Bill Lindner

In a couple recent articles by myself and my colleague Brandon Dimmel , we've mentioned the Big Brother concept a couple of times. Now we can talk about the worst Big Brother case scenario known to modern man (and woman). When used correctly, the ... concept of Big Brother can be beneficial to everyone's safety and security. When used as a tool to maintain complete control over an entire country, there is always the possibility of mind-numbing civil rights violations, too. At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are reportedly being installed along streets in southern China. These will soon ... (view more)

A lawsuit filed in April alleging that Microsoft misled consumers with labels on Windows XP machines touted as "Windows Vista Capable" will be allowed by a federal judge to proceed. The suit alleges many of the computers labelled by the ... Redmond-based company as "Windows Vista Capable" couldn't run some of the highly touted features of Vista. After listening to oral arguments in Seattle, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman denied Microsoft's motion to dismiss two of the law suits claims: allegations that Microsoft's marketing violated Washington state's Consumer Protection ... (view more)

Microsoft Windows XP will be used to handle vital functions of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and has already been installed on most of the PCs delivered by Lenovo for the event. Microsoft's poster boy Windows Vista will only be used on PCs set up in ... Internet lounges for athletes to use, contrary to a Microsoft sponsored report earlier this year. (Source: InfoWorld.com ) Yang Yuanqing, chairman of Lenovo, said the Olympic games require mature, stable technologies during a briefing in Beijing. Due to the size and importance of the Olympics, it's not the place to try new technologies, especially ... (view more)

Following in the footsteps of Dell, Lenovo and Novell recently announced an agreement to provide preloaded Linux on Lenovo ThinkPad notebooks and to provide support from Lenovo for the operating system (OS). The announcement came at the LinuxWorld ... Conference ... (view more)

Two recent court rulings indicate that judges are paying closer attention to how corporations conduct online and technological transactions with their customers. This is good news for consumers. (Source: Wired.com ) End User License Agreements ... (EULAs) are usually lengthy and full of all kinds of legalese. Almost all of them are one-sided and oppressive, offering consumers no choice but to take it or leave it. The first case of Gatton v. T-Mobile (PDF) involved a California Appeals Court that over ruled a provision in the EULA that required consumers to go through arbitration if they wanted to ... (view more)

When Microsoft shipped Windows Vista, one new feature that was introduced was a firewall that monitored both inbound and outbound traffic. What Microsoft failed to mention about the firewall is the fact that monitoring outbound traffic is disabled ... by default. Microsoft claims it was disabled because administrators wanted more control over it. Even more interesting is the fact that you can't enable outbound filtering through the Windows Security Center in Windows Vista. The user is required to manually configure the firewall if you want to filter that outbound traffic. To do this in Windows ... (view more)

A recent survey of more than 250 CIOs, CSOs, IT managers and network administrators across Europe, Asia Pacific, and the U.S. conducted by PatchLink shows that fewer businesses are now planning a migration to Windows Vista than seven months ago. ... More businesses are saying they'll either stick with the Windows thay have, or they'll switch to Linux or Mac OS X. The poll also shows that corporations are afraid of zero-day vulnerabilities. Of the more than 250 businesses polled, 2% said they're already running Windows Vista. 9% said they plan to roll Vista in the next three months. 87% said they ... (view more)

After coming across the information from the "Does Windows Vista Send Information to the Government?" story , I decided to do a little research on Microsoft, the Department of Defense (DoD) and the National Security Agency (NSA). What I found was ... very interesting, and it raises some serious questions. It's not clear what software was being used by my source as I wrote that previous post. He may be using some sort of file sharing or peer 2 peer (p2p) program. He posted pictures of a log from the peerguardian 2 program, software that isn't listed as compatible with Windows Vista. Just because ... (view more)

At a time when Microsoft didn't need any more bad Windows Vista news, reports are beginning to surface about problems with the product activation system. For some users of the not-ready-for-prime-time operating system, updating some hardware drivers ... can cause the Software Protection Platform code in Windows Vista to require reactivation. No changes are made to the hardware itself, just the drivers. Software Protection Platform code in Windows Vista is part of the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA). It's a program required by Microsoft as part of their fight against software piracy. It gets ... (view more)

In what's beginning to look like the technological version of "One Flew Vver the Cuckoo's Nest," Microsoft filed a patent application on July 5 detailing advertising software that uses applications and data on a computer rather than the web. ... (Source: Information Week ) The summary of the patent, which amounts to nothing short of adware, begins with this lengthy statement: "an advertising framework may reside on a user computer, whether it's a part of the OS (operating system), an application or integrated within applications. Applications, tools, or utilities may use an application program ... (view more)