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Displaying items by tag: Microsoft

84The explosion of the smart phone tied to the sudden need for people to post where they are and what they are doing every minute of the day has led to some rather interesting consequences. We all have heard the numerous reports of applications that are taking your personal data right off of your phone and then either selling it or using it to push their own applications… which reminds us… what ever happened to all those congressional requests and demands? Anyway getting back to the point we have even heard how one application (now pulled from distribution) used public Facebook profiles combined with check-ins on the Facebook game Four Square to allow almost anyone to stalk nearby women.

Published in Editorials

PressOne of my favorite movies is the move “Heat”  (for multiple reasons) in this movie there is a scene where Tone Loc is talking to Al Pacino about one of the “bad guys” he makes a very telling comment; “But he goes on and on running down to me about how he ain't been doing nothin' and nothin's been going on and all this other bullshit, so right then and there I know: this cat's got somethin' goin' down.” The same can be said about companies and people that tell you how great things are all the time. This is what we are seeing in a rash of articles about how great the New iPad is and how Apple will dominate the market (tablet market) until 2016… This is odd as only a couple of weeks ago it was only through 2013.

Published in Editorials

steve_ballmer_apple_tabletAs I made my rounds this morning (checking out what the rest of the world thinks is going on in technology) I stumbled across a couple of articles that had my laughing. One of them was just more of what I have been hearing since 1997, the PC is going away. I honestly do not know how some analyst firms can even print this any longer. The PC has been a fixture in the home and work place for so long and it is such an integrated fixture in how people do work that it is very unlikely you will see the PC go away. Still we see this almost every quarter despite both many “PC” related companies posting record quarters and PC sales actually being up between 2-4%.

Published in Editorials

despdMicrosoft is in the news again today as they are officially admitting to blocking any links to The Pirate Bay on their Messenger Software. The possibility that Microsoft was blocking links was first raised last week as more than a few people reported being unable to send or receive links. Microsoft and other messaging companies have always used filtering software to make sure that people are not bothered by spam or malware.

Published in News

News_manstealingdataMicrosoft has scored a fairly important (if somewhat small) victory over some of the real cyber criminals out there. This morning they announced that through a joint effort with the US Marshals, Multiple Financial organizations they were able to bring two Zeus botnets down over the weekend. This was accomplished by seizing the command and control servers for this particular group. The Zeus family of malware has been responsible for millions of dollars in losses due to the theft of banking information.

Published in News

bill-of-rightsPrivacy is the big watch word these days. We are hearing more and more about how this app or that one gathers personal data or how Social media uses (or abuses) our personal information. We are even hearing the rumblings of congressional hearings on the subject with the US Congress demanding answers from a multitude of app providers on how they are addressing personal data privacy. It is a good thing that Congress is there to protect us… Oh wait, is this the same Congress that wants to enable internet monitoring and allow ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and corporations the power to collect and read all traffic that passes over their networks?

Published in Editorials

ipad_thermal_images-1-thumb-598xauto-4319The New iPad is having a VERY rough time for a new Apple product. Even the iPhone 4 with its “antennagate” issue has not gotten as much press for so many problems. The first one that was brought to our attention was the heating issue. This little problem has been vilified and explained away by multiple sites. However, there is no mistaking the fact that under usage the New iPad runs up to 13 degrees hotter than the iPad2. Apple and others have tried to say it is an increase in the number of LEDs that are used for backlighting and that is plausible, but we should also look at the fact that you have a larger battery, beefier charging system, twice the number of GPU cores (4 PowerVR SGX 543s) and also twice the amount of memory under the hood. All of this adds up in a way that the Apple engineers appear to have missed. But the heat issue is not the only problem that has been brought up this week alone.

Published in News

win8logoredesignedIf there is one constant in the world or IT (in indeed the world) it is change. I remember learning that back in physics class many, many years ago. Change is not stoppable it is not something that you can run from and it is a law that seems to be the driving force behind so much. Where am I going with all of this? Well I talking about the way the consumer electronic markets and the PC markets are moving. When I first started tinkering around with hardware resolutions were laughable compared to what your average smartphone can pull off. I am talking about 192 x 160 with 8-bit color and this was considered cutting edge!

Published in Editorials

peacekeeperWindows 8 will be released for both x86 and ARM tablets in Q4 of this year (2012). We have talked about what that means to both Apple and Google and managed to ruffle more than a few feathers in the process. Today we read an interesting story that shows the New iPad is scoring the same as the iPad 2 when it comes to Futuremark’s Peacekeeper benchmark. This test is meant to test different browsers and their ability to perform different tasks. According to the results page the New iPad scored just one more point than the iPad2. This does not mean that the hardware is slower, in fact is means just the opposite considering a few important factors.

Published in News

snapMicrosoft is doing the hard sell on Windows 8 features and in particular they have made a valiant effort to push past some of the bad press (and consumer grumbling) about Metro UI and the way many of the apps are locked down. We have talked a little about this and even touched on it during some of our gaming coverage. Although you can launch “desktop” applications from the Start Screen (The Metro UI interface) you are not actually running them there. The only apps that will run in Metro UI Mode are ones that are downloaded from the Microsoft Store. This limits the functionality of the OS in many ways. Sure you can get some applications to interact with each other, but even then there are limitations.

Published in Consumer Software
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