations,” he wrote. “Focus On the Family, Planned Parenthood, and AARP are just a few “pet charities” of politicians who encourage would-be “big dollar contributors” to make contributions to these organizations who won’t “tell you who to vote for” but will “deliver a message consistent with our own”.“
AARP spends a lot of money lobbying and our reader Ryan mentions the political actions a lot [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] because of their viciousness. He compares AARP to the RIAA.
Here are Microsoft and AARP doing joint ‘research’ and bragging about it. What’s the motive? Well, whenever Microsoft does such studies, there is usually a financial motive (e.g. IDC to help with government lobbying around the world using Microsoft-sponsored surveys, like those which we saw last month [1, 2, 3]). Here is another “Microsoft-sponsored” survey, found only a few days ago:
AccountMate Software Corporation received a PERFECT score on the latest Microsoft-sponsored Net Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty survey in Customer Loyalty Segmentation, Revenue Impact and Net Satisfaction areas.
She has been selected as one of five semi-finalists in a contest sponsored by Microsoft to obtain official press passes to the games and access to all the Olympic skating stars.
Here is a more dubious new example. Microsoft’s Jan Muehlfeit, who last month we described as an “allegedly former communist [1, 2] [...] now the European chairman of Microsoft [...] lobbying in Europe [1, 2, 3, 4]” is now swapping favours and lock-in in Albania, potentially getting access and gaining control of national data.
Berisha briefed Muehlfeit on the government’s Digital Albania plan and welcomed consultancy services from Microsoft in project fields including education and health, the government said in a statement.
Here is some more PR from the company which deliberately tries to produce more waste [1, 2] and sell more bloated software, not just computers. A group of Microsoft employees went to Copenhagen and wrote about it. Hypocritically enough they also participated.
Next week, I and a dozen of my Microsoft colleagues will be in Copenhagen as a delegation of issue and technology experts supporting the UN’s Climate Change Conference (COP15). We are participating in a series of briefings, events, and partnership launches to showcase the power of information technology to help address the daunting energy and climate challenges the world faces.
It is interesting that this Web site is publishing Microsoft material as “news” (see author/source). There are other new examples and Microsoft is now using Copenhagen to “attack” Google based on pseudo-moral grounds.
Microsoft-Backed Green Search Engine Attacks Google
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The Ecosia search engine announced this week in the run up to the UN climate talks in Copenhagen is being billed as an environmentally friendly application which donates 80 percent of the income generated from sponsored links to help preserve rainforests.
Another PR move from Microsoft appears to be this damage control over IE6 [1, 2, 3]. Microsoft recently refused to just kill IE6, which causes a lot of trouble and distress to webmasters. There were protests.
As one last example of PR, in order to keep afloat Microsoft devalues all of its products, including the top cash cow, Microsoft Office. They give something away free of charge (like Vista 7 beta) and then pretend there is huge demand for it. They control the image of the product through selective disclosure of information (PR). This time it’s Office 2010 beta*. Regarding retail price, one of our readers reminds us of “student edition, where everyone is a student.” There is clearly a decline in margins and now that Microsoft is giving away Office, the competitive pressure is clear to see. █
____ * There is no Office 2009 as they promised, but they keep delaying, pretending it’s right around the corner (now they say June 2010).
Disc that has been scratched by the Xbox 360 console (source: Wikipedia, GFDL-licensed)
Summary: Many buyers of Xbox 360 find themselves banned from Live despite the fact they did nothing wrong; Xbox Live suffers another new setback
PREVIOUS posts about Microsoft’s banning of its own customers [1, 2, 3, 4] were just the tip of the iceberg as far as Xbox failures are concerned. We showed that sales of Xbox 360 dropped around the very same time and based on this new report from Ars Technica, not much has changed.
Wii, PS3 crow over Thanksgiving success, Microsoft silent
Thanksgiving week is a boon for retailers, both on- and offline, and the big three are starting to share their sales data on their respective consoles. Nintendo is strong, the PS3 did very well, and the Xbox 360… isn’t giving us anything to talk about.
Even in the United States, Xbox 360 fell to a bottom position as Japanese consoles grew in popularity and gained appeal. This is relevant to us because Xbox is a big hole in Microsoft’s budget, having already amassed about $6 billion in losses. Microsoft’s CFO has just decided to quit.
Microsoft’s en masse Xbox bans recently led to lawsuits and a class action is likely on its way, too. Based on this second report from Ars Technica, a lot of innocent people got banned.
Microsoft: difference between cheat, exploit? None. Banned!
Microsoft has begun issuing temporary bans to players taking advantage of an exploit in Modern Warfare 2, while Infinity Ward works on a patch to fix the issue. While the servers may be kept slightly cleaner for the efforts, the amount of control Microsoft holds over owners of their consoles, and the arbitrary way they are able to wield it, is troubling.
TechDirt asks, “does it make sense to ban players from Xbox Live just for using a glitch?”
Unfortunately, it appears the BBC wasn’t in the position to make its iPlayer a premium level service, and now the two giants have reached a disagreement. The result is that the official iPlayer launch on Xbox LIVE has been delayed until further notice.
It is rather surprising that there is a disagreement because the BBC and Microsoft UK share some of the same staff. It is actually similar to the NHS, which is influenced heavily by the Microsoft ecosystem [1, 2, 3, 4]. The BBC indicates that the trouble caused to the NHS (in part by Microsoft software) may finally come to an end.
The government is to scale back its £12bn NHS IT system in what the Tories are calling a “massive U-turn”.
Chancellor Alistair Darling said he would be delaying parts of the scheme in Wednesday’s pre-Budget Report as it was “not essential to the frontline”.
When will they learn to just never get involved with companies like Microsoft? The London Stock Exchange learned it the hard way [1, 2, 3]. █
We had previously informed our readers of this grant awarded in August. The press release does not provide details about the way the funds will be managed, the type of governance that will be -eventually chosen-, what African NGOs will eventually participate, how transparency and accountability will be implemented, issues that are very important and were specifically addressed by the Gates Foundation in the $7 million project awarded to the American Cancer Society.
This contract was apparently signed in June 2009. Its size is substantial: $451K represent about 8,5% of the global budget of $5.2 millions provided to IDRC by the Gates Foundation.
The post on the IDRC’s site does not say what the participation of the African advocates is and if they’ll receive any part of the financial support that is given to Jeffrey Drope (who had previously been awarded smaller consulting contracts).
Jeffrey Drope is the brother of Jacqui Drope who is the senior program officer of the ATSA program. Her name usually appears when ATSA grants are advertised but in this case it is replaced by Greg Hallen (new RITC program leader).
Here are some valuable videos for those who do not know what the Gates Foundation is doing to the African population. This is not an unusual opinion/analysis because the Los Angeles Times conducted and ran long investigations that led to similar conclusions.
University of Colorado at Boulder Falls Prey to Philip Morris’ Strategic Philanthropy
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Notwithstanding that a federal court in 2006 found Philip Morris guilty of engaging in 50 years of public fraud and racketeering, a peer-reviewed study of tobacco industry documents conducted by the University of California San Francisco’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education looked at why tobacco companies so robustly promote Life Skills Training.
Yes, they want a place on the table. It’s the business of death.
Speaking of which, Barbara Dunn has kindly sent us information about the “Not on My Watch Campaign”, which she introduces as follows:
When someone enters the hospital, he expects the get better of course, not worse. Unfortunately, all too often patients become terribly ill from an infection they didn’t have before entering the hospital. These infections are known as HAIs – healthcare associated infections or hospital acquired infections. With the increase in resistant bacteria, HAIs are on the rise. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at any point in time, 1.4 million people worldwide are suffering from infections acquired in hospitals.
The Not on My Watch Campaign aims to educate healthcare professionals and patients about the best ways to prevent infections. One of the most important methods is the old standby, handwashing or hand sanitizer. Below is a short video about the campaign.
If you’d like more information about HAIs or the Not on My Watch campaign, please take a look at http://www.haiwatch.com
The healthcare sector can be brutally corrupt sometimes, as recent attempts to reform the system in the United States have shown. The lobby and AstroTurf (fake, paid-for protesters) of the insurance companies paid off, as they will continue to monetise the deaths of people who pass away due to preventable disease/conditions. █
Summary: The press which is in Microsoft’s pocket uses its position irresponsibly to brainwash the masses by the spread of marketing and not reporting
THE reality behind Vista 7 cannot be distorted, not even with obedient, self-appointers reporters who comply with norms, pressure, PR agencies, and hearsay. Some of them are also paid by Microsoft. They made a big mistake when they spread the message that Windows Vista would be a great success (even after it was released) and they are doing it again with Vista 7.
“They made a big mistake when they spread the message that Windows Vista would be a great success (even after it was released) and they are doing it again with Vista 7.”Shifting of focus from Vista to Vista 7 is perfectly clear to see and there is even a shift of focus to vapourware that we call “Vista 8″. We’ll come to this later. Not a single headline about “Vista” has appeared in the past week’s news*, compared to 20 clusters of headlines about Vista 7 (which is also relatively little). This is typical.
So who is responsible (at least in part) for hyping up Windows? Well, there is the unofficial ‘Microsoft press’ (they recently set up a biased “visualization” site), which writes positively about Vista 7 and quotes Microsoft as taking pride in waste. The same publisher also shows what Comes vs Microsoft once revealed — that Microsoft may want to abolish SQL.
Think the “NoSQL” movement isn’t prominent on Microsoft’s radar screen?
Think again. Not only is the company tracking it, some people inside Microsoft have actually jumped on the anti-SQL bandwagon. This came to light when Microsoft Technical Fellow Dave Campbell took some pot-shots at the latest threat to the company’s bread-and-butter database strategy during the recent Professional Developer’s Conference.
This is an old plan that never materialised (more lock-in). It is interesting that the ‘Microsoft press’ can bring this up, along with baseless and ridiculous claims from Doug Barney, who shockingly claims “Mobile Windows Surge Due”. Where does this man live? Based on several surveys from planet Earth, Windows Mobile is sinking like a rock, but that’s just the reporting one ought to expect from the ‘Microsoft press’ (they have a whole bunch of domains now), which sometimes seems to act like a peripheral marketing agency of Microsoft.
After 13 years and countless kicks at the can, it’s time for Microsoft to call it a day.
Going back to Vista 7, Microsoft is looking for free labour, just like the in “Show Us Your Wow” campaign that left submitters’ contributions dumped altogether, along with the campaign Web site.
Perhaps even more interesting is the level of fantasy, which includes hype and vapourware one findswhen it comes to Windows. Vista 7 is hardly adopted and Microsoft is already talking about future versions. Why? Probably to “freeze the market,” to use Microsoft's own words. They always fail to deliver what they promise, but it keeps people deluded and unwilling to explore other options.
“FreeNAS, a popular, free NAS solution, is moving away from using FreeBSD as its underlying core OS and switching to Debian Linux. Version 0.8 of FreeNAS as well as all further releases are going to be based on Linux, while the FreeBSD-based 0.7 branch of FreeNAS is going into maintenance-only mode, according to main developer Volker Theile. A discussion about the switch, including comments from the developers, can be found on the FreeNAS SourceForge discussion forum. Some users applaud the change, which promises improved hardware compatibility, while others voice concerns regarding the future of their existing setups and lack of ZFS support in Linux.”
- Volker, the current FreeNAS project leader and main developer, will create a new project called “‘OpenMediaVault” based on a GNU/Linux using all its experience acquired with all its nights and week-ends spent to improve FreeNAS during the last 2 years. He still continue to work on FreeNAS (and try to share its time with this 2 projects).
On the other hand, application virtualisation may offer a way of delivering a new application into an environment which, without the virtualisation capability, wouldn’t allow the application to run – for example running Windows applications in a Linux environment or vice versa.
The SCC operates with a customized version of Linux. As SCC has the cores it is able to run an OS instance, Intel and its partners have a possibility to work with various networking arrangements on the software side and then decide what works best.
We rely heavily on our cellphones. We keep critical data stored on them. This data must be backed up often. In Windows, people use all sorts of synchronization suites to backup their cellphone data to hard disk. Most often, these suites are slow, bloated, poorly coded and work only with specific cellphone models. Oh, and they only work in Windows.
Pentoo Linux is a Gentoo-based Linux distribution that runs as a Live CD or Live USB. Pentoo has been designed to provide a penetration testing and security assessment solution through the use of Nessus and Metasploit. Pentoo uses the Enlightenment window manager, is optimized for Pentium III architecture, and supports package modularity like Slax.
Since the release, and all of the publicity and complaints, the maintainers of PackageKit have decided to remove the feature. Out of this controversy, though, are lessons for any project regarding security, transparency, and system defaults. There were no real complaints about the existence of the feature, rather it was the choice to make it the default, coupled with a lack of any notice of the change, that led to the outcry.
Shakshober and Larry Woodman, a Red Hat consulting engineer, lead four-day performance tuning courses for advanced users throughout the year and offer a briefer version for intermediate users annually at the Red Hat Summit.
Nokia Oyj plans to install Linux software on just one new smartphone next year, a source told Reuters on Monday, dampening prospects of a quick makeover of the Finnish group’s struggling product line-up. But a spokesman said the world’s biggest handset maker had no plans to sell its manufacturing plants, clarifying earlier comments by an executive in the run-up to the firm’s strategy update on Wednesday.
Google is working on a mobile application that enables Android smartphone users to take a photo and run an image search to bring up additional information, says eWEEK. The Google Visual Search technology could also be used to drive mobile advertising based on taking photographs of billboards, says the story.
I shouldn’t have to come clean on this, but I will. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of Microsoft Windows (really?) but I recognize its position in business and on most of the world’s desktop. But trust me. It doesn’t belong on a netbook.
So what does? Linux, of course. The kind of Linux that was designed for a netbook. In the hours that followed my decision to scrap Windows from yet another computer, I tried Easy Peasy (based on Ubuntu 8.04), Moblin, and Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 which is based on the current Sue Graftonesque release “K is for Karmic Koala” (there’s a thread on my WFTL-LUG titled “Sue Grafton meets Linux” so I couldn’t resist).
Despite this ABI Research published some new data last month and the results may surprise you. They place the 2009 market share for Linux on netbooks at 32% with 11 million units preloaded with Linux shipping this year. In an interview with DesktopLinux.com, Jeffrey Orr of ABI makes clear that dial boot machines (i.e.: the Acer Aspire One AOD250-1613) and machines that are purchased with Windows but later have Linux loaded do not count in the 32% number. That number is pure Linux sales. This data confirms comments made first by Jay Pinkert and later by Todd Finch of Dell that one third of their netbooks sales are Linux machines and that there is no higher return rate for Linux systems than there is for ones sold with Windows preloaded.
Bruce Byfield is completely unaware of this too. In his latest misguided rambling ‘Open Source Projects and the Meritocracy Myth’ he lists a number of major projects with paid developers. As if meritocracy is and should only be applied there.
First, he obviously doesn’t understand the full concept of meritocracy. Meritocracy in FOSS is about merits, not just “who is the best”. If a paid developer can spend eight straight hours per day and provides most of the code he will obviously rise in the ranks, a fact that is clearly supported by the findings of the FLOSS polls, that infamous report that everybody likes to quote and nobody obviously read. Furthermore, in our capitalist world those who pay call the shots. The privilege that the community has is that if it doesn’t like it, it can fork. Something that Eben Moglen recently confirmed.
[...]
Meritocracy is not the guiding principle of the FOSS ideology. It simply works best for these thousands of unpaid volunteers you’re so eager to insult and attack on each and every opportunity you get. Proof? Here you got it. Source? FLOSS polls!
Two United Nations human rights officials urged the government of the Philippines on Thursday to pursue a thorough investigation of the election-related massacre in which 57 people were killed, and the police recommended that murder charges be filed against 11 more suspects.
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Mrs. Arroyo, who has been under intense pressure to take action on the killings, attended a wake Thursday for some of the journalists who were killed and spoke to their relatives. “We will help in the studies of the children as well in finding justice,” Mrs. Arroyo said.
Google’s Street View service, which lets you zoom into Google Maps and stroll through the city streets in a 3D environment, is amazing in its own right, but it just got twice as amazing with the addition of the ancient ruins of Pompeii.
In 2006 the new Canadian government announced it was abandoning its targets to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto protocol. No other country that had ratified the treaty has done this. Canada was meant to have cut emissions by 6% between 1990 and 2012. Instead they have already risen by 26%.
Up to 20 million Bangladeshis may be forced to leave the country in the next 40 years because of climate change, one of the country’s most senior politicians has said. Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, Bangladesh’s finance minister, called on Britain and other wealthy countries to accept millions of displaced people.
With the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen starting on Monday, it is of vital important that there is consensus on the scientific evidence about climate change, in order to inform debates about the best course of action for the international community. Sharing the same basic picture about the climate, global warming and the impact of human sources of carbon dioxide (regardless of the details of this picture, regardless of differences in opinion about the most appropriate course of action in reponse to it) is surely a critical prerequisite to effective and fruitful negotiations.
This data is a subset of the full HadCRUT record of global temperatures, which is one of the global temperature records that have underpinned IPCC assessment reports and numerous scientific studies. The data subset will consist of a network of individual stations that has been designated by the World Meteorological Organisation for use in climate monitoring. The subset of stations is evenly distributed across the globe and provides a fair representation of changes in mean temperature on a global scale over land.
When ABC News, for instance, looks for someone to help explain the president’s decision to send more troops, they turned to Kimberly Kagan. In this segment, Kagan plays the role of Beltway policy wonk, describing how U.S. troops will initially surge to southern Afghanistan (”Those forces would go in, they would protect the population they would interact with local elders, village elders, try to figure out who those bad guys are in those communities and figure out different ways of making those communities safe,” she says). But there’s no mention of the fact that she played a role in shaping the strategy.
USA Today, by contrast, quotes Fred Kagan on the troop increase and the prospects for improved security (”the good news is the administration does not seem to be planning that a rapid turnaround will take place”), but also mentions that he helped McChrystal with the assessment. CNN, quoting Fred Kagan in this segment, does not.
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More importantly, think tanks served as a sort of advance guard for a troop increase, with some pundits pushing early — and hard — for an escalated involvement. Here’s Cordesman, arguing in early August for more troops and fewer allied caveats. And here’s a CNAS brief from back in June. Not everyone one McChrystal’s advisory team signed on to the surge — Shapiro of Brookings, for one, did not advocate more troops — but the panel’s bipartisan design helped lend more weight to the general’s recommendations.
The Lisbon Treaty introduces a new form of public participation in European Union policy shaping, the European citizens’ initiative, which enables one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States to call directly on the European Commission to bring forward an initiative of interest to them in an area of EU competence. Before citizens can start exercising this new right, a few ground rules and procedures have to be laid down in an EU regulation.
One controversial issue, which arose at the drafting stage, related to the removal of “competition policy” as one of the EU’s objectives from the draft Treaty. Instead, a legally binding “Protocol on Internal Market and Competition” was compiled, stating that “the internal market as set out in Article 3 of the Treaty on European Union includes a system ensuring that competition is not distorted”. However, the European Council’s Legal Service also provided an opinion confirming that the fact such reference is omitted from the EU’s objectives would not, in any case, prevent the EU legislator from acting under Article 308 to ensure competition is not distorted.
“All internet communication data goes to foreign countries and then it returns. This activity has a security aspect,” said Acarer. I can’t be 100% certain but I think most of Turkish citizens would probably rather have their data go live somewhere on a Google server in California than to be looked at by Turkey’s intelligence services – on a server in Istanbul. But then again I may be misjudging the mysterious Turkish soul.
Police forces across the country have been warned to stop using anti-terror laws to question and search innocent photographers after The Independent forced senior officers to admit that the controversial legislation is being widely misused.
…the Bill has an inflexible and stereotyped view of the way in which access to the internet is provided which ignores many useful and important business models: many business from Weatherspoons and Macondalds to the British Library and local community access projects will be affected and may have to cease to provide internet access.
Within the last few months, I have been singled out for “additional screening” roughly half the time I step into an airport security line. On Friday, October 9, as I stepped out of the full-body scanning device at BWI, I decided I needed more information to identify why it is that I have become such an appealing candidate for secondary screening.
Little did I know this would be only the first of many questions I now have regarding my airport experiences.
Over these last few months, I have grown increasingly frustrated with what I view as an unjustifiable intrusion on my privacy. It was not so much the search (then) as it was the embarrassment of being singled out, effectively being told “You are different,” but getting no explanation as to why.
If that wasn’t enough of a sign as to how much of an online movement this has become and the attention it’s getting, in the afternoon, after the failed meeting, President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero came out in a press conference to appease tensions, stating that “no website will be shut down”, discrediting the Culture Minister.
But it got bigger. Press coverage has been impressive. Last night at 8pm, an unofficial protest—a walk—was called, in defense of our fundamental internet rights. As far as I know, people came out in protest in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Vigo, Bilbao, Palma, Malaga, Granada, La Coruña and Santiago de Compostela. And I’m sure there are more. We mobilized for internet rights, without which we wouldn’t have been able to mobilize in the first place. Whatever comes out of the commotion now, whatever final decisions are drawn (unlikely to happen quickly), this spectacular reaction is something to talk about.
DigiProtect, the anti-piracy company that makes money from threatening alleged file-sharers with court unless they pay up a ‘fine’, has a worrying new tactic. Hoping to scare letter recipients even more than they already do, the company is now sending more threats via a debt collection agency.
German researchers have devised five methods that determined attackers can use to bypass hard-drive encryption in recent versions of Microsoft operating systems.
A Missouri man has lost his legal battle against an online prescription processor that suffered a security breach that exposed highly sensitive subscriber information.
John Amburgy alleged that Express Scripts was negligent because it failed to adequately safeguard customer data, including names, dates of birth, social security numbers, and prescription drug histories. He argued that the breach in October 2008 that exposed an unknown number of subscribers’ details put him at risk of identity theft for which he was entitled to compensation.
The US$10 webcam that Anna Giesman bought her daughter at Office Depot over the Thanksgiving weekend sounds like one of those deals that’s too good to be true. And for her, it was.
A week later, she’s worried and upset because a CD that came with the camera contained a Web link that apparently infected her PC with fake antivirus software.
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