It Got Worse
It would appear Microsoft has - once again - been caught with their proverbial hand in the ol’ cookie jar. Except instead of cookies, the jar held some honkin’ torqued off avians :
Looks like Microsoft has some Angry Birds on its hands -- but not, apparently, in the way that it hoped.
The company caused a stir this morning when an icon for the popular mobile game was spotted in a remote corner of its Windows Phone site, hinting that it would be available for the company's new mobile platform, set to be unveiled in New York tomorrow morning.
But Rovio Mobile, the maker of the game, quickly responded with a tweet: "We have NOT committed to doing a Windows Phone 7 version," it said. "Microsoft put the Angry Birds icon on their site without our permission."
What a shock! Microsoft stealing something without permission? Say it ain’t so, Joe! We find the irony deliciously satisfying given how Microsoft was just moaning about the theft of its own intellectual property (IP) just last week.
But we suspect the anger is going to be short lived. Here is what Rovio had to say a little later on :
nothing to do with if we do or don't, it's just that we decide that ourselves.
Please allow us to translate : We don’t want to slam the door by suing Microsoft, because it may be possible to make a buck off them. We want to keep our options open, but we want great terms, so we are using this as leverage in negotiations for what we hope is going to be a really big check.
We wish Rovio all the best luck with that. We can see why Microsoft was so desperate to have anything popular on the marquee. After all, you can see for yourself Microsoft doesn’t even bring out the top software for Windows Phone 7, even when they completely own the IP behind it.
Tetris?! Seriously?
Call us crazy, but if that is the biggest name Microsoft has, then Windows Phone 7 might be a bigger bomb than Castle Bravo. We will bet gamers are WTF’ing all over the place there is no mobile version of Halo. Nope, no Halo for you, walking-around-boy. Just Halo Waypoint. The only thing Halo about it is the name. Just check out the pathetic list of “games” Microsoft has announced.
We can’t wait to ditch the iPhone so we can play Jet Car Stunts ! Oh, wait. We don’t have to. Jet Car Stunts is already available for the iPhone.
Sorry, Microsoft. Sucks to be you.
Worse?! How Could I Possibly Make it Worse?!
How do you take a horrible security situation and make it worse? Add a can of Microsoft to the mix !
NEW YORK — Shares of Adobe soared in heavy trading Thursday on a report that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer discussed a possible buyout of the company.
A report posted in the "Bits" blog of The New York Times said Ballmer recently met with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen to talk about Apple's control of the cell phone market and how Microsoft and Adobe could work together to fend off the iPhone maker.
It was in this context that a possible buyout of Adobe by Microsoft Corp. came up, according to The Times.
There is absolutely no reason to believe this is not a true and accurate report. It fits a pattern of past behavior in which Microsoft has engaged, most recently with the courting of Yahoo!. This is the second stunning admission Microsoft has made in the past few days, that being simply Microsoft cannot innovate so it must acquire.
The first? Oh, just a little something Microsoft cooked up to let it seize control of the internet :
Virus-infected computers that pose a risk to other PCs should be blocked from the net, a senior researcher at software giant Microsoft suggests.
The proposal is based on lessons from public health, said Scott Charney of the firm's Trustworthy Computing team.
It is designed to tackle botnets - networks of infected computers under the control of cybercriminals.
Putting machines in temporary quarantine would stop the spread of a virus and allow it to be cleaned.
"Just as when an individual who is not vaccinated puts others' health at risk, computers that are not protected or have been compromised with a bot put others at risk and pose a greater threat to society," he said in a blog post.
Here we have the most clear, concise, tacit admission that Microsoft is completely incapable of writing secure software.
Never once do we see in this report what software is running on the majority of those ‘bot-nets’ to which Microsoft refers. Why, that would be Microsoft Windows. So if one were to assign blame and fault, naturally all heads would turn to Microsoft for creating and - more importantly - sustaining the problem in the first place.
Microsoft should be dropped like a bad habit immediately for even suggesting a guilty-until-proven-innocent model in the first place. All free people should be outraged at the very thought, and disgusted and repulsed that it was ever given utterance in public in the first place. One should not have to ‘prove’ a fit computer to navigate the internet. If Microsoft truly wants that model, then perhaps Microsoft should have to prove it has a secure OS in the first place.
There are two great problems with the model Microsoft suggests. First, who will decide what computers are “healthy” and which are not? And second, who is watching the watchers? We undoubtedly know who Microsoft chooses for the task : itself. We offer up Microsoft’s security track record since November 1985 as the entire case on why Microsoft should never be allowed anywhere near the task.
But then - to combine two companies with abysmal security track records? Exactly what reason does the average victim of Microsoft or Adobe insecurity have to believe the combined companies will get better? Both companies have a track record of security failure after security failure going back at least a decade. They do not have anything to bring to the table which would countenance them being considered experts on security in the greatest stretch of human imagination.
So then who will be watching the completely unfit watcher? We are still convinced Microsoft will suggest AdobeSoft (or MicroDobe) should be given that power. And we are equally convinced Microsoft will suggest it be allowed to self-police. We would agree to this insanity on one condition : AdobeSoft, by force of law, is completely unshielded from liability when a “healthy” computer is blocked, and it pay a minimum $10,000 fine directly to the owner of the computer for each instance.
If Microsoft is at all confident in its ability to organize and run such a system, then let them put up the bond and finance a court specifically for adjudicating the ‘mistakes’ Microsoft’s track record has shown they will make. Let those aggrieved get direct compensation, and let the market take its course. Short of that, everyone who cares a single whit about freedom and security should let it be known they will not stand for such an intrusion by a company more known for its bungling than true security.
Shame on you, Microsoft.
What Did Microsoft Know
... and when did it know it? Evidently, since February of this year :
Microsoft has known since at least February that dozens of Windows applications, including many of its own, harbor bugs that hackers can exploit to seize control of computers, an academic researcher said Sunday.
At least 19 of the bugs can be exploited remotely, Taeho Kwon, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California Davis, said in a paper he published in February and presented last month at an international conference.
Remind us again how secure Windows is. We keep forgetting.
Had this been Apple it would have been big news; however, since it’s Microsoft this news has made barely a ripple. But we fully expect the rabidly anti-Apple press will be all over Apple if Safari and Quicktime aren’t patched tomorrow.
We remind the reader : Microsoft knew for six months and did nothing.
The Pain! It Burns!
Just in case you feel life is just missing... oh, extreme amounts of stress and challenges we present the (sorta) definitive guide on how to network a Win98se machine to a Mac running OS 10.X.
Yeah, we hear you.
WARNING : TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN INVOLVES EDITING THE REGISTRY ON THE WIN98 COMPUTER. THIS STEP IS NOT FOR MERE MORTALS AS YOU CAN REALLY MESS UP YOUR COMPUTER MUCKING ABOUT IN THE REGISTRY IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, AND DON’T COME CRYING TO US IF YOU FALL DOWN AND SKIN YOUR KNEES.
1) Head over to Microsoft and VERY CAREFULLY read this : How to Enable NTLM2 Authentication.
2) Read and USE this KB article : How to back up and restore the registry in Windows.
3) Go here to download the software to make the magic happen : How to install the Active Directory Client Extension.
4) Go here to get a pictorial instruction on how you are going to edit your registry : Enabling NTLMv2 on Windows 95, 98, and ME Computers.
THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE. IF YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE EDITING THE REGISTRY, THEN DON’T. CALL A PROFESSIONAL AND LET THEM HANDLE IT. YOU WERE WARNED. TWICE. SO THERE.
5) Go back to the link in step 1, follow the instructions and edit your registry. Cross-match with the pictorial in step 4 if you get stuck.
6) Restart the Win98 machine.
7) Enjoy the sweet, sweet networking goodness.
You’re welcome.
UPDATE : If you should be copying files *from* the Win98 box *to* the Mac box, you may find the going easier if a folder is created on the Mac current user’s desktop. Remember to be giving everyone read-write access for permissions. This folder may be the only one to be ‘seen’ by the Win98 box, and save a lot of frustration.
Now if we could just go back in time, knowing what we know now.
Microsoft Expecting
Addressing an audience at the company's annual Financial Analyst Meeting in Redmond, Microsoft's COO, Kevin Turner, announced that a beta for Internet Explorer 9, the latest version of its popular browser, will be available fore download this September.
"The most beautiful thing about our browser story is the message is getting out with IE8, the safest most secure browser in the marketplace," Turner said. "We're really excited about IE9 which will be beta and coming out in September."
We don’t know that we would go so far as to say IE8 is the ‘safest most secure’ browser. Especially in light of Secunia’s allegedly 31% unpatched vulnerability rating. However, the unpatched vulnerabilities are not of a critical nature, in all fairness. We do know that until Microsoft de-couples IE from the operating system, we still suggest running a browser that is not OS-dependent, like Safari or Firefox. This will minimize the possibility of exploiting the OS via an attack on the browser.
Then again, we really do wish the government would run IE8 sometime this century :
The government has ruled out scrapping the use of Internet Explorer 6 on department computers, saying it will persevere with the bullet-riddled browser despite its high-profile vulnerabilities.
Responding to an online petition with more than 6,000 signatures urging government departments to upgrade away from IE6, the government said such a move would be "a very large operation" potentially at "significant potential cost to the taxpayer".
"It is therefore more cost-effective in many cases to continue to use IE6 and rely on other measures, such as firewalls and malware-scanning software, to further protect public sector internet users," reads the statement.
(sigh) Only in government. And since when is the government suddenly concerned about the cost of anything?
