Contact Me By Email

Friday, March 21, 2014

Google: No, no. You've got Glass all wrong | Technically Incorrect - CNET News

"Something I've learned over the last few years is that Google is always right.

It criticizes the NSA for snooping, when it quite happily crawls all over your e-mails. But it's right, because it's for your own good.

It pumps ads at you even when you're writing e-mails, but it's right to do so. Because these ads are far better than all the other ads you'll see on the Web.

And then there's Google Glass, which Google insists isn't a creepy, awkward intrusion into public and private life. So Google must be right.

Well, except that those who have so far resisted a Google chip being implanted into their brains still feel that Glass might be for the self-righteous, rather than the normal human being.

Of late, Google seems to have adopted a crouching posture, as the criticisms and humor have rained its way."

Google to Glassholes: Stop it | Technically Incorrect - CNET News

"Google, perhaps mindful of some negative reactions to its revolution, offers a dos and don'ts guide. The don'ts mostly revolve around human behavior."

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Ex Microsoft staffer arrested for allegedly stealing Win 8 trade secrets

"Alex Kibkalo, a former senior architect at Microsoft who most recently served as a director of product management in 5nine Software (according to his LinkedIn profile), has been arrested for allegedly stealing Windows-related trade secrets while working for Microsoft.

Kibkalo was arrested on Wednesday, according to a report in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

According to a complaint filed on March 17 in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, Kibkalo -- a Russian national and former Microsoft employee based in Lebanon -- passed on trade secrets involving Windows 8 to an unnamed technology blogger in France.

Microsoft's own investigation found that Kibkalo "uploaded proprietary software including prerelease software updates for Windows 8 RT and ARM devices, as well as the Microsoft Activation Server Software Development Kit (SDK) to a computer in Redmond, Washington, and subsequently to his personal Windows Live SkyDrive account." Kibkalo is then said to have provided the blogger with links to the file on his account.

The unnamed blogger was "known to those in the Microsoft blogging community for posting screenshots of prerelease versions of the Windows operating system," according to the complaint. This person also posted information to his own Web sites and on Twitter, according to the document. Kibkalo was found by Microsoft to have elicited assistance from an acquaintance in Washginton state to set up a virtual machine on a server to help distribute the data and products, the complaint said."