Windows XP: When Microsoft Support for it ends in April, XP will become a Gateway for Hackers into All those XP Machines

Source: PC Pro
The final deadline for Windows XP support will act as a starting pistol for hackers, as they target hundreds of millions of users on unpatched systems.

Microsoft has already granted the 12-year-old OS several stays of execution, but the firm has said it will finally end extended support on 8 April 2014 – despite the fact that XP remains the second-most popular OS, with almost a third of PCs running it.

These hundreds of millions of desktops and laptops will be vulnerable to hackers once XP stops receiving security updates, with Microsoft warning earlier this year that hackers could use patches issued for Windows 7 or Windows 8 to scout for XP exploits.

“The very first month that Microsoft releases security updates for supported versions of Windows, attackers will reverse-engineer those updates, find the vulnerabilities and test Windows XP to see if it shares [them],” wrote Tim Rains, the director of Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group.

“If it does, attackers will attempt to develop exploit code that can take advantage of those vulnerabilities on Windows XP,” Rains added. “Since a security update will never become available for Windows XP to address these vulnerabilities, Windows XP will essentially have a zero-day vulnerability forever.”

The Excel Depression

By PAUL KRUGMAN - NY Times
Published: April 18, 2013


In this age of information, math errors can lead to disaster. NASA’s Mars Orbiter crashed because engineers forgot to convert to metric measurements; JPMorgan Chase’s “London Whale” venture went bad in part because modelers divided by a sum instead of an average. So, did an Excel coding error destroy the economies of the Western world?

The story so far: At the beginning of 2010, two Harvard economists, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, circulated a paper, Growth in a Time of Debt, that purported to identify a critical “threshold,” a tipping point, for government indebtedness.

Once debt exceeds 90 percent of gross domestic product, they claimed, economic growth drops off sharply.

Ms. Reinhart and Mr. Rogoff had credibility thanks to a widely admired earlier book on the history of financial crises, and their timing was impeccable. The paper came out just after Greece went into crisis and played right into the desire of many officials to “pivot” from stimulus to austerity. As a result, the paper instantly became famous; it was, and is, surely the most influential economic analysis of recent years.

In fact, Reinhart-Rogoff quickly achieved almost sacred status among self-proclaimed guardians of fiscal responsibility; their tipping-point claim was treated not as a disputed hypothesis but as unquestioned fact. For example, a Washington Post editorial earlier this year warned against any relaxation on the deficit front, because we are “dangerously near the 90 percent mark that economists regard as a threat to sustainable economic growth.” Notice the phrasing: “economists,” not “some economists,” let alone “some economists, vigorously disputed by other economists with equally good credentials,” which was the reality.

For the truth is that Reinhart-Rogoff faced substantial criticism from the start, and the controversy grew over time. As soon as the paper was released, many economists pointed out that a negative correlation between debt and economic performance need not mean that high debt causes low growth. It could just as easily be the other way around, with poor economic performance leading to high debt. Indeed, that’s obviously the case for Japan, which went deep into debt only after its growth collapsed in the early 1990s.

Over time, another problem emerged: Other researchers, using seemingly comparable data on debt and growth, couldn’t replicate the Reinhart-Rogoff results. They typically found some correlation between high debt and slow growth — but nothing that looked like a tipping point at 90 percent or, indeed, any particular level of debt.

Finally, Ms. Reinhart and Mr. Rogoff allowed researchers at the University of Massachusetts to look at their original spreadsheet — and the mystery of the irreproducible results was solved. First, they omitted some data; second, they used unusual and highly questionable statistical procedures; and finally, yes, they made an Excel coding error. Correct these oddities and errors, and you get what other researchers have found: some correlation between high debt and slow growth, with no indication of which is causing which, but no sign at all of that 90 percent “threshold.”

In response, Ms. Reinhart and Mr. Rogoff have acknowledged the coding error, defended their other decisions and claimed that they never asserted that debt necessarily causes slow growth. That’s a bit disingenuous because they repeatedly insinuated that proposition even if they avoided saying it outright. But, in any case, what really matters isn’t what they meant to say, it’s how their work was read:  

Austerity enthusiasts trumpeted that supposed 90 percent tipping point as a proven fact and a reason to slash government spending even in the face of mass unemployment.

So the Reinhart-Rogoff fiasco needs to be seen in the broader context of austerity mania: the obviously intense desire of policy makers, politicians and pundits across the Western world to turn their backs on the unemployed and instead use the economic crisis as an excuse to slash social programs.

What the Reinhart-Rogoff affair shows is the extent to which austerity has been sold on false pretenses. For three years, the turn to austerity has been presented not as a choice but as a necessity. Economic research, austerity advocates insisted, showed that terrible things happen once debt exceeds 90 percent of G.D.P. But “economic research” showed no such thing; a couple of economists made that assertion, while many others disagreed.  

Policy makers abandoned the unemployed and turned to austerity because they wanted to, not because they had to.

So will toppling Reinhart-Rogoff from its pedestal change anything? I’d like to think so. But I predict that the usual suspects will just find another dubious piece of economic analysis to canonize, and the depression will go on and on.

Microsoft collects locations of Windows phone users

April 25, 2011- CNET
by Declan McCullagh  

 

Like Apple and Google, Microsoft collects records of the physical locations of customers who use its mobile operating system.

Windows Phone 7, supported by manufacturers including Dell, HTC, LG, Nokia, and Samsung, transmits to Microsoft a miniature data dump including a unique device ID, details about nearby Wi-Fi networks, and the phone's GPS-derived exact latitude and longitude. 

A Microsoft representative was not immediately able to answer questions that CNET posed this afternoon, including how long the location histories are stored and how frequently the phone's coordinates are transmitted over the Internet. Windows Phone currently claims about a 6 percent market share but, according to IDC, will capture about 21 percent by 2015 thanks to Microsoft's partnership with Nokia.

Microsoft does say, however, that location histories are not saved directly on the device. That's different from Apple's practice of recording the locations of visible cell towers on iPhone and iPad devices, which can result in more than a year's worth of data being quietly logged.

Google's approach, by contrast, records only the last few dozen locations on Android phones.
The privacy practices of mobile software companies have come under extensive scrutiny after a researcher at a conference last week in Santa Clara, Calif., described in detail how the iPhone's location logging works. A CNET report, however, showed that law enforcement and forensics analysts had been aware of and relied on the undocumented feature since at least last year.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) today asked Google and Apple to appear at a Senate hearing scheduled for May 10, and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has asked for a meeting. A lawsuit seeking class action status was filed today in Tampa, Fla.

According to a Web page in the "Help and How-To" section of the Windows Phone site, Microsoft has assembled a database with the "location of certain mobile cell towers and Wi-Fi access points" so a mobile device can determine its location more quickly, and with less battery drain, than if only GPS was used. Relying exclusively on GPS would have a negative "impact on mobile phone users by increasing data charges and draining the battery," the company says.

To make applications like maps work, of course, it's necessary for a smartphone or tablet to transmit its GPS coordinates to a remote server--and, in exchange, receive nearby restaurant reviews, or driving directions, and so on.

Privacy concerns begin to arise when a unique device ID is transmitted, which allows a company to track a customer's whereabouts over an extended period of time. Randomizing the device ID frequently would alleviate some concerns. (Microsoft says that in the case of Windows Phone 7, location information is transmitted to its servers only if Wi-Fi and location services are turned on. It also points out it offers a global switch to turn off all location-based services.)

"The user is identifiable if you have a series of events" that can be linked together, says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C.
Microsoft says its operating system transmits the MAC address of the Wi-Fi access point (but not the name), signal strength, a randomly generated unique device ID retained for an unspecified limited period of time, and, if GPS is turned on, the precise location and direction and speed of travel. That happens when the "application or user makes a request for location information," the company says.

One privacy concern is that location databases can be a gold mine for police or civil litigants: requesting cell phone location information from wireless carriers has become a staple of criminal investigations, often without search warrants being sought. It's not clear how often legal requests for these records have been sent to Microsoft, which said it could not immediately answer that question, or whether its lawyers require a search warrant signed by a judge.

Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year by contacting AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and other mobile carriers, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. The Obama Justice Department has claimed that no warrant is required for historical location information, a claim opposed by a coalition of companies including Google and Microsoft but not Apple. (CNET first reported on warrantless cell tracking in 2005.)

Apple acknowledged (PDF) to Congress last year that "cell tower and Wi-Fi access point information" is "intermittently" collected and "transmitted to Apple" every 12 hours, but has declined to elaborate. Google has confirmed that it collects location information from Android devices, but downplayed concerns about privacy by saying the information is not "traceable to a specific user." It has yet to respond to questions from last Friday.

Here are the questions, still unanswered, that CNET posed to Microsoft this afternoon:

• When did Microsoft start collecting location data from mobile devices?  

• Does Microsoft collect cell tower data?  

• How frequently do devices running Windows Phone 7 transmit the data to Microsoft? Every 15 minutes? Hourly? Daily?  

• How is that done? Is it an HTTP POST request to a Microsoft.com server, like Google?  

• Is the connection encrypted? If so, using what method?  

• What information, exactly, is transmitted?  

• You say the information collected includes a "randomly generated unique device ID." Is that device ID ever changed? If it is changed, how often does it change?  

• What does Microsoft use the database of Wi-Fi access points for? Because you collect "direction and speed" if GPS is available, is it used for traffic data?  

• You say the WiFi access points are surveyed when "the user has allowed a particular application to access location services and the application requests location information." If WiFi is turned on, location services have been activated, but no apps are ever run, will location data ever be transmitted to Microsoft?  

• You say the randomly generated ID is "retained for a limited period." How long is that? Is the ID then deleted or only partially anonymized?  

• Given a street address or pair of GPS coordinates, is Microsoft able to produce the location logs associated with that generated ID, if legally required to do so?  

• Given a generated ID, is Microsoft able to produce the complete location logs associated with it, if legally required to do so?  

• Given a MAC address of an access point, is Microsoft able to produce the generated IDs and location data associated with it, if legally required to do so?  

• How many law enforcement requests or forms of compulsory process have you received for access to any portion of this database?  

• If Microsoft knows that a Hotmail user is connecting from a home network IP address every evening, it would be trivial to link that with an Windows phone's device ID that also connects via that IP address. Does Microsoft do that?  

• Is any information about current or previously-visited locations stored on a Windows Phone 7 device?  

• Is Microsoft planning to change any of its policies regarding location data storage and transmission?

Independent News Site Fraudulently Blacklisted by Internet Explorer After Negative Bill Gates Article

Friday, November 5, 2010@Activist Post

Is the Internet Blacklist already being enforced via web browsers?  Microsoft's Internet Explorer recommended that visitors should not access Activist Post today, claiming the site contains threats to outside computers.  First, we want to assure all of our visitors that this is blatantly FALSE. Our site does not contain any viruses, malware, or data-harvesting capabilities.  We have a voluntary and confidential sign-up mechanism for our free weekly newsletter, which apparently now falls under the category of illegal data mining according to Microsoft.

Our website runs on a Google Blogger back-end which immediately declines any material that may be "malicious."  This back-end also makes it easy for us to scan our entire site for potential viruses or other problems.  This scan is, and always has been, 100% clean.  Furthermore, our technical team ran a check at Website Grader which tests various aspects of a site, including cleanliness Activist Post scored a 97% (FAR above the average).  Yet, Microsoft has taken an anonymous tip from a user as enough evidence to deter access to our site.  Meanwhile, other browsers such as Chrome, Safari, and Firefox have similar malware protection, yet none of them flagged Activist Post today.

What's interesting about the timing of this possible censorship is that it comes on a day when we posted an article that reflects negatively on Bill Gates.  It appears that his empire carries out vendettas by deterring access to websites not favorable to their overlord.  We did receive a complaint through our contact form from a reader listing the e-mail address: office@heavenaboveyourlife.com.  This email address is not valid and the domain is not currently registered.

All of the information about the cleanliness of our site, and the potential false tip, was easily obtained by our tech staff within minutes.  Why couldn't a behemoth like Microsoft do the same?

This appears to be the latest tactic the establishment will use to shut down access to alternative voices, making visitors believe that the site is "harmful" to their computer.  We have been informed by Microsoft that this is basically a guilty-until-proven-innocent situation, since we certainly weren't contacted to counter any claim in advance of the warning they posted. 

Internet Explorer users represent 42% of our visitors, while representing a similar overall market share.  For alternative sites that are 100% user-funded through visiting sponsors and donations, this can be a damaging blow that has the potential to force people out of business.  Welcome to the free market of ideas.

Our technical team is working hard on restoring our site to Internet Explorer users.  Presently, it is fully accessible and safe to view from Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari.  In protest of such shenanigans, we hope that readers will drop IE and use a different browser, as this type of censorship is likely to continue from the Gates Gestapo.  One can also send a statement to Microsoft that our site has been clean in your experience.  Click HERE to submit.

UPDATE:  We're hearing reports that site accessibility with Internet Explorer has been returned.  If you continue to have problems accessing our site with that browser please do the following: In Internet Explorer go to the Tools menu, select "Smart Screen Filter" and choose to "Turn Off Smart Screen Filter."  After completing this, accessibility should be returned immediately.

The 10 Biggest Corporate Campaign Contributors in U.S. Politics

(Thanks to my Google Buzz friend Jessica for the share)

***

by Bruce Watson  10/13/10

As the midterm elections slowly draw nearer, we're taking a look at the companies whose deep pockets help keep America's political campaigns rolling along. With the help from data compiled by the nonpartisan folks at the Center for Responsive Politics, we've combined a list of the top 10 corporate campaign contributors, offering a a view of the candidates they support, the issues that concern them and their lobbying habits.

Here are 10 companies that give America the best elections that money can buy, arranged in ascending order by campaign dollars contributed between 1989 and 2010.

10. Lockheed Martin (LMT) -- $19.3 million  (Defense contractor/war profiteer)

Military contracts are lucrative, and Lockheed Martin -- the country's top defense contractor -- has landed a passel of them. But big-ticket deals like the Joint Strike Fighter don't come cheap, and Lockheed has spent over $19 million in political races since 1989. Meanwhile, its yearly lobbying expenditure ranges between $7 million and $15 million. Thus far in 2010, it has spread $6.7 million around the halls of Congress.

Lockheed's support goes to Congressmen and Senators on both sides of the ideological divide. This year, two of its top five congressional vassals are Republicans Howard McKeon (Calif.) and Kay Granger (Texas). The other three are Democrats Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Ike Skelton (Mo.) and Daniel Inouye (Hawaii).

9. Morgan Stanley (MS) -- $19.8 million  (Wall St. banksters)

When it comes to campaign fund-raising, the financial industry is far and away the biggest contributor, and its continuous lobbying over the past 20 years has borne considerable fruit. Morgan Stanley, one of the U.S.'s top investment banks, was among the biggest supporters of securities industry deregulation and Social Security privatization. To that end, it has poured almost $20 million into political contests since 1989. Not surprisingly, it was also a major beneficiary of bailout money in 2008.

For most of the past decade, Morgan Stanley has steadily increased its lobbying expenditures, from just over $1 million in 2001 to almost $3 million in 2009. Republicans and Democrats both benefit from its campaign largesse: In this election cycle, the company's top contributions have been to Republican Carly Fiorina (Calif.), and its second-biggest gift has been to Democrat Kiersten Gillibrand (N.Y.). Democrats Harry Reid (Nev.) and Reshma Saujani (N.Y.) join Republican Richard Shelby (Ala.) in rounding out the company's five favorite politicos.

8. Time Warner (TWX) -- $20 million  (Major Player in the Net Neutrality debate)

A media colossus with fingers in dozens of pies, Time Warner's interests extend from baseball to periodicals, books to movies, and its lobbying is similarly wide-ranging. Between 1989 and 2010, the company gave some $20 million to candidates, the vast majority of whom were Democrats. Currently, the company's top five contribution recipients are Patrick Leahy (Vt.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Howard Berman (Calif.), Harry Reid (Nev), and Charles Schumer (N.Y.). All are Democrats.

Time Warner also pays a lot of money to lobbyists. Since 2003, it has averaged between $4 million and $6 million per year, with an $8 million spike in 2008. Thus far in 2010, it has paid out over $1.7 million to more than 300 lobbyists.


7. JPMorgan (JPM) -- $20.3 million  (Another bankster from Wall St.)

Another top financial services firm, JPMorgan Chase has contributed over $20 million to political campaigns since 1989. Its favorites are split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, and its donations influence contests around the country. Currently, the company's top five beneficiaries include New York Democrats Kirsten Gillibrand and Scott Murphy, as well as Arkansas Democrat Blanche Lincoln, Alabama Republican Richard Shelby, and Illinois Republican Mark Kirk.

JPMorgan also spends heavily on lobbying. For most of the 2000s, its yearly contribution to K Street coffers has ranged between $4 million and $6 million. Thus far in 2010, it has spent just over $3 million. As with most other banks and financial services companies, Morgan's money has gone to influence banking deregulation and bankruptcy reform rules. Morgan, too, was a major beneficiary of government bailout money.

6. Microsoft (MSFT) -- $21 million  (Net Neutrality, smart phones, suffered many an anti-trust suit)

A relatively late arrival to the political contribution game, Microsoft was quick to learn the lessons of Beltway power-peddling. Following its antitrust trial in 1998, the company set up a lobbying office in D.C. and made it clear that it was open for business. Since 2000, it has poured over $2 million into each election cycle, hitting its height in 2000 and 2002, when its contributions topped $4 million. At the same time, Microsoft has also funneled a fortune into lobbying, sending more than $6 million per year to K Street since 2000 and more than $8 million per year from 2003 to 2008.

For the most part, Microsoft's money has gone to Democrat candidates from the Pacific Northwest. This year, it has poured over $110,000 each into the candidacies of Suzan DelBene and Patty Murray, and has also liberally funded Jay R. Inslee and Republican Dave Reichert, all of Washington. Over the last few years, however, Microsoft's political giving has slowly trended downward as the memories of its 2008 inquisition have faded.

5. Altria (MO) -- $24.3 million  (Largest food processor in the world)


Formerly known as Philip Morris, Altria is the top tobacco company in the world, as well as a major shareholder (and former owner) of Kraft Foods (KFT). Much of the $24 million that Altria spent between 1989 and 2010 went toward protecting the company against devastating legislation and lawsuits. Recently, however, Altria recently shifted its position, publicly endorsing a move by the Food and Drug Administration to regulate nicotine as a drug. This has placed it in opposition to many of its fellow tobacco companies. At the same time, the roughly $2.7 million in "soft money" that Altria spent in each election cycle from 1996-2002 has dried up.

Still, Altria remains a major player in the realm of government influencing. With yearly lobbying expenditures of more than $10 million, it's keeping its D.C. friends very close. In the 2010 election cycle, Altria's donations have largely gone to Republican congressional and senatorial candidates, especially Mitch McConnell (Kent.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Roy Blunt (Mo.) and Eric Cantor (Va.). One Democrat, Virginia's James Webb, rounds out the top five candidates drawing Altria support.

4. United Parcel Service (UPS) -- $24.9 million

For decades, UPS and Fed Ex (FDX) (which would be No. 13 on the list) have poured money into government lobbying, each seeking to gain a strategic business advantage over the other. But their similarities may outweigh their differences: Both have fought legislation that would make it easier for the U.S. Postal Service to sell valuable overnight and second-day air services. Similarly, both strongly support free-trade agreements because these deals encourage greater overseas shipping.

UPS's political contributions -- totaling almost $25 million between 1989 and 2010 -- skew toward Republican candidates. They have also remained remarkably consistent, hovering around $2.6 million through the last four election cycles. This year, the delivery company's top five campaign contributions are fairly closely split, with just under $28,000 going to Democrats Steny Hoyer (Md.) and Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), while $32,250 is going to Republicans Aaron Schock (Ill.), Todd Tiahrt (Kan.) and Roy Blunt (Mo.).

3. Citigroup (C) -- $27.5 million  (Bankster extraordinaire!)

The second-biggest campaign contributor from the financial services sector, Citigroup has given more than $27 million to a fairly even slate of Democrat and Republican candidates. Its spending spiked in the 2008 election cycle, when it contributed almost $5 million to various candidates. Today, its contributions are way down.

Citi's lobbying efforts are also declining from a high of more than $8 million in 2007. Thus far in 2010, it has spent just over $3 million. It has also spent locally. In 2010, three of its top five candidates were New York Democrats: Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and Representative Joseph Crowley.

2. Goldman Sachs (GS) -- $36.7 million  (King of all Wall St. bankster criminals)

One of Wall Street's largest -- and most notorious -- banks, Goldman Sachs is also the biggest political contributor from the financial services arena. Between 1989 and 2010, it gave more than $36.7 million to political candidates and spent roughly $1 million per year on lobbying through most of the early 2000s. Starting in 2004, however, its political spending went through the roof. Its budget for the 2004 election cycle was 45% higher than four years earlier. While its contributions dropped off slightly in 2008, they still represented a 36% jump over 2000's expenditures.

Goldman's impressive lobbying effort leaped into overdrive in 2006, when its payouts to politicos more than doubled. Since then, the bank has kept up its heavy lobbying payments, which topped $3 million in 2008. At the same time, it has benefited greatly from financial deregulation -- which it strongly supports -- and government bailouts, which it accepted in 2008. In the 2009/2010 election season, most of its money has gone to Democrat candidates, including Nevada's Harry Reid and New York Representative Michael McMahon, although it has also contributed mightily to Republican Roy Blunt of Missouri.

1. AT&T (T) -- $45.6 million  (Net Neutrality player, complicit in NSA spying on US citizens)

Between 1989 and 2010, AT&T gave more than $45 million in campaign donations to both Republican and Democrat candidates. In the 2009-2010 cycle, its biggest contribution was $30,000 to the campaign of Nevada Senator Harry Reid, but three Republican congressmen -- Joe Wilson of South Carolina, Pete Olson of Texas and Roy Blunt of Missouri -- were among its top five. While impressive, however, these contributions were dwarfed by AT&T's lobbying expenses, which topped $25 million in 2006 alone.


It isn't hard to see why the phone company is willing to open its wallet for Congress. After its early-1980s antitrust breakup, Ma Bell has spent the last few decades putting itself back together again. Today, it's the largest land-based phone carrier, the largest cellular carrier and the 13th-largest company in the U.S. In 2006, as AT&T's political giving reached its apex, the company bought Bell South, a major piece of the post-breakup puzzle. Coincidence?

Microsoft buying Adobe would fix both companies' Apple problem

By Peter Bright | Ars Technica

The New York Times is reporting that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has recently been at a secret meeting with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen to discuss topics including the two companies' mutual competitor, Apple.

The Times says that the companies were investigating ways to partner in order to do battle with Apple. One option was for Microsoft to acquire Adobe, a claim that has seen Adobe's stock price surge by more than 10 percent.

Microsoft is thought to have investigated buying Adobe some years ago, but abandoned the idea with the expectation of running into new antitrust problems. With Apple and Google now such strong competitors, such a purchase may now be a viable option. Regardless of the legal difficulties, a partnership—and, indeed, a Microsoft purchase—makes sense.

The common enemy

Apple's increasing importance in the mobile space with its trio of  iOS devices: the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, is a growing threat to both companies. Adobe and Apple butt heads in a number of markets. The two companies have competing software (Adobe's Lightroom and Premiere go up against Apple's Aperture and Final Cut Studio, for example), and more significantly, Apple is attacking a key Adobe product: Flash.

iOS devices have no Flash support in their browsers, so can't run Flash ads or any other Flash content on webpages. Apple has been advocating the use of HTML5, with its video and interactivity capabilities, as an alternative. Given the dominance of Flash in advertising, this is a big blow to Adobe. Apple then stepped up the pressure on Adobe with the launch earlier this year of iAds—rich, Flash-like ads built using HTML5.

Microsoft's difficulties in the mobile space—both phones and tablets—are well-known. The tablet problem is probably more serious; though Microsoft would like to have a piece of the smartphone market, it is tablets that threaten PC sales, and hence Windows. There is already some suggestion that iPad sales are denting netbook sales, and this is a trend that Microsoft could be badly hurt by. At the very least, it would substantially diminish home PC sales; ultimately, it could threaten corporate computer purchases too.

Apple's anti-Flash stance also indirectly threatens Microsoft. Redmond's relationship with HTML5 is a difficult one. On the one hand, the Internet Explorer team is making a considerable effort to make Internet Explorer 9 a modern browser with good support for new Web technology. That team, at least, is serious about HTML5.

On the other hand, Microsoft is also investing in its own Flash competitor, Silverlight, which it introduced in 2007 with great fanfare. Like Flash, Silverlight is a browser plugin that allows the creation of rich, interactive Web applications, and like Flash, it includes a range of media features not available to HTML5, such as DRM-protection of video streams. HTML5 threatens Silverlight in much the same way as it threatens Flash.

HTML5 also raises Microsoft's long-standing fear about the Web: that it would become a platform in its own right and displace the Windows PC. It is this fear that led to the development of Internet Explorer and the first browser war; Microsoft doesn't want the Web to be a platform, but if it must be one, it should be a Microsoft-powered Web accessed through a Microsoft browser on a Microsoft operating system.

Microsoft and Adobe do compete on a number of fronts. Silverlight and Flash, and ASP.NET and ColdFusion, are the two main areas of opposition. However, in practice, even in these competitive areas, the companies' respective products have carved out their own niches, and neither is threatening to completely demolish the other. Apple's stance towards Flash—get rid of it, use HTML5—is far more dangerous to Flash, and far more vigorously pursued, than Microsoft's stance—use this other browser plugin instead.

Collaboration and cooperation

Having a common enemy isn't enough to justify working together, of course. There needs to be some practical benefit to cooperation: something that strengthens both Microsoft and Adobe against the Apple threat.

The most obvious, immediate thing that the two companies can do is to get Flash ported to Windows Phone 7. Early signs are that Windows Phone 7's Web browser is surprisingly fast and capable, but one thing it isn't is HTML5-aware. If the phone operating system is successful, there will be a substantial growth in smartphones that are, at least for the time being, not HTML5-capable.

Such phones are crying out for Flash compatibility. There are certainly hurdles to achieving this—not least of which is the current requirement that all Windows Phone 7 software be written using .NET code—but they are by no means insurmountable. For example, Microsoft could simply bundle Flash with the phone operating system, and in so doing obviate the need for Flash to be written in C#.

The two companies could even go for something more exotic: make it possible to create Windows Phone 7 programs directly in Flash. The latest Flash version, CS 5, has the ability to produce iPhone applications. Apple originally planned to ban such applications, but has since relented. A similar capability could be readily built to produce Windows Phone 7 software.

Microsoft is already doing its best to court developers to attract them to its phone platform, with high-quality development tools that leverage the .NET technology that's already familiar to many. Flash development would similarly open the platform up to a large number of developers, letting them use technology they're already familiar and comfortable with.

There are technical things that the companies can work on, too, to improve the use of plugins in the desktop browsers. Google and Adobe are already cooperating to produce a better plugin interface to enable greater performance and stability for Flash in Chrome, and Chrome now bundles Flash. Taking a similar tack with Internet Explorer would further strengthen Flash's position on the desktop, again countering the forces of HTML5.

Or an outright purchase

Microsoft could afford Adobe, no doubt about that. Hell, Microsoft could afford to buy Adobe with petty cash; we're only talking $15 billion here. The relative size of the two companies means that the offer doesn't even have to appeal to Adobe, particularly: Microsoft can buy the company whether it likes it or not; as such, the question is not what Microsoft has to offer Adobe, only what Adobe has to offer Microsoft. Such a purchase would significantly strengthen Microsoft's software line-up. Redmond has virtually no creative/artistic software; though the company has dabbled in this area in the past, its only real creative software is the Expression Design vector graphics package.

The corporate cultures of the two companies are likely to be radically different, a product of their vastly different target audiences. As such, it's hard to see Adobe being anything other than a wholly-owned subsidiary, at least initially. Attempting to integrate it into the broader Microsoft organization would likely be no more successful than Microsoft's Danger purchase.

Software...

Apple has had a lot of success with its creative software, both at the high end (Final Cut Studio, Aperture, Logic Studio) and the low end (iMovie, iPhoto, GarageBand). An Adobe purchase would let Microsoft tackle these markets in the same way; Adobe's technology would provide a substantial upgrade to programs like Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Movie Maker, as well as opening up the possibility of upsells to the full products like Lightroom and Premiere. A hypothetical "Windows Live Photoshop Elements" would be a great addition to the line-up, too.

Bolstering the Windows Live line-up makes Windows a much nicer platform. The iLife suite is a tough act to follow, and though Windows Live Essentials is trying to compete in this area, the iLife applications are quite a bit more polished. Buying Adobe would let Microsoft simultaneously broaden the appeal of the Essentials with new programs, and raise the quality bar.

Software with more of an overlap with existing products may be a little more difficult to deal with. Adobe's Dreamweaver Web authoring software is on balance better than Expression Web, so it would seem natural to replace the latter with the former. ColdFusion would be tricky, and it's hard to see how it would survive such an acquisition; though it has its fans, and offers features that ASP.NET does not, it's probably too similar to justify continuing to develop and support both products; one can imagine it would be cut loose in such a purchase.

Though the same would in some senses be true of Flash (and related technologies, Flex and AIR)—it has massive overlap with Silverlight—it's too important to be let go in this way. Instead, consolidation—allowing the Flash software to produce applications that will run on Silverlight or Windows Phone 7—would be the way to go.

It would also be good to see Microsoft's secure coding practices applied to Adobe's software. If nothing else, the teams developing Reader and Flash need a bit of help.

... and Style

Beyond the software, Adobe would bring a very different kind of customer to Microsoft. Adobe has strong links with the creative and design communities, communities that have, frankly, reviled Microsoft for decades. I would argue that the current generation of Adobe software shows a stronger sense of aesthetics than is generally true of Microsoft's output, and that's in no small part down to the community that Adobe serves—giving designers a suite of ugly, clunky software is not a winning move. It would be nice for this sense of aesthetics to permeate Microsoft.

Microsoft traditionally has been very good at producing software for developers, but its efforts to appeal to designers have been less effective. It has started making moves in the right direction with Expression Blend, but it's still in many ways a developer-oriented company. The Expression range of software does have some interoperability with Adobe software (Expression Blend can open Adobe Photoshop mockups, for example), as an acknowledgement of the importance of Adobe's software in the design world.

By bringing this design-oriented, creative software in-house, Redmond would be able to offer an end-to-end solution for designing great-looking applications, from Illustrator and Photoshop mock-ups, to Expression Blend or Expression Web/Dreamweaver designs, to Visual Studio application development. If the company could make this kind of workflow work better—without alienating designers—it could prove to be extremely attractive to both Web and phone developers.

Microsoft hasn't cared too much about design in the past, but that's no longer the case with Windows Phone 7. Strong design is key to the new platform; it ties it together to make it feel like a coherent whole, in a way that simply doesn't happen on desktop Windows. Appealing to designers hasn't mattered in the past. These days, it does.

Stumbling blocks

An Adobe purchase does pose quite a few issues. Antitrust is the obvious biggest problem. Regulators might not like to give Microsoft control over Flash, and would be certainly be concerned about what such a takeover would mean for Adobe's Apple software. Microsoft does develop Office for Mac, but this is a bastard product that's not actually a version of Office for Mac OS X, but rather a completely separate set of software that happens to share the same file formats as the Windows software. It looks different, it works differently, it does different things, it is written by different people, and it is released on a different schedule.

This allows Microsoft to continue to "support" Apple's platform, while still keeping it at a disadvantage relative to Windows. The company gets the best of both worlds; Office for Mac is believed to be profitable in its own right, Microsoft gets to say to regulators "See? We do care about other platforms!" and yet, simultaneously, Microsoft manages to keep Mac OS X inferior to Windows in a manner that's important to corporations. It has Office, but it's not the real Office—so companies are going to stick with Windows.

This is not the case with Adobe's software; Photoshop for Mac OS X is a first-class citizen, on an equal footing with the Windows version. Any work done to improve Photoshop strengthens Microsoft's rival just as much as it does Windows. As such, killing the Mac OS X versions would plainly hold some appeal to Redmond. If Photoshop and related products were not so dominant on Mac OS X then it might not matter, but the fact is that it would kneecap Macs. Those creative sales are still important to Apple, and their loss would be quite a blow to the Mac platform, if not Apple as a whole. Until Apple comes out with its own Photoshop competitor, this is a situation unlikely to change.

The close work between Adobe and Google over Flash likely wouldn't withstand such a purchase, either. Adobe and Google don't compete, making it easy for the two to cooperate, but Google and Microsoft are not so friendly with one another.

Adobe's other major technology, PDF, would be another sticky issue. Microsoft has devised its own PDF alternative, XPS, and though this has not set the world on fire, it's sufficiently integrated into Windows now that the company is stuck with it. PDF, obviously, is enormously entrenched. There would be a concern that Microsoft might favor XPS over PDF, to the detriment of everyone not using XPS (which is to say, everyone). Countering that is the fact that various versions of PDF are ISO standards anyway; Adobe has ceded absolute control over the specification, so there may not be too much that Microsoft could do to hurt it.

Partnership, yes. Purchase, doubtful

Microsoft partnering with Adobe is something of a no-brainer. In spite of the differences between the two companies, working together, especially on Windows Phone 7, will be valuable to both. Bringing Flash to Windows Phone 7, both in the browser and as an application development tool, would be win-win, and I would be surprised if this did not happen eventually.

As for buying Adobe? I think a good case can be made. It rounds out Microsoft's software offerings, giving the company access to a market that it currently virtually ignores, and though it wouldn't happen overnight, gradual integration of the two companies' product lines would enhance Windows and Windows Phone in many ways. Microsoft is not the dominant monopoly it once was, but regulators might well be reluctant to let the company buy the dominant producer of painting, drawing, and desktop publishing software, especially when so many of its customers don't use Windows.

And it's these monopoly concerns that I think will be enough to prevent the companies from even trying to engineer a takeover. The purchase would make sense for Microsoft, but the chances of it ever being approved are slim to none.

Support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP2 comes to an end (2 stories)

By Peter Bright | Ars Technica

Today is the last day that Windows 2000 and Windows XP Service Pack 2 will receive support and patches from Microsoft. Starting tomorrow, Service Pack 3 will be required to receive support and hotfixes for Windows XP.

In the past, the end of support for a service pack would mean that Microsoft would refuse to offer any kind of telephone support or troubleshooting assistance. This policy was relaxed a little in April; limited support will remain available for those organizations sticking with Service Pack 2. However, any hotfixes or security updates will be restricted to Service Pack 3.

Customers on Windows 2000 will not even have this option. The operating system is now out of its extended support phase. This brings an end to any and all hotfixes, security updates, or even paid support options. Fewer than half a percent of Internet-connected machines appear to use Windows 2000, and with the end of support, it is now open season on that minority: Microsoft will take no action to provide fixes for any security issues, regardless of their severity.

***

XP fans get reprieve in form of downgrade rights extension
By Peter Bright | Last updated about 13 hours ago

Downgrade rights have been a long-standing feature of Microsoft's operating system licensing. They allow users to buy a license for the latest version of the operating system, and then use that license with an earlier incarnation. Volume license users have long had a broadly unrestricted right to downgrade; though unsupported, they could choose to run Windows 95 if it suited their needs. OEM licenses, sold with preinstalled copies of the software, also have downgrade rights, but unlike the volume license kind, they tend to be restricted to specific versions.

Windows 7's OEM downgrade rights, available for Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate, were originally due to expire this October. Microsoft has now announced that these end-user downgrade rights are being extended further.

OEMs themselves will have to stop preinstalling downgraded copies of Windows XP on October 22, 2010. However, end-users will now be able to downgrade PCs with OEM installations of Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate to the corresponding version of Windows Vista or Windows XP Professional, and will be allowed to do so for the duration of Windows 7's lifecycle.

Microsoft says that this change is in response to business demands; it would be confusing if some Windows 7-licensed PCs included downgrade rights but others did not. The change in policy means that the licensing conditions will be uniform, and the same conditions will apply regardless of when the machines were purchased.

The company did not explicitly state which lifecycle. Under current rules, OEM availability ends two years after the next operating system is released. Presuming that Windows 8 lands in late 2012 (for a three-year release cycle), that would mean that OEM licenses of Windows 7 would be available until late 2014. Beyond that, customers would have to use volume license downgrade rights.

The supported lifecycle is longer; consumer editions of Windows 7 will receive mainstream support until 2015, and corporate editions until 2020. If this is the lifecycle that OEM downgrade rights are tied to, it would extend downgrade rights to 2015 (for Windows 7 Ultimate) or 2020 (for Windows 7 Professional). Though this interpretation has been widely reported across the Internet, it seems hard to reconcile with Redmond's current stated availability policy.

The chance of a computer bought in 2020 working flawlessly with Windows XP is slim—indeed, even in 2015, Windows XP's hardware support is likely to be problematic—so even if the 2020 date is accurate, it is unlikely to have any practical value.

This extended availability also does not appear to impact the support schedule for the old operating system; Windows XP support is due to expire in April 2014. So not only will the operating system be unlikely to work, it will be insecure, too.

Those businesses dependent on OEM rather than volume licenses will, no doubt, welcome the change. Microsoft's own figures say that three-quarters of businesses still use Windows XP in some capacity, so the ability to buy machines with the right to downgrade will certainly find its uses.

However, Windows XP's dominance is certainly diminishing. Microsoft says that 65 percent of companies either have started their migration to Windows 7 or will do so within six months, rising to 89 percent planning to do so within 24 months—upgrading just in time for the release of Windows 8.

Moreover, the wisdom of buying new hardware just to run Windows XP is increasingly questionable. Microsoft is not going to decide one day that every post-Windows XP operating system was a grave error, and is not going to undo all the changes in those operating systems that cause software and device driver incompatibility. The company has moved on. Going forward, the compatibility situation is only going to get worse: new technology like USB3 and LightPeak will become mainstream, new processor extensions such as Intel's AVX will start to gain traction, and even hard disks might start to forfeit Windows XP compatibility.

Though Microsoft has repeatedly relented, extending Windows XP availability and support, it is sticking to its guns when it comes to the necessity of the platform changes that Windows Vista and Windows 7 have made. If a business absolutely must use Windows XP to run some essential software, Microsoft's solution is virtualization. Any company hoping to stick with the obsolete platform indefinitely is setting itself up for disappointment.

Microsoft’s tracking system goes public

'Orwellian' tracking system goes public
Published on 05-29-2010

Microsoft has publically released a tagging system that will allow users to leave a breadcrumb trail for the firm, its advertisers and just about anyone else to follow.

The Vole claims that its Tag software allows businesses who use it as a form of barcode giving access to “advanced analytics” and “real-time location services” to track where users access products and services that are registered with Microsoft’s latest privacy concern.

Backing up Tag’s ability to provide access-all-areas capability, Microsoft gushed that it has witnessed “a lot of enthusiasm for Tag among marketers”. Well, quite, but the firm doesn’t mention a thing on its website concerning the privacy of those who purchase products incorporating Tags.

The system will form part of Microsoft’s plan to build up a rich picture, similar to that of augmented reality, of Tagged items, with the user being able to receive further information about them. The firm hopes that its customers will use smartphones to tap into the apparent wealth of data this system will provide. Microsoft says that “all major mobile platforms” are supported, and presumably Windows Mobile, too.

Perhaps as a sign of Microsoft’s legendary reliability, at press time Microsoft’s Tag website was up and down like a yo-yo.

As Microsoft loses its grip on the virtual world, apparently it’s decided to chance its hand in the real one. µ

Apple overtakes Microsoft as biggest tech company

So, with less than 10% of the personal computer market and propelled solely by their device market (iPod, iPhone, iPad), Apple overtakes the 'Soft. Jobs bitchslaps Gates. They migrated to the X86 chip for their Macintoshes, so now all PCs are based on the IBM model, but those devices are what everyone wants, huh?

***

Apple overtakes Microsoft as biggest tech company
By Bill Rigby

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Apple Inc shot past Microsoft Corp as the world's biggest tech company based on market value on Wednesday, the latest milestone in the resurgence of the maker of the iPhone, which nearly went out of business in the 1990s.

Apple's shares rose as much 2.8 percent on Nasdaq on Wednesday, as Microsoft shares floundered, briefly pushing its market value above $229 billion, ahead of its longtime rival.

Both stocks ended down after a late-day sell-off, but Apple emerged ahead with a market value of about $222 billion, compared with Microsoft's $219 billion, according to Reuters data.

Apple shares closed down 0.4 percent at $244.11 on Nasdaq, while Microsoft fell 4 percent to a seven-month low of $25.01.

Shares of Apple are worth more than 10 times what they were 10 years ago, as it has profited from revolutionizing consumer electronics with its stylish, easy to use products such as the iPod, iPhone and MacBook laptops.

The last time Apple had a higher market value than Microsoft was December 19, 1989, according to Thomson Reuters Datastream.

Microsoft, whose operating system runs on more than 90 percent of the world's personal computers, has not been able to match growth rates from its hey-day 1990s. Its stock is down 20 percent from 10 years ago.

Apple, which struggled for many years to get its products into the mainstream, resorted to a $150 million investment from the much larger Microsoft in 1997 in order to keep it afloat. At that time, Microsoft's market value was more than five times that of Apple.

Microsoft still leads Apple in sales. In the latest quarter, Microsoft reported $14.5 billion in revenue compared with Apple's $13.5 billion.

Cupertino, California-based Apple is now the second-largest company on the Standard & Poor's 500 index by market value, behind energy behemoth Exxon Mobil Corp.

Murdoch: 'I'll stop Google taking our news for nothing'

Means he'll probably go after blogs, too.

Rupert Murdoch defiant: 'I'll stop Google taking our news for nothing'
Paul Harris in New York
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 7 April 2010 07.52 BST

Rupert Murdoch has launched a spirited defence of putting up paywalls around his newspaper websites, while embracing the game-changing potential of Apple's iPad. The News Corp chairman hailed the new device as a possible saviour of the newspaper industry.

Murdoch renewed his attacks on search engines, such as Google, whom he accused of stealing journalism from traditional media outlets. He told a National Press Club event at George Washington University that the newspaper industry had to stand up for itself and charge for content while using copyright law to defend its journalism from being used without permission.

"We are going to stop people like Google or Microsoft or whoever from taking stories for nothing … there is a law of copyright and they recognise it," Murdoch told a packed audience of students, journalists and other media professionals.

He said search engines had tapped into a "river of gold" by aggregating content but that the days of free news had to come to an end. "They take [news content] for nothing. They have got this very clever business model," he said.

In June, Murdoch's British titles the Times and Sunday Times will join joining his business title, the Wall Street Journal, behind a paywall.

However, some critics say consumers are now too used to getting online news for free and will not pay subscriptions in big enough numbers to form a viable business model for quality journalism. Murdoch dismissed this fear, saying consumers could be forced to change their habits. "When they have got nowhere else to go they will start paying. If it is reasonable. No one is going to ask for a lot of money," he said.

Murdoch also fired a shot at the New York Times – a bête noire of Murdoch's and the Journal's main rival – by saying its paywall plans were halfhearted and needed to be more restrictive.

"They don't seem to be able to make up their mind. They will have opposition internally from some of their journalists, especially their columnists," he said."To really make it work they have got to put a paywall up. I think most newspapers in [the US] have got to have a paywall."

Advocates of free newspaper websites often accuse Murdoch of being a technophobe, but the Australian media mogul was happy to embrace the iPad, launched last Saturday.

During the interview, with journalist Marvin Kalb, he picked up an iPad to demonstrate how to navigate the Journal's website. He said the iPad could be the saviour of newspaper journalism, albeit in electronic form, not print.

"I got a glimpse of the future last weekend with the Apple iPad. It is a wonderful thing," he said. "If you have less newspapers and more of these … it may well be the saving of the newspaper industry."

Murdoch was challenged in the interview – and by many in the audience – over the conservative bias of his Fox News cable television channel. The audience tittered when Murdoch said he thought the channel's news coverage had no political bias. "We have both sides. We have Democrats and Republicans, libertarians and whatever," he said.

Asked to name a single Democrat-leaning Fox commentator – alongside such conservative names as Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly – he struggled openly to remember one. "I wish I could tell you a couple of names. But they are certainly there," he said. He eventually settled on the Fox host Greta van Susteren, whom he said was "close" to the Democratic party.

Microsoft's Charney Suggests 'Net Tax' for PC Security

A corporate executive without a clue? Who would've thought that? In a financial disaster which hasn't even played out fully yet--we still have the commercial real estate crash coming and the credit crash coming, as well--anyone who proposes a new tax or raising prices is not thinking rationally, just like anyone who really thinks the economy is recovering. Recovering? It's not done crashing yet.

By the way, the security firms will never catch up to the hackers because it has and will always be easier to commit a crime than to prevent it. And personally, I'm not impressed at all with Microsoft's security measures because they treat everyone as guilty whether they are or not.

Microsoft's Charney Suggests 'Net Tax to Clean Computers
By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service

How will we ever get a leg up on hackers who are infecting computers worldwide? Microsoft's security chief laid out several suggestions Tuesday, including a possible Internet usage tax to pay for the inspection and quarantine of machines.

Today most hacked PCs run Microsoft's Windows operating system, and the company has invested millions in trying to fight the problem.

Microsoft recently used the U.S. court system to shut down the Waledac botnet, introducing a new tactic in the battle against hackers. Speaking at the RSA security conference in San Francisco, Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney said that the technology industry needs to think about more "social solutions."

That means fighting the bad guys at several levels, he said. "Just like we do defense in depth in IT, we have to do defense in depth in [hacking] response."

"I actually think the health care model ... might be an interesting way to think about the problem," Charney said. With medical diseases, there are education programs, but there are also social programs to inspect people and quarantine the sick.

This model could work to fight computer viruses too, he said. When a computer user allows malware to run on his computer, "you're not just accepting it for yourself, you're contaminating everyone around you," he said.

The idea that Internet service providers might somehow step up in the fight against malware is not new. The problem, however, is cost.

Customer calls already eat into service provider profits. Adding quarantine and malware-fixing costs to that would be prohibitive, said Danny McPherson, chief research officer with Arbor Networks, via instant message. "They have no incentive to do anything today."

So who would foot the bill? "Maybe markets will make it work," Charney said. But an Internet usage tax might be the way to go. "You could say it's a public safety issue and do it with general taxation," he said.

According to Microsoft, there are 3.8 million infected botnet computers worldwide, 1 million of which are in the U.S. They are used to steal sensitive information and send spam, and were a launching point for 190,000 distributed denial-of-service attacks in 2008.