Tag Archive for Microsoft

| July 2, 2011
Comments Off on AccountKiller KO’s Online Accounts

AccountKiller KO’s Online Accounts

AccountKiller KO's Online Accounts AccountKiller.com says it is a website dedicated to helping social network users reclaim their personal data. The website helps users reclaim their personal data by explaining and ranking social networking sites. The website explains how to delete online accounts and ranks them by how hard it is to reclaim your personal information.

AccountKiller provides instructions to remove your account or public profile on most popular websites, including Skype, Facebook, Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Live, Hotmail, MSN,  Twitter,  Google (GOOG), and many more.

The creators of AccountKiller have also created a blacklist of sites that do not allow their users to reclaim their online account information.  According to the website a black-listed site indicates it’s probably impossible or highly difficult to get rid of your account. Among the sites AccountKiller has blacklisted are:

The grey-listed sites may cost you some irritation or effort – but it should be possible to terminate your online accounts says AccountKiller. These sites will require you need to send a mail to the site, send a message using a webform or even call them to recover your personal information.

The creators of AccountKiller say that social media sites purposely make it difficult or even impossible to delete your account for two reasons. First, because they are profiting from their users’ data. These sites are in the business of data customer retention.  Alternatively, they suggest that these developers may simply be ignorant, lazy, or incompetent, i.e. not being able to create some account deletion function.

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Kudos to the creators of AccountKiller, I now recommend this site to anyone who has questions about these social networking sites. It is time for social networking sites to provide transparency into their real business model, data collection, otherwise, there could be a social networking bubble.

What do you think?

Do you know how to get out of your social networking sites? Can you?

 

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Apple (AAPL)
Category: Data protection | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
| June 25, 2011
Comments Off on 40 Years of Malware – Part 2

40 Years of Malware – Part 2

40 Years of Malware - Part 22011 marks the 40th anniversary of the computer virus. Help Net Security notes that over the last four decades, malware instances have grown from 1,300 in 1990, to 50,000 in 2000, to over 200 million in 2010. Fortinet (FTNT) marks this dubious milestone with an article that counts down some of the malware evolution low-lights.

The Sunnyvale, CA network security firm says that viruses evolved from academic proof of concepts to geek pranks which have evolved into cybercriminal tools. By 2005, monetization of the virus scene was underway and almost all viruses developed for the sole purpose of making money via more or less complex business models. According to FortiGuard Labs, the most significant computer viruses over the last 40 years are:

– See Part 1 Here – See Part 2 Here  – See Part 3 Here  – See Part 4 Here

1945 – A Bug is Born –  Grace Murray Hopper, a researcher at Harvard, notes a system failure and finds a moth trapped in relay panels.

1949 – Self-replicating programs – John von Newman a researcher from Hungary published the theoretical base for computers that store information in their “memory”.

1962 – A group of Bell Telephone Labs researchers invents a game that destroys software programs.

1971 – The Creeper Virus appears on ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet. It replicates itself and displays a message: “I’m the Creeper: Catch Me if You Can.”

1974 – The Wabbit – was a self-replicating program, that made multiple copies of itself on a computer until it bogs down the system to such an extent that system performance is reduced to zero and the computer eventually crashes. This virus was named wabbit because of the speed at which it was able to replicate.

Apple IIe1981 – Elk Cloner – the first widespread virus on the Apple (AAPL) II platform, spreads by the floppy disk and infects boot sectors, generating messages and impairing performance.

1983 –  The term “computer virus” comes into vogue after Professor Len Adleman at Lehigh University demonstrates the concept at a seminar.

1986 – The Brain is the first global epidemic on the PC platform and shows businesses and consumers are clueless about protection.

1987 – Jerusalem virus – On any Black Friday (Friday the 13th), it would delete any programs that were run, instead of infecting them, so it simply couldn’t be ignored,” Roger Thompson told News.com, Australia. “You couldn’t throw away your hard drive, and reformatting it didn’t remove the virus,” the chief research officer for AVG said.

BSD Daemon1988 – The Morris worm – created by Robert Tappan Morris, infects DEC VAX and Sun machines running BSD UNIX connected to the Internet and becomes the first worm to spread extensively “in the wild”, and one of the first well-known programs exploiting buffer overrun vulnerabilities.

1990 – Chameleon– the first documented polymorphic virus, malware that adapts and changes to avoid detection.

1992 – Michelangelo – was expected to create a digital apocalypse on March 6, with millions of computers having their information wiped according to mass media hysteria surrounding the virus.  Later assessments of the damage showed the aftermath to be minimal.

1995 –  Concept – the first Macro virus attacked Microsoft (MSFT) Word documents.

1996 – Laroux – the first Microsoft (MSFT) Excel virus, appears in the wild.

1999 – The Happy99 worm – invisibly attached itself to emails and would display fireworks to hide the changes being made then wished the user a happy New Year. It modified system files related to Microsoft (MSFT) Outlook Express and Internet Explorer (IE) on Windows 95 and Windows 98.

1999 – The Melissa worm targeted Microsoft (MSFT) Word and Outlook-based systems, and created considerable network traffic.

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Back in the day, I had to deal with both Happy99 and Melissa, as well as the occasional Stoned. Melissa was the easiest to deal with since I was running a GroupWise shop at the time, once the news spread, we just pulled the Cat5 from the GWIA and we saw minimal blowback. Let’s hear it for technological diversity.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| June 20, 2011
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Tablet Notes

Tablet NotesiPad sold three million units in the first 80 days after its April 2010 release. Its current sales rate is about 4.5 million units per quarter, according to Bernstein Research. This sales rate is blowing past records. iPad is outselling iPhone and the DVD player, the most quickly adopted non-phone electronic product.

Apple iPad Will Fail in the Enterprise

Dell logothe Apple (AAPL) iPad would ultimately fail in the enterprise. That is what Andy Lark, Dell‘s (DELL) global head of marketing for large enterprises and public organizations told CIO Australia.

… longer term, open, capable and affordable will win, not closed, high price and proprietary [Apple has] done a really nice job, they’ve got a great product, but the challenge they’ve got is that already Android is outpacing them.

Apple is great if you’ve got a lot of money and live on an island. It’s not so great if you have to exist in a diverse, open, connected enterprise; simple things become quite complex.

Mr. Lark claimed Dell had taken an enterprise approach toward tablet PCs. This approach will ultimately give Dell an edge. Dell has a major stake in Microsoft Windows and the desktop PC market. “We’ve taken a very considered approach to tablets, given that the vast majority of our business isn’t in the consumer space,” he said.

The cost of Apple products was another deterrent to iPad deployments. Dell’s Lark claims that the economics on a fully loaded iPad did not add up. “An iPad with a keyboard, a mouse, and a case [means] you’ll be at $1500 or $1600; that’s double of what you’re paying,” he claimed. “That’s not feasible.”

Despite the company’s history with Microsoft, it had embraced both Windows Phone 7 and Android operating systems “…Our strategy is multi-OS,” Lark said. “We will do Windows 7 coupled with Android Honeycomb, and we’re really excited. We think that giving people that choice is very important.”

Outlook on the iPhone and iPad

Pst Mail an iPad appHelp has arrived for Apple (AAPL) iPhone and iPad owners who need access to their Microsoft (MSFT) Outlook e-mail. AppScout says users can check their email even when they don’t have an Internet connection.Pst Mail from Arrow Bit is an iPad app that provides offline access, potentially saving money on the user’s data plan. With the app, you can carry around a year’s worth of messages with you. Pst Mail can interact with the Mail app on your iPhone or iPad to reply to or forward messages. It can also open pst files created with any version of Microsoft Outlook.

AppScout says to find messages in large pst files, Pst Mail includes an advanced search feature. You can search by sender, recipient, subject text, message body, or even attachment name. You can also limit the search to a particular time frame. The developers offer a free lite version of the app in the iTunes Store, which has all the same features as the full version but is limited to the number of messages a user may open in each folder. The full version costs $9.99 in the iTunes app store.

GoToMyPC: iPad App

GoToMyPC Citrix (CTXS) has launched an Apple (AAPL) iPad version of GoToMyPC, a remote desktop application that lets you log in to your computer and control it on the go. Up until recently, you needed a PC to log in to a remote PC using the service. But the iPad app lets you do it anywhere you can get an internet connection on an iPad.

Mobilputing says GoToMyPC is hardly the first app of its type for the iPad. LogMein, TeamViewer, Parallels, and Splashtop all offer similar apps. But the GoToMyPC app has tight security features including 128-bit AES encryption, user authentication, and dual passwords, oriented for business.

Apple Sued Over Apps Giving Information to Advertisers

Apple is being sued over the collection and sharing of user data with outside companiesApple (AAPL) and Apple app developers have been sued over the collection and sharing of user data with outside companies (which I wrote about here). Two suits were filed in the Northern District of CA against the iPhone and iPad manufacturer. Apple is named in Lalo v. Apple, 10-5878.

Lalo seeks class action and claims that iPhones and iPads are encoded with identifying devices that allow advertising networks to track what applications users download, how frequently they’re used, and for how long. “Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users’ location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and political views,” reports Bloomberg’s BusinesWeek.

According to Wired the second suit, Freeman v. Apple seeks both monetary damages and a court order to stop the profiling by app makers being sued are Pandora and Dictionary.com, Toss It, Text4Plus, The Weather Channel, Talking Tom Cat, and Pimple Popper Lite.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| May 7, 2011
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Tech World Financial Results

FMoney Makes the Tech World Gou Roundoxconn, Microsoft and Intel just reported financial results, and things look different. Apple is more profitable than Microsoft, MSFT’s most profitable division are toys and Intel says server growth for the mobile web is driving its growth.

Foxconn financial results

Foxconn financial results Jump in 2010the world’s manufacturer of all things tech recently posted its latest earnings report. TechEye points out that despite inconveniences like having to pay workers a slightly larger pittance and give them better working conditions, Foxconn has announced a 53% rise in consolidated revenues for 2010. Terry Gou‘s company’s gross profit for the twelve months increased by 58.5% to NT$100.9 billion from NT$63.6 billion in 2009.

Digitimes says the figures are all better than market watchers’ forecasts. Market watchers originally expected rising labor and component costs would seriously impact Foxconn’s profitability in 2010, but the company’s strong revenues last year still managed to boost its overall profitability despite a drop of 1.37 percentage points in its gross margin from the 2009 level to 8.15%.

Microsoft

Windows Sales Down Microsoft Profits Up 31%Microsoft’s (MSFT) profits grew 3% during its fiscal 3rd quarter ending March 31, 2011. During this period, the software giant racked up $5.23 billion in profits, while revenues reached $16.43 billion, a 13 percent climb. These profits came thanks to strong performance from some nontraditional divisions.

MSFT’s Entertainment and Devices Division provided the biggest revenue gain. The home of Xbox and Kinect, Ballmer’s boys motion-sensing game controller increased sales by 60 percent to $1.94 billion.  This is the smallest of Microsoft’s product divisions so it only generated 11.8 percent of overall sales. According to CNET. Kinect drove sales, selling 2.4 million units in the quarter according to the New York Times. CNET reports the company sold 2.7 million Xbox 360 consoles in the quarter, a 79 percent increase from last year.

Microsoft‘s second-largest revenue generator this quarter was the Windows and Windows Live Division which had revenue of $4.45 billion. This represents a 4 percent decrease from last year’s $4.65 billion and net income fell 10 percent. According to CNET Redmond says Windows is the fastest-selling operating system in history with 350 million licenses sold.

The Server and Tools Division saw the next best performance. The home to Windows Server had sales of $4.1 billion, up 11 percent from a year ago. Profit for the unit climbed 12 percent. CNET says business adoption of Windows Server, SQL Server and System Center lifted the division’s results.

At the Business Division, home of Office, Microsoft’s revenue grew 21 percent from last year according to the NYT. The NYT says the company’s Office software has no significant competition revenue grew to $5.25 billion. Office 2010 is the fastest-selling version of Office ever, Microsoft said, with businesses deploying the software at five times the rate of its predecessor.

Microsoft’s smallest revenue generator the Online Services Division, home of Bing gained 14 percent in revenue to $648 million from $566 million.TechEye reports that Bing increased its share of the search market but Microsoft spent so much on promotion the division saw operating losses of over $700 million. Ballmer’s partners are not happy with these results.  Two years ago, Microsoft and Yahoo inked a deal to use MSFT technologies for Yahoo’s search to help both fight off rival Google. However, Yahoo’s chief executive, Carol A. Bartz, said that the partnership had not yielded the expected financial results for Yahoo and that technical glitches by Microsoft were to blame according to the NYT.

Intel

Chip giant Intel (INTC) has finally found a way into the mobile market. After years of trying to get its Atom chips into mobile devices, they are profiting from the demand for servers to feed the mobile devices. Intel Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith told Bloomberg that the spread of mobile devices fuels “explosive” growth for processors used in data centers. “There’s a significant, maybe even an insatiable, demand driver for more and more performance and computing power that’s moving into the cloud,” Mr. Smith told Bloomberg. “What gets lost is the explosive growth of all of these devices connecting to the Internet is driving a $10 billion dollar server business.” Intel recently reported that its second-quarter revenue will be $1 billion more than analysts had estimated, in part driven by the data center boom.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| May 4, 2011
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Another Go at Virtualization

Another Go at VirtualizationA New York start-up called NeverWare is trying to break the Microsoft (MSFT) upgrade loop. Each time a new version of Windows is released, many computer users find that their hardware is suddenly outdated. NeverWare is targeting cash-strapped schools that cannot afford to upgrade to the latest hardware with each major Microsoft software release. NeverWare is offering a possible solution a virtualization server that lets even decade-old PCs upgrade to the latest Windows 7 operating system reports MIT’s Technology Review.

Neverware logoTechnology Review says that the NeverWare server, called the JuiceBox a100, does the hard work of running the latest operating systems for many aging computers on the same network. To users of those old computers, it will feel as if the PCs are running the latest version of Windows, when in fact they are accessing it over the network. Their typing and mouse commands are sent to the software on the server, and the imagery for their display is sent back. This is called virtualization.

Once connected to a JuiceBox virtualization server, a PC doesn’t even need a hard drive, or any local software at all according to the article. NeverWare’s founder, Jonathan Hefter, says a 10-year-old desktop computer running Windows 98 would work just fine. He’s targeting the U.S. education market and institutions in the developing world with the technology. “Schools can’t afford to upgrade PCs, and developing countries can’t afford PCs, so if we can use the power of the cloud, we can move to a more efficient model of computing, Mr.  Hefter says. Several New Jersey schools. are testing JuiceBox servers to power networks of desktops in two

NComputing logoAnother company, NComputing, also uses servers to offer “virtual desktops” to multiple users and supplies its technology to some schools around the world. Mr. Hefter says in the article that, NComputing’s approach requires a new device that links a user’s keyboard, mouse, and monitor to a distant server over the Web. He claims that one NeverWare JuiceBox is larger than an NComputing device, but then it only takes one JuiceBox to “upgrade” a network of tens of computers.

Joyojeet Pal, professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington, thinks NeverWare’s approach has potential. “What this project seems to offer is an alternative to an online operating system like Google’s (GOOG) Chrome OS,” Mr. Pal says. Google’s approach requires users to use Web versions of software packages, rather than providing access to traditional software. However, Mr. Pal says, the cost of maintaining an outdated machine could still be considerable due to the need for repairs and labor, for example.

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Mr. Hefter is right with his comparison of US education and third wold education. The way the Republicans are attacking teachers and ravaging budgets the third-world nations will soon be better off.

Thin clients and virtual desktops have been around for a long time. It may stick this time because the economics are right and the technology is adequate.

What do you think?

Has the time of virtual desktops finally arrived?

Is it because of the technology? The economics?

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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