Thursday, February 7, 2013

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Microsoft got into the console business to spite Sony

Posted: 07 Feb 2013 01:34 AM PST

Microsoft created its Xbox as a way of kicking Sony in the consoles after the Japanese ignored its overtures for a glorious alliance.

Former Vole Joachim Kempin, who was VP of Windows Sales at Microsoft for 20 years starting in 1983, made the claim in an interview with IGN.

He said that Sony was always at arm's length with Microsoft, but Vole wanted them as a chum because there were a lot of things they could have cooperated on.

Kempin said that Sony bought Windows for their PCs but when you really take a hard look at that, they were never Microsoft's friend. Vole wanted them to be a friend because they knew they had a lot of things they could have co-operated on because they are, in a way, an entertainment company. Although not very entertaining.

As soon as Sony came out with a video console, Microsoft just looked at that and said "well, we have to beat them, so let's do our own".

According to IGN, the move came from the top of the company, with Sir Bill Gates putting his oar in. Gates was not really a fan of consoles because he was worried that a living room computer would metamorphosise into an alternative PC that could threaten Microsoft's dominance of the traditional market.

As a result, it was eventually felt the company had to try and tackle Sony head-on and come up with a product of its own so if there was any metamorphosis then Microsoft would be the one turning into a butterfly.

The only downside was that both Vole and Sony were losing a bundle on hardware and needed to make shedloads on software to make a profit.

Kempin said that he went to several PC manufacturers and tried to beg them to do the Xbox thing and keep the device manufacturing out of Microsoft, but they were not stupid enough to bite.

Kempin claims Microsoft never really managed to nail the whole software-supplementation thing, with Halo ending up as the only exclusive software franchise they could depend upon. They came up with a few ideas and managed to break even. But in the end they have effectively neutered Sony which was the goal. 

Movie industry can't profit from piracy

Posted: 07 Feb 2013 01:15 AM PST

The UK courts have told Big Content that it can't hope to profit from piracy after it tried to seize cash made by Usenet.

The England and Wales High Court of Justice, Chancery Division, has ruled that the movie industry has no rights to the profits made by the owner of Usenet-indexing website Newzbin2 by infringing on copyrights.

According to IT World,  the studios already obtained injunctions freezing Harris' bank accounts and those of the NZB Foundation which seems to own the property in which Harris lives and those of his company Kthxbai, which is said to have received payments from Newzbin2, and another company Motors for Movies, which owns the McLaren car Harris uses.

But the studios wanted an even bigger pound of flesh. They wanted a proprietary injunction which would claim title to Harris' assets and those of his companies. They argued that as copyright owners they had a proprietary claim to the proceeds of infringement of those copyrights.

But Judge Guy Newey said that a copyright owner does not have a proprietary claim to the fruits of an infringement of copyright and he refused to give such an injunction.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), represented by Universal Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Disney and Columbia Pictures, sued David Harris, the operator of the Newzbin2 website, and Christopher Elsworth, who used to run the site's predecessor Newzbin.com.

The studios had hoped to make a bob or two on the money Harris derived from copyright infringement. After all it was money they did not make because at the time they were reluctant to sell legal content online.

Newzbin2 was a British website that indexed binary files posted on Usenet. The site also created files in the NZB format listing all the Usenet messages containing the constituent parts of a posted binary file, allowing users to download the posted files more easily.

So the High Court of Justice ruled in 2010 that Newzbin was liable to the studios for copyright infringement because its operators well knew that the vast majority of the materials in the Movies category of the website were commercial and so likely to be protected by copyright. 

Julian Assange wants to be an Aussie Ron Hubbard

Posted: 07 Feb 2013 01:13 AM PST

One of the celebrity backers of Wikileaks, Jemima Khan, has hit out at Julian Assange for being a cult leader.

Khan let loose a stinking attack on Assange saying he demands "blinkered, cultish devotion". To make matters worse she has said that he should go to Sweden and face justice.

She said that Assange has been guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose and as one of the inner circle who fronted up with Assange's bail money she might know what she is talking about.

Writing in the New Statesman, Khan said that Assange risked becoming ''an Australian L. Ron Hubbard''. The article shows how Assange has alienated some of his closest allies.

In Assange's defence, Khan wrote that a bloke who had spent his life ''committed to this type of work, wedded to a laptop, undercover, always on the move'', to be a little odd. She had also seen flashes of Assange's charm, brilliance and insightfulness.

"... but I have also seen how instantaneous rock-star status has the power to make even the most clear-headed idealist feel that they are above the law and exempt from criticism," she said.

As a result Khan said that she had gone from ''admiration to demoralisation'' on the subject of WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks has been guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose, while its supporters are expected to follow, unquestioningly, in blinkered, cultish devotion,' she wrote.

Khan was executive producer of a documentary film about WikiLeaks titled We Steal Secrets, which recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the US. She said that her film was designed to present a balanced view of the WikiLeaks story but Assange had denounced it before seeing it.

When Khan told told Assange she was part of the We Steal Secrets team, she told him that it would be fair and would represent the truth.

''He replied: 'If it's a fair film, it will be pro-Julian Assange.' ''

Khan's article praised WikiLeaks for exposing corruption, torture, war crimes and cover-ups but criticised it for a ''with us or against us'' mentality that was killing it.

While she found the timing of the sexual abuse allegations against Mr Assange suspicious, Khan had come to the conclusion that the allegations had to be dealt with through Swedish due process.

''The women in question have human rights, too, and need resolution. Assange's noble cause and his wish to avoid a US court does not trump their right to be heard in a Swedish court,'' she wrote.

Khan said she did not regret putting up bail money for Assange but she did it so that he would be released while awaiting trial, not so that he could avoid answering  the allegations.

 

Kaspersky cuts off millions of internet connections

Posted: 07 Feb 2013 01:07 AM PST

Russian computer security vendor Kaspersky has a novel way of protecting its users from internet malware, its latest update cuts them off from the internet completely.

Millions of Kaspersky customers were left without internet access after a faulty anti-virus update was pushed out on Monday.

Users that figured out the cause of the problem jumped onto the company's online forum   and expressed frustration at the lack of communication from the company.

Some were eventually told to disable web anti-virus or roll back updates to get back online. But some found that complicated. One forum poster moaned that he had spent 24 hours trying to fix it and that involved two online chats with Kaspersky.

The company said it rolled out an update early on Tuesday morning that fixed the problem but on Wednesday there were still reports from users that the problem remained. We guess the problem with an update cutting off your internet access is that you can't really use the web to fix the update.

Some claimed that the update was taking hours to download before stalling.

In a statement, Kaspersky said that if a machine updates directly from its servers, then the initial workaround should be applied first which means disabling the web anti-virus component. Internet connectivity will then be restored and the customer will be able to download the most recent database update, the outfit said.

The company said it apologised for any inconvenience caused by the database updates error and actions had been taken to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future.

The problem affected Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows Workstations 6.04 MP4; Kaspersky Endpoint Security 8 for Windows; Kaspersky Endpoint Security 10 for Windows; Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 and 2013; and Kaspersky Pure 2.0. 

Microsoft and Symantec strangle botnet

Posted: 07 Feb 2013 01:05 AM PST

Microsoft and Symantec have disrupted a global cybercrime operation by shutting down servers that controlled the Bamital botnet.

According to the Microsoft bog, the move made it temporarily impossible for infected PCs around the world to search the web, and both companies offered free tools to clean machines through messages that were automatically pushed out to infected computers.

Using a court order, corporate techies from both outfits raided data centres in Weehawken, New Jersey, and Manassas, Virginia, accompanied by US federal marshals.

Richard Boscovich, assistant general counsel with Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit, said that the techies took control of one server at the New Jersey facility and persuaded the operators of the Virginia data centre to take down a server at their parent company in the Netherlands.

Microsoft and Symantec estimate there are between 300,000 and a million PCs infected with malicious Bamital software.

Bamital hijacked search results and engaged in other schemes that the companies said fraudulently charge businesses for online advertisement clicks.

Its owners could take control of infected PCs, installing other types of computer viruses that could engage in identity theft, recruit PCs into networks that attack websites.

Now that the servers have been shut down, users of infected PCs will be directed to a site informing them that their machines are infected with malicious software when they attempt to search the web.

This is the sixth time that Microsoft has obtained a court order to disrupt a botnet since 2010 this one was a little smaller than its previous take downs.

Symantec approached Microsoft about a year ago, asking the maker of Windows software to collaborate in trying to take down the Bamital operation. Once the servers can be analysed it will learn more about the size of the operation.

It was believed that the ringleaders were scattered all over the world. Some of the people behind it are believed to be from Russia, Romania, Britain, the United States and Australia. They registered the servers using bogus names.

Bamital redirected search results from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing search engines to sites with which the authors of the botnet have financial relationships. 

North Korea propaganda video shows US city under attack

Posted: 06 Feb 2013 07:08 AM PST

North Korea is apparently planning to conduct another nuclear test and the hermit kingdom is also stepping up its propaganda offensive against the west, namely the United States.

Its latest effort seems harmless enough, it's a YouTube video which had gone viral for all the wrong reasons.

The video depicts a young Korean man dreaming of glorious future for the DPRK, which involves some sort of space shuttle orbiting the earth, a rocket launch followed by a US city in flames and a lot of other cheap 3D nonsense. Who ever came up with the video has a rather unusual taste in music, as the nuclear attack unfolds to the tune of "We are the world."

Needless to say, the captions are unflattering and equally tasteless.

"Somewhere in the United States, black clouds of smoke are billowing," the man dreams. "It appears that the headquarters of evil, which has had a habit of using force and unilateralism and committing wars of aggression, is going up in flames it itself has ignited."

It is all a bit disturbing even by North Korean standards. Luckily, the US is in good hands. The video was promptly yanked from YouTube after a complaint from Activision. The video features scenes of Manhattan in flames from "Call of Duty," so it had to go.

Apparently, even a nuclear armed despotic regime with the fourth largest standing army in the world is no match for Big Content.
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