Bad Windows Vista

Microsoft has finally released the pricing structure for Windows 7. The good news is that the new version of Windows will be a bit cheaper than the equivalent version of Windows Vista. The bad news is that since I am now used to receiving Ubuntu for free this made me realize that a Windows 7 license is in fact f*cking expensive!

The boxed edition of Windows cost as much as a computer.

Here in Europe a full version of Windows home premium would cost €199 (about $280). You can actually purchase a cheap Linux netbook for the same price! Yes, a boxed Edition of Windows can actually cost as much as a full netbook, that’s how expensive it is. If you live in the US you will get some relief though, as your license will only cost $199.

Read more at Tech-no-media

A home-cooked Microsoft license has carved out a small but growing following among the open-source community in less than two years.

Microsoft’s Public License (MS-PL) is used by 1.03 per cent of open-source projects less than two-years after it was officially recognized by the Open-Source Initiative and is poised to overtake the Mozilla Public License (MPL) in terms of popularity.

MS-PL is tenth in a list of licenses used by the community with MPL coming ninth and used by 1.25 per cent of projects. There’s no sign of the Microsoft Reciprocal License, accepted by the OSI at the same time as MS-PL.

Read more at The Register

Speaking about consumer search last week, Steve Ballmer said he now regrets that Microsoft quote “didn’t start earlier” unquote. But it seems to me that Microsoft has been all in for a long time and they just haven’t been very successful at consumer search. It wasn’t so much they gave in, as consumers simply preferred Google. It’s unclear if Bing can change that in spite of Ballmer and Microsoft’s best efforts to convince us otherwise.

Did They Give Up or Get Rolled Over? Click here to read more.. »

With Internet Explorer 8 out the door, Microsoft is trying to capitalise on its latest browser release with a marketing campaign outlining several benefits Internet Explorer 8 supposedly has over Chrome and Firefox. The campaign is titled “Get the facts”, so I guess most of you will know what will come.

The campaign is divided into three sections: reasons to install, browser comparison, and mythbusting. The reasons to install aren’t that crazy, it’s just that the features and benefits listed are offset against previous versions of Internet Explorer – and let’s face it, it’s not hard to best Internet Explorer 6 and 7. Still, it does have some features in there that are not common in every browser, such as isolated tabs, which Firefox, Safari, and Opera can’t offer you.
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You’ve probably caught up with the news that Microsoft is going to offer a version of Windows to the European market, without Internet Explorer pre-installed. This seems to be a ploy that isn’t making anyone happy.

My interest here isn’t in what Microsoft and the EU agree to as an appropriate remedy for Microsoft’s market dominance in web browsers or past legal transgressions. My interest is in ensuring an increase in the global competition in operating system platforms. In short, unbundle IE in Europe? Why stop there? Why not unbundle the whole of Windows from all OEM PCs shipped in Europe?
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Ubuntu creator Mark Shuttleworth is itching for a clean fight with Microsoft on netbooks.

Shuttleworth once told The Reg he can’t wait for Windows 7 on this sub-laptop class of machines because it’ll finally give Ubuntu the opportunity to compete fairly against Microsoft’s operating system in this emerging market.

OEMs have been able to buy and install Windows XP from Microsoft with something close to impunity. The repeatedly prolonged life of Windows XP makes it available for netbooks that would have choked on Windows Vista.

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It is bad enough that the bad guys constantly try and phish your financial data via email and fake websites, now cash machines are getting in on the act.

The Trustwave SpiderLabs, an outfit that deals with everything from ethical hacking through to incident response and security forensics, is warning that the bank cash machine network is at risk from a malware attack that collects PIN numbers.

The SpiderLabs team reports that it has been able to perform an analysis of the malware, which had been discovered on compromised East European cash machines running Windows XP.

The malware was able to capture the magnetic stripe data from the private memory space of transaction-processing applications that were installed on these compromised ATMs, along with PIN codes for good measure.

Read more at iTWire

Cuba criticized Microsoft on Friday for blocking its Messenger instant messaging service on the island and in other countries under U.S. sanctions, calling it yet another example of Washington’s “harsh” treatment of Havana. The technology giant recently announced it was disabling the program’s availability in Cuba, Syria, Iran, Sudan and North Korea to come into compliance with a U.S. ban on transfer of licensed software to embargoed countries. The move “is just the latest turn of the screw in the United States’ technological blockade against the island,” a technology writer stated. Click here to read more.. »

An article in the Wall Street Journal says that European Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes is considering imposing tighter regulations on Microsoft. It says the company could be compelled to package browsers that compete with Internet Explorer, with its Windows operating system. Jonathan Todd, a Commission spokesman, had stated similar considerations publicly in February. A response from Microsoft was still being considered at that time, but it evidently made no impression on Commissioner Kroes.
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A known computer hacking clan with anti-American leanings has successfully broken into at least two sensitive Web servers maintained by the U.S. Army, InformationWeek has learned exclusively.

Department of Defense and other investigators are currently probing the breaches, which have not been publicly disclosed.
The hackers, who collectively go by the name “m0sted” and are based in Turkey, penetrated servers at the Army’s McAlester Ammunition Plant in McAlester, Okla., and at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Transatlantic Center in Winchester, Va.
Click here to read more.. »