CharlotteTheHarlot

Microsoft DNS servers down; Hotmail, Microsoft.com, others down [update: Microsoft Response] ( NeoWin 2013-11-21 ) This is a big story from yesterday which somehow flew under the radar ... Commenters clearly state that Xbox.com is also down, so that pretty much covers everything. So they had themselves quite an outage and it could definitely be related to the Xbox launch. I'll bet they re-tasked resources to handle the expected influx of gamers, but since it could only be a couple of million max, what does this really say about their capacity management? Just imagine if hundreds of millions of sheeple actually went to cloud versions of Office and other things they would be dead in the water I think. Winamp Petition Emerges as Microsoft Considers Purchase ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-22 ) Following up on that story from yesterday, two new developments ... Microsoft is in talks to buy WinAmp ( and Shoutcast ) ... and separately there is a petition to AOL to release WinAmp as open source. Fat chance of the latter ever happening. And considering that Microsoft did lots of damage to WMP along the way ( including planned obsolescence versioning ) who would really want them to lay a finger on it. They even started and then effectively killed the media center as well. It would take a miracle for WinAmp to become useful again because as many commenters point out, there are viable replacements ( VLC, GOM, Foobar ) already and Microsoft's own WMP and MCE can become useful after running K-Lite codec packs and neutering some of the defaults.

LG Says It's Investigating Smart TV Spying Claim ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-21 ) LG says firmware update will halt data collection on Smart TV's ( NeoWin 2013-11-22 ) Wow! What a difference a day makes. Yesterday they were clearly blaming the retailers ( WTF! ) and today have backtracked to planning on disabling it. Unfortunately, anything that a firmware fix can disable, it can always (re)enable. LG and Samsung and others will quietly sit in the corner now while the sheeple make up their mind whether they like this or not. Later, after enough precedents have come and gone, it will be back in all its glory. Hurray. Microsoft Wants to Sell You Anti-Google Mugs and T-shirts ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-21 ) Google gets sassy in firing back to Microsoft's 'Scroogled' merchandise ( NeoWin 2013-11-22 ) More on that latest sleazy Microsoft campaign no doubt directed by that politician they hired to further sully their reputation. Google has responded in a very high-brow ( not sleazy ) fashion which will make them look much better than Microsoft when compared head-to-head ... The red-meat fanboys cannot understand it, but it will be proved a well-calculated response especially among Wall Street analysts. As usual the NeoWin article mentions a bogus story also at NeoWin ... ... but I see no evidence of that ... ... numbers not to brag about even if you believe them. They supplement it with a spokesmouth ... ... which is where that line they always insert into these articles apparently comes from. Anecdotally, I see very very few people happy about the Scroogle smear campaign at all in the forums. Most appear to be aghast at this kind of public campaign. The Wall Street analysts on CNBC and in the print media will definitely take Google's side in this.

Some quick first impressions of the Xbox One ( NeoWin 2013-11-22 ) Lots of articles about the finally arrived Xbone launch day, including some hiccups. This article involves none of those, just quick impressions. Deeper Impressions should be visible in the coming days. However it wasn't until today that I realized that Microsoft had one final mis-step with the Xbox to unveil ( credit to an anonymous commenter at TechBroil for noticing it first ) ... After all these years with all the possible days to have the unveiling, the incompetent boobs choose the ... 50th Anniversary of the JFK assassination! There is probably no worse idea ( except perhaps 9/11 ) and yet they managed to pull it off anyway! The History Channel and the news outlets have been consumed by this since I turned on the TV and I have noticed the Xbox commercials have gone missing, unlike the way it has been the past few weeks. So someone up there in Redmond managed to select the very day where documentaries are detailing snipers, headshots, autopsies and magic bullets in gory detail for the launch of their Shooting Game platform. It's a darn good thing that infamous JFK sniper software simulator isn't a release day game. Some Xbox One consoles shipping with faulty disc drives, scratched covers ( NeoWin 2013-11-22 ) ( this article was also first noticed by a TechBroil commenter ) It's not like a hit piece on their revered game platform, just mildly reported cases of problems, but it certainly is more than enough to get a couple fanboys up in arms seeing conspiracy theories of NeoWin hating Microsoft.

Absolutely epic. And I thought they could never top the Apple/Jobs/HUMANCENTiPAD ...

Liquid metal alloy could allow hobbyists to print electronics at home on any surface ( TechSpot 2013-11-21 ) Now we're talking!. That's a truly empowering use of home 3D printing - PCB electronics prototyping. It is a perfect antidote to the planned future of walled-garden hardware and software monopolies envisioned by MobileTards. And the possibilities here are truly endless. Disarming Corruptor Disguises 3D Models As Unrecognizable Jumbles ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-21 ) Nicely dovetailing to that story and directly related to citizen empowerment and privacy and 3D printing. Here is one answer to the inevitable question of what happens when the gatekeepers of knowledge and their lobbied lackeys ( i.e., the political powers-that-be ) clamp down on just what we can make and produce at home outside of their oversight. A way to disguise the source files from the censors of private knowledge! Eurocom Builds First 12-Core, 24-Thread Laptop, Weighs 12 pounds ( Maximum PC 2013-11-21 ) Since it's Christmas season again, here's something for the person who has everything. Starting at just $3000. I thought folks would get a kick out of looking at the configuration selector form, which is decidedly non-Dell. And yes, Windows 7 operating systems are available.

Google completes upgrading its SSL certificates to 2,048-bit RSA ( TechSpot 2013-11-21 ) One of the few bright spots of news in the wake of the spookmasters pwning of Microsoft, Yahoo and Google ( to name but a few ). I hope someone more knowledgeable about these issues explain how this is foolproof though? Do we actually know they haven't got a backdoor to RSA-2048? Can web browsers and other applications be trusted to encrypt/decrypt without leaving a backdoor or simply spitting out a clear copy somewhere? And it certainly cannot help if the spooks are also tapped into the unencrypted customer endpoints with ISP's brokering the Internet on/off ramps. There still is a lot of mystery to the whole world of electronic communication, and the spooks have unlimited funds and are present at every step of the journey. Let's hope this isn't only for Google's benefit, to restore their reputation. For Limited Time, Adobe Offers Photoshop CC, Lightroom, and 20GB Storage to Everyone for $10/month ( Maximum PC 2013-11-21 ) Speaking of reputation salvage, now it is Adobe's turn since they just allowed a mere 150 million passwords or so to be stolen. By all means, forgive and forget and go to Adobe and enter your credit card number to open a subscription to their formerly highly regarded applications. What could possibly go wrong, again. What Is 4K TV? ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-21 ) Nice overview of where display technology is headed. One thing is always missing though when they ask about the lack of 4k ( or whatever ) content to watch on a display ... why not simply allow 4 x 1080p feeds on the screen simultaneously? Does everything have to be single-tasking for MetroTards? The TV makers will need to work on multiplexing or multiple decoders to allow this but it sure seems like a simply obvious idea to me. I would love a 4k 40 inch computer screen right now, and the last thing I would worry about is whether YouTube supplies a 4k feed ( they sometimes do ). The real gain is extra real estate that our friendly neighborhood single-tasking MetroTards cannot possibly understand.

It's been an epic few days on the Privacy front ... LG Responds to Accusations That TVs Are Spying on Users ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-20 ) ( controversy mentioned earlier by Rick and Jorge ) So WTF is this now? Blaming the retailer? That's the kind of arrogant response that leads to a class action lawsuit which I expect will be incoming. Our 60 inch is also a smart TV and I have to admit I haven't bothered to check the network packet stream yet. BTW, for those buying one the delivery guy always wants to add it to the wireless network since these TVs have built-in Wi-Fi, but that makes very little sense since the TV is usually setup well within easy Ethernet cable distance to the router and that will give it maximum speed and not clog up the local air network, not to mention exposing the router security passphrase to a 3rd party ( both the installer guy and the TV manufacturer itself ). It is simple to to just yank out the Ethernet cable from the TV or router to disconnect it at will. This is much more sensible than using Wi-Fi. Also, calling this thing "Smart" is one he!! of a joke anyway. That crappy, unchangeable web browser included in the "apps" is as dumb a thing as I have ever seen ( bookmarks are anchored to root websites, not specific webpages ). And as usual, they managed to find a way to make the thing much slower than necessary because loading Google or BING maps into the browser takes an eternity compared to a PC also on an Ethernet wire right into the same router. Near as I can tell, there is no addressable storage in the TV so anything personalized apparently gets stored in the cloud, and the apps are so dumb that even if there was local storage they wouldn't know how to use it. So we're just throwing away privacy right and left at every opportunity now. This thing with LG ( and no doubt Samsung and others ) profiling their customers and stealing information is very similar to the situation with Xbox and Kinect because they have laid the groundwork here for a privacy-less advertising infrastructure and are just awaiting tacit approval from the sheeple and their sheepdog masters. I don't expect them to backtrack at all even after possibly losing one or more class action lawsuits. They will wait while the dripping of Chinese water torture causes the victim to throw up their arms and cry uncle, and then they will open the floodgates to advertising, make tons of money in the process and invade your living rooms and bedrooms without blinking an eye. Orwellian nightmares are just fine as long as the sheeple don't complain. "Dave, would you like to see some condom commercials or an educational PSA about STD's before you two go any further?" Dating-Site Data Breach Dumps 42 Million Plain-Text Passwords ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-20 ) 42 million suckers exposed. 42 million! What really is noteworthy is that huge stories like this are barely noteworthy at all these days. Says nothing about credit cards ... yet. Oh well. Gaming company hit with $1 million fine for turning customer PCs into Bitcoin miners ( TechSpot 2013-11-20 ) Yet another example of how the "cloud" signals the complete end of privacy and the most exploitable gateway to all manner of crime. The most twisted thing about this story is that they have come down so hard on the company here, while apparently dealing with the perp employee in some minor fashion ( merely terminated ). To be clear, the company like all Cloud/ISP/email/Network providers had an infrastructure in place that could be abused for spying and theft if someone merely chose to do so. That puts them in the exact same spot as LG with their Smart TV cloud, and yes, Microsoft with their Xbox and Kinect and gaming cloud as well. The only logical solution would be to arrest the perp here ( the employee ) and charge him with tens of thousands of individual counts of hacking, home invasion, and theft ( of electric power and CPU/GPU cycles ). Clean him out for financial restitution and then sentence him to 20 years. This would stifle the intentions of all future home invaders at LG, Samsung, Microsoft and Google ( to name but a few ). If the individual has to worry about doing the time, he will not do the crime. Instead, what seems to have happened here is that the deep pocketed company was targeted by authorities and this means a slush fund of payola to the would-be crime-stoppers out there. Personal responsibility is what is needed, NOT a neat behind-the-scenes deal that ensures this will be repeated ad nauseum again and again.

Gartner Sees an End to Big Declines in PC Shipments ( Maximum PC 2013-11-20 ) If the story is accurate ( and I'm not interested enough to read through Gartner ramblings anymore ) then the analysts have once again proven they know nothing by reversing all their earlier yammering hyperbolic babbling of the past couple of years. Big shock, NOT. The PC, or home computer was never going to be replaced by mobile devices, except in those individual cases where a home computer was overkill in the first place. The only way that the MobileTards could cause the death of the PC would be by premeditated murder. And they are certainly trying to accomplish this ( Big Data including Microsoft and the sheeple like those that congregate at NeoWin and The Verge ) because the mobile hardware and associated software like Microsoft Tiles lends itself nicely to a curated walled-garden where every bit is for sale and your wallet is conveniently available to the curators. Gartner is not one person obviously, and it could be that this article just happens to be from a competent analyst as opposed to the normal type who remind me exactly of NY sportswriters. Whatever the case, even with short lifespan hardware with fast replacement rates it appears that desktop PC shipments still exceed mobile. That's pretty amazing and probably drives the MobileTards crazy. Xbox One lacks proper storage management; Microsoft says it is 'automatic' ( NeoWin 2013-11-20 ) You people don't need to know such things! How dare you question the great and powerful MicroTards who designed Xbox! One of the commenters is a real fanboy or astroturfer or employee. See his ramblings here for a wonderful explanation of how all ya'll have always been doing things wrong and how Microsoft knows better. Can you imagine saturating your ISP bandwidth for days to download 10's of gigabytes of game files? Now we know why they wanted always-on, so that the Xbox could continually download resources. Even with a FIOS pipe gigabytes are a PITA, and eventually you are going to be flagged as a problem and possibly be throttled or at least watched closely. In Microsoft's NuWorld, causing the customer to continually suck down gigabytes is business as usual since they are not part of that last network segment from the home to the ISP. It's very easy to spend other's people bandwidth, and money. Microsoft's 'Scroogled' efforts against Google now include t-shirts ( NeoWin 2013-11-20 ) ( story mentioned above by Rick and FF ) Clearly Microsoft is still employing that slimeball politician. Okay then ... The possibilities are endless! Here, use this one to make your own.

After a 16-year Run, Winamp to Shut Down Next Month. ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-20 ) Subtitle: Winamp is joining Alta Vista and Voodoo Extreme in the Internet graveyard. Sob. Well, not exactly. WinAmp is a fine example of how a product changes and alienates its user base, and naturally there are those that spend eternity trying to scapegoat other things instead of looking inward. This story has been repeated over and over with countless other software inexplicably changed by an arrogant retarded author, and it also happens with Microsoft with everything from the tiniest support apps and utilities, to bigtime Office suites, and of course Windows itself. In fact it is the dog wagging the tail because the average smalltime developer out there may see Microsoft "getting away" with these annoyances year after year and become convinced that they can be just as impervious to customer feedback, but then pay the price that Microsoft rarely does. In truth, Microsoft has only survived because their products have been positioned as "too big too fail" thanks to their carefully structured monopoly. But even that luck appears to have been pressed to far now. Perhaps Metallica could write them a theme song and call it Enter Android? Did that PC game come out resolution locked? Don't worry this guy will fix it for you ( TechSpot 2013-11-20 ) This story kinda jumps off of that previous one about developer mis-steps by profiling a programmer who for fun ( and for free ) untangles the artificial limitations that game authors impose on their PC releases. Obviously the PC world is chock full of similar folk, it is practically the defining characteristic of the x86 universe with personalization and customization, and most importantly the endless corrections necessary to sloppy and arrogant development. Kudos to him and all others that spend their valuable time fixing annoyances. Nokia to say farvel to their Espoo HQ building ( NeoWin 2013-11-21 ) We will not go quietly into the night.

Yahoo to encrypt all products in light of NSA spying revelations ( TechSpot 2013-11-19 ) Story mentioned by Jorge earlier. I thought this comment ( speaking about the Yahoo CEO ) shows what the big companies are now facing thanks to exposure of their collaboration with the spooks ... Chris Roberts: Star Citizen is a PC game, will never be "dumbed down for a lesser platform" ( PC Gamer 2013-11-18 ) I just thought everybody would like to hear that thankfully there are still some adults with integrity around.

Ransomware email attachment demands Bitcoin payments ( NeoWin 2013-11-19 ) An update to the recent and truly dangerous ransomware which encrypts local files anywhere it finds them. This is a payload malware reportedly seen in attachments to email. One wonders if the criminals behind this virus who demand and receive payment have even read any news from the past 6 months concerning government surveillance? Do they really believe they will not be nailed quickly from the payment trail? Hackers breach vBulletin support forum using zero-day vulnerability ( TechSpot 2013-11-18 ) Forum software vendor compromised, credentials stolen. I'll bet all the others are under attack too, particularly Wordpress. No-one is safe as the black hats look like they are taking cues from the government spooks who set the precedent that everything is fair game now. It's open season. We have our wild, wild west back again.

Not a worry in the world!

Report: Apple buys the company that helped Microsoft create Kinect ( NeoWin 2013-11-17 ) Apple reportedly buying PrimeSense, the company behind original Kinect ( TechSpot 2013-11-18 ) Apple Makes $345 Million Offer for PrimeSense, 3D Sensor Tech Firm Behind the Kinect ( Maximum PC 2013-11-18 ) Another one of thoe ironic stories that sends shivers down a fanboy's spine. They are all like 'Oh don't worry, that was Kinect 1.0, they now made their own in Kinect v2'. Noticably lacking is any insinuation that Microsoft has now 'copied' PrimeSense! Some are speculating that this means Apple wants to play catch-up with Microsoft and thus they bought the company and will now begin their own project. That's what a Microsoft sycophant would think. But the more likely answer is that Apple has already made and is ready to release their device and has nailed down this company to cover their legal backside. This is how Apple operates and in this regard is the exact opposite of Microsoft who continually get caught flatfooted in the legal department. And speaking of patents ... Microsoft files patent for skin sensing bezel, Surface says hello ( NeoWin 2013-11-17 ) Microsoft files patent for automatically quieting mobile devices ( NeoWin 2013-11-18 ) How wonderful. Our awesome patent system at work, where everyone runs to lock-down and freeze out competitors from their "idea" as opposed to making an actual product work successfully and then answering to the customer marketplace. The whole patent thing is based on the false premise that without recognized protection no-one would bother to have any brilliant ideas because they would lack a guarantee of exclusivity, therefore they must be granted a full monopoly to keep their creative juices flowing. Ridiculous! The damage that lawyers have managed to do to humanity over the past couple of centuries is incalculable. Prepare for More Asteroids to Hit Earth, Scientists Say ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-16 ) Okay, on the surface this has nothing to do with Windows or Microsoft, except that one comment made me laugh and I'll make it apply to all we have discussed here ... hehe But since asteroids are so few and far between, there's only one way to be sure ...

Microsoft still trying to fix SVCHOST bug in Windows XP ( NeoWin 2013-11-17 ) The headline is NeoWin's incompetence because it is neither a bug in Windows XP nor a problem in its SVCHOST ( which is like saying your modem has a bug because your ISP isn't responding ). The quote is Microsoft's incompetence struggling to admit the clusterf*ck that is WU which is joined at the hip to MSIE and unsurprisingly fails as they obsolete earlier versions of their crappy browser. Verification chain! Only a madman could have designed this mess. I could say that they should release the newer browser for all Windows versions, but I won't. I could say they should open up Windows Update for non-MSIE browsers, but I won't. Why bother. This is their planned obsolescence underway as scheduled. Ironically they are weaning 1/3 of the world off of Windows Update and this will expose more people to the fact that the real scam is in all the FUD about staying up-to-date, and the often destabilizing, buggy and even bricked BSOD experience that they open themselves up to by allowing this destabilizing and buggy service to mess around with your computer in the first place. Foxconn intern claims PS4 was sabotaged during manufacturing ( NeoWin 2013-11-17 ) Whoa. Didn't see that one coming at all. I have to agree with some of the NeoKids that there will be consequences to this. Consequences for the employees involved, the FoxConn company, and even China as a country full of slave-labor vendors. In a part of the world where insults, saving face and blood feud is taken very seriously there is the macro issue of Chinese workers highly visibly sticking it to their historical Japanese nemesis, not to mention the twisted irony of a huge signature Japanese firm using a Chinese company in the first place. This could get interesting. Most likely FoxConn will move to massively reassure customers that things are under control or else risk an exodus of clients, which ironically might be the best thing for all parties involved ( for the slave labor obviously, and USA/Europe/Japan doing their own manufacturing again ). It doesn't take much to destroy a reputation. I'm just really surprised this hasn't occurred with something more popular like the iPhone. I guess we'll see what surprises they have yet in the pipeline. The memo purportedly from the Foxconn workers was supposedly translated by this commenter and he offers this possible Chinglish explanation ... That was OCR'd and then software translated. For comparison, another commenter who claims fluency in Chinese offers this translation ... That China-Japan history is the very first thing that occurred to me. Coming soon, India-Pakistan battling on the shelves of your local dollar store. All the World's a Stage indeed!

Well the big news of the past few days is that the Sony PS4 is out and here is it is unveiled on NBC Late Night ( mentioned by a commenter at one of the NeoWin threads). Check out the robot thing in the video ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hUUsqhetX4 Amazing YouTube numbers after just 3 days. At this writing: ... 2,781,428 views ... 3,572 comments ... 21,094 likes ... 679 dislikes ... We'll have to see how the Xbox does next week. Sized Up: Xbox One is massive compared to the PS4 ( NeoWin 2013-11-14 ) ( Image Source ) Well they certainly score a clean win in this category. Jolla to launch inaugural smartphone with Sailfish OS on November 27 ( TechSpot 2013-11-15 ) A real alternative phone OS and kinda nice looking so far. One can almost imagine the "Nokia" logo on that cyan back below the camera shutter. It's interesting because a group of former Nokia employees are purposefully behind this project out of frustration with the Nokia sellout to Microsoft for WP and are moving forward with this further variation of MeeGo, a Linux phone OS originally started by Nokia and Intel. That kind of dedication shown for an OS given a death sentence in by a Microsoft trojan horse makes the story timely.

Microsoft: Indian banks could be at "major risk" if they don't ditch Windows XP ( NeoWin 2013-11-14 ) I would love to see some sycophant explain the details of that FUD logic ( shown in bold text ). Exactly how does one derive banks 'going down' or transaction delays of '30 minutes' from the simple matter of updates not appearing in the automatic WU? This is pure FUD plain and simple, and some of the worse yet seen. I've said it before, the thing that Microsoft and her sycophants most fear is that people will call their bluff and expose this nonsense of an operating system being "supported" by them and your very livelihood depending upon it. The last thing they want is for people to discover the truth - they support nothing and charge good money to maintain that illusion. HP researchers find zero-day exploit in IE11 on Windows 8.1 ( NeoWin 2013-11-15 ) Well this is unprecedented - MSIE facilitating infection. Seriously, weren't we just told by somebody about all these fabulous security improvements in Windows 8? If Microsoft cared about security at all they would block MSIE from being used on their operating system. Of course they would first need to figure out a way to make Windows Update work with other browsers since they fused the two at the hip.

There is a delicious epilog to that story . After WW2 the USA & UK sold german cyphering machines, at bargain prices, to many allied and neutral governments. 'We don't know what to do with the lots we've captured, and of course, as everybody knows, they're unbreakable' . The ULTRA secret wasn't unofficially disclosed until 1973, 30 years after the war (once tech advance had made it irrelevant). "Lester, can you actually believe we f***ing sold the wiretaps to the targets?" While we're at it, here goes one my favourite bug stories: The Thing Yes, that is ironic on the surface and completely by design. For those not following along closely, they encouraged others to use already broken ciphers. It should make people think about NIST publishing and recommending the compromised RNG ( eventually added to Vista and probably all Windows since ) to the world, and what else they have slipped by the goalie along the way. Another example was in the Pacific theater where "Magic" ciphers were also broken. In at least one case they did dramatically use the info, and that was to shoot down Yamamoto's plane which shows that sometimes caution is thrown to the wind.

I just saw that. Here's the full title ... Rumor: Kevin Turner reportedly to be next CEO at Microsoft, followed by Elop ( NeoWin 2013-11-14 ) My proposal for Microsoft's new corporate theme song ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9wdbbGZkOA

Security Related ... Over 70,000 unencrypted credit card and CCV numbers stolen ( NeoWin 2013-11-13 ) And yet another Groundhog Day where the forecast calls for cloudy with a probability of theft. ~sigh~ We're truly on our own in this Brave NuWorld because clearly there are no adults in place in any position of authority anywhere. It seems every possible mistake must be made, every bad idea tested, and no-one is capable of learning from past experience from themselves or others. Every day is new that exists completely independent of the previous one. It's no wonder the world is awash in scams and frauds exceeding the legendary snake oil period of the late 19th century. And why not, the NuWorld is their oyster stocked full of sheeple. Adobe leaks 150 million passwords; Facebook and others impacted ( NeoWin 2013-11-13 ) NeoWin just catching up to news from two weeks ago ( Huge Adobe Data Breach Gets Even Worse ( Tom's Hardware 2013-10-29 ) ). All hail the cloud indeed. : NSA Tracks Turned-Off Phones But Phone Makers Don't Know How ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-12 ) Didn't we already understand this well over a decade ago? Am I the only one who watched Alias and 24 and Clancy movies? Remove the battery, pop out the SIM and if you're really worried put the phone in a Microwave oven ( the oven should be off ). But seriously, there is a train of thought that these phones are not really "off" when you turn it off and that it periodically pings regardless of what you might think. This would make liars out of the manufacturers who deny this but at this point in time knowing what we have learned in the past six months who is going to believe this at face value? There seems to be no non-governmental purpose for powered-off pinging though, I mean we know that stolen phones don't get recovered by the police and if you misplace the phone it's not like it is smart enough to let you know where it is hiding. So if such a clandestine feature made it into all phones at the behest of government spooks it exists only for their very narrow purposes and lives at a well hidden level where thousands of researchers have somehow missed it. The problem is that the thing will be discovered some day. All in all I'd have to call this unlikely but not impossible. And then there is something else ... the quandary that the spooks find themselves in which is quite similar to the World War II codebreakers who successfully read encrypted comm traffic but were unable to act on it without giving away their actual breakthrough ( if you know of a pending attack should you prevent it or hold the knowledge for something even more important, whatever that might be? ). So if spooks can locate any cellphone regardless of the power-on status, how could they use this information without giving it away? Things that make you go hmmmm.

Microsoft Stops Ranking Its Employees. Reward curve and rating system scrapped ( Maximum PC 2013-11-12 ) Microsoft axes stack ranking, employees likely scream with glee ( NeoWin 2013-11-12 ) More about the about-face on the incredibly damaging stack-ranking where a certain number of employees were predestined to receive bad reviews simply because of quotas, making the existence of a perfect team an impossibility. Note that I am talking about the quota aspect of this. Stack-Ranking can also be used in a non-insane way without quotas and I'm sure it exists elsewhere quite possibly using the same confusing name. It is astounding that quotas were ever introduced anywhere, especially at Microsoft which began life in the most informal of circumstances. Of course they still might screw this up royally, just removing the system is no panacea at all. They have to take a weed-whacker to management and somehow remove all of the deadweight, people who are just punching the clock and waiting to vest and watching others who they can backstab and leap over. One way to do this would be to terminate all management who unquestioningly supported Stack-Ranking and actually applied it to employees in their departments. So, if they gave a "5" to an employee this manager should be placed into the "scrutinize file" and then it needs to be determined if that "5" was legitimate or a quota. If that manager filled a quota and did not fight against the system he should be shown the door. Microsoft Worried About PCs Still Using Windows XP ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-13 ) If you want to stack rank someone then how about this Tom's Hardware author who just constructed this FUDfest article to stoke the flames and drum up comments and page hits ( this guy is just as sycophantic as Ed Bott or Patty Hearst IMHO ). They got 91 comments already so apparently the recipe works. ~sigh~ Shovel the people into a modern, post-9/11, PRISM friendly and spook approved operating system. That's the ticket. : At least one commenter cuts to the chase with a simple solution: "If XP is so insecure and outdated but people like it so much and want to stick with it. Why doesn't MS just make Windows 9 look and feel exactly like XP when it comes out? Just make it with modern security, technologies and automation behind the scenes.". Quite a good question there. I guess the answer exposes that part of the Microsoft plan which is all about the future walled-garden for retards. Having a user customizable interface without training wheels simply does not fit into those plans.

Microsoft to fix IE zero-day bug today with security patch ( NeoWin 2013-11-12 ) Oh look, some more details that finally mention ActiveX controls which have been making the Internet safe for malware for the better part of two decades. First rule of security - never use MSIE unless it is for Windows Updates. Violating this rule, as the fanboys highly recommend, is about as dumb a thing as one can imagine. Seriously though, still no hard information on what website this alleged exploit is operating from? So it is out there doing alleged driveby infections and conveniently no-one else may check this out to see if they are just blowing smoke. Noisy tabs and Malware detection added to Chrome Beta ( NeoWin 2013-11-12 ) Make it so! ( I mean you Opera, in the Presto build not the Chrome clone ). Finally a web browser that finally flags a tab that has a webpage playing audio ( and let's hope they don't patent this tweak ). It is a little unclear to me in the article but let's hope this also applies to YouTube and other videos that autoplay thanks to those miserable lowlife webslinging authors. While the flag is nice, I propose a better solution involving missiles launched from a predator drone that home in on the web author directly. We know this is do-able thanks to all the recent spying revelations.

Microsoft confirms SkyDrive is coming to the Xbox One ( NeoWin 2013-11-11 ) It is going to be very interesting to see if the "SkyDrive" branding shows up on the Xbox, I mean literally shows up there. As they have lost that court case and must change it, any branding that appears in the very soon-to-be-released Xbone will be extra work that needs to be scrubbed out later. That would be senseless. Does anyone else notice something strange going on here? When they lost rights to "Metro" you never saw anybody move so fast. That name was struck from the public consciousness almost instantaneously. But with "SkyDrive" they seem to have not even moved a muscle. Something is weird about this. Unless they have quietly negotiated a limited use license it sure looks like another legal fiasco in the making by flagrantly ignoring the judgment of that court case. How big are Xbox One games? List reveals install sizes up to 43GB ( NeoWin 2013-11-12 ) And here collide two of the landmark "features" of Xbone: (1) all games must be installed to the HDD ( not playable from optical disc ), and (2) deprecated physical media in favor of digital distribution. Suddenly the CloudTards are silent. Perhaps the thought of burning up 100% of their ISP bandwidth cap by downloading a single game doesn't look so swell? It's a good thing that item (2) isn't set in concrete, just yet.

Now that is interesting. Quite possibly the first smart thing out of Redmond in years ( unless you count the employee braindrain ). Nothing about it mentioned at Mini-Microsoft yet ( He's probably waiting for the CEO announcement ).

New Xbox One commercial shows Kinect notification and zombies ( NeoWin 2013-11-11 ) Wow, that's industrial strength creepiness. And it is a very short jump from here to custom tailored advertising recognition. I guarantee that all interested parties are waiting with baited breath for acceptance of this first "baby step". It really couldn't be any clearer to me that this is only a warmup. The enabler fanboys on the other hand, remain completely oblivious to this. "Xbox, load MSFN Deeper Impressions please" ... I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that! Internet Explorer users face drive-by attacks targeting new 0-day bug (Updated) ( Ars Technica 2013-11-10 ) Operation Ephemeral Hydra: IE Zero-Day Linked to DeputyDog Uses Diskless Method ( FireEye 2013-11-10 ) New Internet Explorer zero-day bug already in use by hackers ( NeoWin 2013-11-1! ) So as usual MSIE can be counted on to facilitate a yet another malware attack vector? Say it ain't so. However, we are being told that some important unnamed website is currently compromised and dispensing malware and yet people are not warned to avoid it? This part smells of typical BS from security industry professionals. Prove it now. And what about the possibility that this is a spook sponsored counter-attack to disrupt the flow of leaks, maybe targeting the Guardian, NYT, WP or others? That used to be called a tin-foil conspiracy theory. How's it looking these days?

Microsoft makes nice with student who got his Xbox One console early ( NeoWin 2013-11-10 ) Wait what? Banned from "connecting to the Internet"? Addressable box? Remote kill switch? This really needs some explanation. And now an update ... Microsoft says Xbox One isn't getting new DRM policies ( NeoWin 2013-11-11 ) There are several huge pending questions here about remotely killing the thing and the previously denied always-connected DRM. Maybe NeoWin botched the previously story but "banned from connecting to the Internet" seems pretty clear to me. One thing is for sure, Microsoft cannot catch a break with Xbox. It makes me wonder why they ever got into this crazy field in the first place because the tiny profit cannot be worth all of this. No wonder the thing is on everybody's chopping block. The death of the PC was probably over-estimated and if Microsoft has any say in the matter we might just be talking about the death of the console instead.