Google repaints a fence for Mark Twain’s birthday
If Mark Twain — also known as Samuel Clemens — were alive today, he would be celebrating his 176th birthday right now. But since the author isn't around to blow out candles or eat cake, Google is marking the occasion by putting some of his beloved characters onto its homepage. Read more...
Anonymous and Team Poison form alliance to steal from rich, give to poor
Throughout history, there have been a few good-hearted thieves who’ve stolen the hearts and minds of the public — in addition to the physical objects they’ve swiped. Top among them, of course, if Robin Hood. Now, a new gang of Merry Men is setting out to help the 99% through similar tactics.
The world’s two most widely-recognized hacking collectives, Anonymous and Team P0is0n, are joining forces. Their target: the same banks, coporations, and members of the 1% who inspired the #Occupy movement. They’re kicking off the campaign — which is being called #OpRobinHood — under the assumed name of p0isAnon (we see what they did there). Their goal is clear: steal from the rich and give to the poor. Read more...
Lawmaker dissatisfied with Amazon’s answers on Kindle Fire’s data harvesting
Amazon told a Massachusetts congressman that the Silk browser in its Kindle Fire tablet doesn't pose a privacy threat to consumers, but the lawmaker wasn't ready to give the online retailer a pass.
Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the co-chairman of a congressional caucus on consumer privacy, on Tuesday released the retailer's responses to questions he had put to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in October about Silk and the data it collected.
Markey wasn't happy with Amazon's answers.
"Amazon's responses to my inquiries do not provide enough detail about how the company intends to use customer information, beyond acknowledging that the company uses this valuable information," said Markey in a statement. Read more...
Former Apple subsidiary loses patent spat with HTC
The US International Trade Commission (ITC) has ruled that HTC does not infringe on patents held by former Apple subsidiary FlashPoint Technology.
FlashPoint complained to the ITC about IP relating to digital cameras in the Taiwanese smartphone-maker's products.
An initial ruling by an ITC judge back in July found no violation and the rest of the commission backed that up yesterday.
"The Commission has determined to affirm the judge’s determination of no violation of Section 337 with respect to the ’769 patent on the bases that (1) the accused HTC Android smartphones and the accused HTC Windows Phone 7 (WP7) smartphones do not infringe the ’769 patent, and (2) respondent has established that it has an implied license to practice the ’769 patent with respect to the accused WP7 smartphones," the ITC ruling (PDF) read. Read more...
Is Microsoft spin masking slow sales for Office 365?
Microsoft hasn't spilled the beans about Office 365 sales, but the little information we do have makes it sound to me as if the cloud suite isn't doing well at all.
In spite of a spate of minor announcements yesterday, Group Product Manager Andrew Kisslo announced on the Office 365 blog, "Just five months after its release, Office 365 is being adopted eight times faster than its predecessor."
Keep in mind that Office 365's predecessor is BPOS -- and BPOS didn't exactly get off to a dizzying start. Back in 2007 and 2008, Microsoft hosted Exchange and SharePoint in an ad hoc way. Microsoft didn't give the service a name until November 2008, when an amalgamation of Exchange and SharePoint was packaged and sold as Microsoft Online Services, a precursor to BPOS. Microsoft has never divulged how many BPOS customers it signed on in the five months after its launch, but the number of organizations using Microsoft-hosted servers in April 2009 certainly wasn't stunning. Read more...
Startup Agari debuts security services to stop fake email, phishing attacks
Startup Agari debuts today with cloud-based email security services aimed at allowing enterprises and e-commerce companies to identify and block fake and spoofed email exploiting their legitimate business domain names to conduct scams and phishing attacks.
Facebook and YouSendIt are among the early adopters of the Agari technology, according to Patrick Peterson, founder and CEO of the company, which is based in Palo Alto.
"They understood how email identity is being abused," says Peterson, who adds the Agari service allows Facebook, for example, to set policy controls and automatically block fake email attempting to exploit Facebook's legitimate domain names used for email. Read more...
Obama wants feds to digitize all records
President Obama this week gave government agencies four months to come up with a plan to improve records management by moving to electronic records management systems "where feasible."
In a memorandum, Obama said one aim of the plan is to improve public access to government records by moving them to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which will "provide the prism through which future generations will understand and learn from our actions and decisions."
Paul Wester, chief records officer for the U.S. Government, said in an interview with Computerworld that the president's directive is really about driving a more open government where citizens can access information in a more "Web 2.0" format. Read more...
Hackers launch millions of Java exploits, says Microsoft
Hackers continue to launch attacks exploiting vulnerabilities in Oracle's Java software in record numbers, Microsoft said Monday.
Citing research from a recent report, Tim Rains, a director in the company's Trustworthy Computing group, said that up to half of all attacks detected and blocked by Microsoft's security software over a 12-month period were Java exploits.
Altogether, Microsoft stopped more than 27 million Java exploits from mid-2010 through mid-2011.
Most of those exploits targeted long-ago-patched vulnerabilities, said Rains.
The most commonly-blocked Java attacks -- to the tune of over 2.5 million of them -- in the first half of 2011 exploited a bug disclosed in March 2010 and patched by Oracle the same month. Second on the popularity chart for the full 12-month stretch was an exploit of a bug patched in early December 2008, nearly three years ago. Read more...