Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[JorgeA]

Never mind our published privacy policy, here's what we really mean when the legal chips are down:

GOOGLE: If You Send To Gmail, You Have 'No Legitimate Expectation Of Privacy'

If you happen to send an email to one of the 400 million people who use Google's Gmail service, you shouldn't have any expectation of privacy, according to a court briefing obtained by the Consumer Watchdog website.

In a motion filed last month by Google to have a class action complaint dismissed, Google's lawyers reference a 1979 ruling, holding that people who turn over information to third parties shouldn't expect that information to remain private.

Caveat utilitator.

--JorgeA

[Tripredacus]

In its efforts to take down as much infringing content as it can, Microsoft has started to censor legitimate links to competing software. Hoping to remove pirated versions of Microsoft Office from the Internet, the software company has sent several DMCA takedowns to Google, listing copies of its open source competitor Open Office as copyright infringements. An honest mistake perhaps, but also a terrible one.

http://torrentfreak.com/microsoft-censors-openoffice-download-links-130814/

[jaclaz]

In its efforts to take down as much infringing content as it can, Microsoft has started to censor legitimate links to competing software. Hoping to remove pirated versions of Microsoft Office from the Internet, the software company has sent several DMCA takedowns to Google, listing copies of its open source competitor Open Office as copyright infringements. An honest mistake perhaps, but also a terrible one.

http://torrentfreak.com/microsoft-censors-openoffice-download-links-130814/

As a matter of fact, a DMCA takedown notice is - to all effects - a signed affidavit:

http://www.sfwa.org/2013/03/the-dmca-takedown-notice-demystified/

So what does a takedown notice look like?

A DMCA takedown notice only has to contain a few pieces of information, and there is no set format. Basically, you write up a letter requesting that the OSP remove or block the offending pages and include the following pieces of information in the letter:

1. Your signature (assuming you’re the copyright holder or you’re authorized to act for the holder);
2. Identification of the work that is infringed (or a representative list of such works), e.g., titles of your stories and URLs where they may be found;
3. Identification of material that is infringing and which you wish to have taken down or blocked and enough information to allow the OSP to locate the material, e.g., an URL to the offending page;
4. Ways for the OSP to contact you, such as an address, phone number, and an email (best to include all three);
5. A statement that you have a “a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law”; and
6. A statement that “the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.”

There is NO space for "mistakes", the person signing it is guaranteeing the exactness of the contents, and - more than that - to be acting -duly authorized - on behalf of the owner of the "exclusive right".

Basically - set aside the "good faith belief", someone signing a similar DMCA notice is misrepresenting the property of the rights under penalty of perjury.

A typical "Microsoft originated" DMCA Takedown Notice ends with the sentence:

Trusted User submission.

Participants in the Trusted Copyright Removal Program have previously agreed to these

SWORN STATEMENTS

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described in all notifications submitted through the Program as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

The information in all notifications submitted through the Program will be accurate, and I swear, under penalty of perjury, that with respect to those notifications, I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

More or less is like being called as witness in Court and declare that someone else's car is your own, it is not a "mistake", it is a false statement.

jaclaz

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Microsoft's Outlook.com, SkyDrive and People services experiencing issues (Update) ( NeoWin 2013-08-14 )

Microsoft still dealing with Outlook.com issues with syncing email with mobile devices ( NeoWin 2013-08-15 )

Another cloudy day for MicroSheep. Once again it's Outlook and SpyDrive. Now if they can just work Office 364 into the mix they can be awarded the Darwin cloud Trifecta. Add in another like Xbox Live and we'll get a Superfecta. Not sure if there is a common term for a 5-way, but if there is we can use it for when Skype joins the other four.


Security and related ...

Hacker targets Houston family's baby monitor ( ABC News 2013-08-13 )

Baby monitor hacked, child verbally assaulted ( NeoWin 2013-08-15 )

Details are lacking but it looks like a case of a sheeple consumer device being easily compromised, as can be expected. The sheeple hook up the baby webcam and then look at a webpage from a computer to watch the camera feed. I suspect that the website hosting the webpage itself was "hacked" ( or they guessed the simple password ) but it really can be almost anything as the cause. Maybe uPnP was the culprit as we have known was a weak link for over a decade now. Hopefully this one will be explained in more detail later.


Online Ads Could Create 'Million Browser Botnet' ( Tom's Hardware 2013-08-15 )

Researchers demonstrating how plain old HTML and JS are flawed, but in fact it is the browsers themselves. Just for once I wish these so-called "security professionals" would stop worrying about getting their name in an article describing yet another theoretical exploit and instead do something useful like carefully test their exploit against a slew of different browsers, operating systems, antivirus software and router firewalls and then report the d@mn results. What happens now is that everyone scrambles to add some fix to their currently released browser or OS and the treadmill continues spinning but the vulnerability ( or durability ) older browsers and operating systems are ignored in favor of FUD to drag them into upgrades. They are all pretty much in collusion if you ask me.

EDIT: typo

Edited August 16, 2013 by CharlotteTheHarlot

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

IDC: 300,000 Microsoft Surfaces shipped last quarter ( NeoWin 2013-08-14 )

An analyst may have worked out the actual sales numbers for Surfaces for the last quarter. According to him, in the calendar Q2 2013 Microsoft actually shipped only 300,000 total, of which 200,000 were Pro and the remaining 100,000 were the ReTard Edition. At that phenomenal rate it will take 5 quarters or 1.25 years to sell a single million Pros or 2.5 years for a million RT models. Contrast that to the 14.6 million iPads sold last quarter ( that's the same timeframe ) and the problem for the wannabe MicroApple is clear: 300,000 versus 14.6 million. Ain't never gonna happen.


HTC reportedly dumping Windows Phone to focus on Android instead ( NeoWin 2013-08-14 )

Ruh Roh. One of the few non-Nokia "partners" is bailing on WP. That leaves just Samsung and Huawei I believe. Considering that Nokia itself is practically on life support it is stunning how big a gamble that Windows Phone is. It really looks like Ballmer and co. were at a roulette table and pushed all the chips onto a single number ( with three other small corner bets ).


Microsoft Healthy Computing - Aug. 13, 2013 ( Microsoft 2013-08-13 )

Microsoft: 85 percent of US PC workers are uncomfortable at their desk ( NeoWin 2013-08-14 )

"How discomfort impacts your work performance and what you can do about it."

Today's Joke Of The Day. What we have here is a Microsoft slideshow about Ergonomics, an elaborate ad for their latest keyboard and mouse. Check it out, it's only eight slides.

Anyway, I just had to make a graphic about it ...



( Original Photos: 1,2,3,4,5,6 )

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

The links I keep posting for Mega and Pirate Bay ( so far, hopefully more to come ) are getting into something new. And judging from the shutdowns we have recently seen they may be the only folks working on this - secure P2P communication, stuff that is temporary and never stored ( or stored undetectably ). So yeah, forget the cloud storage aspects and let's see if progress on secure P2P picks up again.

How about these folks? (Either or both.) How do they fit into the scheme?

--JorgeA

Haven't checked that out yet. Has anyone else seen it?

Very difficult keeping up with these threads lately with all the outages!

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Microsoft Censors OpenOffice Download Links ( TorrentFreak 2013-08-14 )

Microsoft DMCA takedown requests targeting OpenOffice ( UK Register 2013-08-16 )

In its efforts to take down as much infringing content as it can, Microsoft has started to censor legitimate links to competing software. Hoping to remove pirated versions of Microsoft Office from the Internet, the software company has sent several DMCA takedowns to Google, listing copies of its open source competitor Open Office as copyright infringements. An honest mistake perhaps, but also a terrible one.

Who the he!! ever thought this DMCA takedown crap was a good idea anyway? Google should have said screw you and indexed everything without a ROBOTS.TXT exclusion. In fact, even that is a pretty bad idea. If you don't want someone to see something it shouldn't be placed on a publicly accessible server in the first place. But the DMCA ex post facto nonsense is a bridge too far and is just asking to be abused. If you read the article you will see that Microsoft is just plain lazy, phoning it in with automated takedown requests using anything with the word Office in it. There should be severe penalties for these errors, intentional or not. Because their precious Office gets pirated from time to time people are expected to jump. Either make your software Pirate-proof or stop complaining.


Mentioned these two stories a few posts back ...

Microsoft's Outlook.com, SkyDrive and People services experiencing issues (Update) ( NeoWin 2013-08-14 )

Microsoft still dealing with Outlook.com issues with syncing email with mobile devices ( NeoWin 2013-08-15 )

I've noticed that NeoWin always reports these glitches in the Matrix but never seems to detail the length of time for the outtage. Now Paul Thurrott has a bit about this in his Short Takes: August 16, 2013 ...

Outlook.com and SkyDrive Down for the Count for Hours on Wednesday

Microsoft’s consumer-focused Outlook.com (email, calendar, contacts) and SkyDrive (cloud storage, Office Web Apps) went dark for millions of users on Wednesday, and because this outage affected me it is now a news story. There’s no word yet what caused the problem, and the firm was able to restore access in what seemed like a very long seven hours or so. And some people are still reporting issues with mobile access to Outlook.com as of this writing.

So it "went dark for millions" eh? ... For "a very long seven hours" eh? ... I must have missed that part at NeoWin because of all the tools who kept telling us "works for me" and "no problems here". Now I really wish that Microsoft had kept all the DRM in Xbox for the inevitable entertainment value when those servers go down or get overloaded.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Man I remember the times when the dissidents were fleeing from Russia and it was the USA who granted them asylum .

Another VERY GOOD one! :

jaclaz

Agreed! TELVM is the thread winner!

[jaclaz]

Microsoft Censors OpenOffice Download Links ( TorrentFreak 2013-08-14 )

Microsoft DMCA takedown requests targeting OpenOffice ( UK Register 2013-08-16 )

In its efforts to take down as much infringing content as it can, Microsoft has started to censor legitimate links to competing software. Hoping to remove pirated versions of Microsoft Office from the Internet, the software company has sent several DMCA takedowns to Google, listing copies of its open source competitor Open Office as copyright infringements. An honest mistake perhaps, but also a terrible one.

Who the he!! ever thought this DMCA takedown crap was a good idea anyway? Google should have said screw you and indexed everything without a ROBOTS.TXT exclusion. In fact, even that is a pretty bad idea. If you don't want someone to see something it shouldn't be placed on a publicly accessible server in the first place. But the DMCA ex post facto nonsense is a bridge too far and is just asking to be abused. If you read the article you will see that Microsoft is just plain lazy, phoning it in with automated takedown requests using anything with the word Office in it. There should be severe penalties for these errors, intentional or not. Because their precious Office gets pirated from time to time people are expected to jump. Either make your software Pirate-proof or stop complaining.

They CANNOT be treated as "errors", they are FALSE SWORN STATEMENTS!

Check again:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/155290-windows-8-deeper-impressions/page-151#entry1047184

jaclaz

[JorgeA]

One more trip down memory lane, based on Thurrott's forays into his archives. Discussing the history leading up to the launch of Windows XP, he wrote the following:

Specifically, Microsoft made these changes to its licensing policy:

[...]

PC makers have the option of putting icons directly onto the Windows desktop, a feature Microsoft previously planned to remove in XP. "Based on extensive customer usability studies," the company said in a statement, "Microsoft had designed Windows XP to ship with a clean desktop and improved Start menu, but PC manufacturers will now have the option of continuing to place icons on the Windows desktop if they want to."

[emphasis added!]

Well, well...

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Man I remember the times when the dissidents were fleeing from Russia and it was the USA who granted them asylum .

Another VERY GOOD one! :

jaclaz

Agreed! TELVM is the thread winner!

+10

--JorgeA

[TELVM]

<< Charlotte the Harlott wrote >>

"... Your move Microsoft. Donate the patents for FAT, FAT32, exFAT and NTFS for the public good! Channel your inner Benjamin Franklin. I am totally serious here, I hope anybody reading this idea will make the effort to contact Microsoft and suggest they do exactly this! That would be a very impressive act of generosity indeed. "

<< >>

Seems the gods have listened:

Samsung Properly Open-Sources exFAT File-System

P.S.: I throw in the towel with this pile of manure interface, it's now impossible to quote selectively and format your posts decently in this forum.

[JorgeA]

P.S.: I throw in the towel with this pile of manure interface, it's now impossible to quote selectively and format your posts decently in this forum.

It IS a pain now, if you want to highlight a block of quoted post text for deletion, you have to be careful that the selection doesn't bleed over into the quote header. Doing this was much easier (and safer) on the old forum software.

Also, if you want to reply individually to several things from the same post, you can't do that anymore with a proper header. There doesn't seem to be a way to copy-and-paste the header to a new block of quoted text. (At least, I haven't yet discovered the way to do it.) I've taken to either (1) inserting ellipses, but this is clunky and prone to misreading; or (2) giving up and creating my own ersatz quote headers.

But hey, unlike the previous forum software at least this version is working (most of the time, ahem).

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

The Future of Advertising: 'Pay-Per-Gaze' Is Just the Beginning

Well, we already have prototype devices that can read and translate your electromagnetic brainwaves, believe it or not; you can literally think instructions to them. You can be as precise as thinking of a particular number or letter, and the device can read them; this was shown in experiments as early as 2000.

A machine that can read your thoughts? Gosh, I wonder if the NSA and assorted tyrants might have any interest in developing and deploying this technology...

--JorgeA

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Lavabit founder Ladar Levison raises $100,000 for legal defense ( TechSpot 2013-08-16 )

Levison told NBC News that he could be arrested for shutting down the service instead of complying with surveillance orders but was unable to speak any more on the subject.

This has taken a strange turn now, with the hero who closed his secure email service rather than become a willing partner in customer spying ( like ~cough~ Microsoft ), being possibly threatened with prosecution for ... closing his secure email service rather than become a willing partner in customer spying ( like ~cough~ Microsoft ). Hence the defense fund. Welcome to fascism.

Google now automatically encrypts all Google Cloud Storage data ( TechSpot 2013-08-16 )

I give them props for taking this step, it might help them stem the bleeding of customer trust, but I can't understand how this can be considered secure. First of all, it still isn't end-to-end encryption, it is only a middle step that secures data once it is uploaded and decrypts before it is sent back. The only people it will protect from are those with access to the cloud itself but the transit is vulnerable. Secondly, this does nothing against court orders and the like, something they will still probably cave in to. It's one step above doing nothing.

NSA violated privacy rules thousands of times, leaked audit reveals ( TechSpot 2013-08-16 )

Well there's a shock. This is my shocked face. Color me shocked.

Company halts bin spying program after public outcry ( NeoWin 2013-08-16 )

The UK trash can story. They say they will stop and promise to explain things much better on any future projects. They just didn't explain it well enough this time. For some real enlightenment check out all the comments by one of the NeoKids bombing the thread with excuses for this and all other types of spying and how it's just peachy keen! One of the dumbest sheeple ever to pollute a NeoWin comment thread, and believe me, that is really saying something. Even some of the other NeoKids are surprised.