John Lister

Microsoft has been recently criticized for suggesting that it may charge phone companies to use its newly-unveiled mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7 (previously known as Windows Mobile 7). However, other analysts argue that charging for the ... operating system is both reasonable and sensible. The charge was led by the Business Insider website, where a columnist estimated that Microsoft's annual revenue from licensing the Windows Phone 7 system will be around $300 million. That's clearly no trifling sum, as Dan Frommer argues, but it's a tiny part of Microsoft's annual income of around $66 ... (view more)

The United States government is in court fighting for the right to track people's location via their cellphone, without warrant. It says the powers are needed to hunt down criminals, but civil rights activists say that tracking shouldn't be allowed ... without ."probable cause." Cellphone Tracking Uses Triangulation The case doesn't involve monitoring conversations or reading text messages, but rather using call records to track a user to within 150 feet. That's usually done by triangulation, which involves finding a cellphone's distance from the three nearest network towers. Cellphone ... (view more)

At least five cities have already said they are interested in taking up Google's offer to build broadband networks running at a staggering 1 Gigabit per second (1Gbps). The comments come as analysts try to figure out what Google gains from the ... scheme. The firm says it will help fund networks serving between 50,000 and 500,000 customers. Cities whose officials have already said they are looking into the proposals include Winston, North Carolina; Peachtree City, Georgia; San Francisco, California; and Greensboro, North Carolina. Officials in Ontario County, New York have also shown an interest ... (view more)

Microsoft is releasing a set of tools aimed at detecting and undoing attempts to bypass Windows 7 anti-piracy checks. It's mostly meant for corporate networks, but the release is also intended as a security warning. The toolset is an update for ... Windows Activation Technologies, one of the systems which checks that a copy of Windows 7 is legitimate. The update will search for and eliminate 70 known tactics for attempting to bypass these checks. (Source: windowsteamblog.com ) Microsoft Touts Antipiracy Tools Obviously, anyone who is knowingly using a pirated copy of Windows 7 is not going to ... (view more)

Apple is said to be prepared to make quick price cuts for its iPad tablet if sales don't take off as planned. The news comes as a survey claims the public has actually become less interested after hearing about the device, though the figures don't ... necessarily bear that claim out. It's perfectly normal practice for a new gadget to be sold at a high price at first and then reduced later on. That makes commercial sense as it means the firm gets the most revenue possible from so-called "early adopters" and then drops the price to capture the mass market. In this case, however, it appears the ... (view more)

A Microsoft blogger recently posted a description of Windows 7's successor, internally codenamed as Windows.Next, otherwise known as Windows 8. The post, however, appears to have been removed from Microsoft's Development Network (MSDN) website at ... the time of this writing. Rumor: Windows Kernel Overhauled The post claims that the "minimum that folks can take for granted is that the next version will be something completely different from what folks usually expect of Windows." It also says that the "themes that have been floated truly reflect what people have been looking for years ... (view more)

In what would be a major change of policy, Microsoft is rumored to be removing multitasking capabilities in the next edition of Windows Mobile. That means that it likely won't be possible, for example, to write an email while checking a webpage. ... It's expected the system will be demonstrated next week at the Mobile World Congress industry event, though it's likely to be a glimpse rather than a detailed presentation. The PPCGeeks site reports that multitasking won't be available, though it will be possible to put one application on pause while running another. (Source: ppcgeeks.com ) Change ... (view more)

Microsoft has confirmed a flaw in Internet Explorer could be used by hackers to access the files on a user's computer. The flaw was demonstrated at a security conference this week. The man who discovered the flaw, Jorge Luis Alvarez Medina of Core ... Security Technologies, says that so far as he can tell, it's not something which can be easily patched. The good news is that Windows Vista and Windows 7 both have default options for Internet Explorer which can block the problem. Medina first noted the existence of the flaw last week, but held back details until this week's Black Hat Conference. ... (view more)

United States security officials have joined European officials in noting the potential security risks of running Internet Explorer 6 (IE6). But they haven't gone as far as issuing a formal warning to stop using the browser. The United States ... Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), part of the Department of Homeland Security has issued an advisory suggesting users review the recent Microsoft security patch and apply any updates which will improve security. That could be interpreted in two ways: patch IE6 immediately, or update to a later edition; the latter of course would make more ... (view more)

A recent report suggests that most users that use social networking sites have reported being spammed, with more than a third of those messages containing malicious links, or malware attached to the bogus messages. The security firm which ran the ... survey says the issue could be a serious threat to corporate networks. According to security experts Sophos, 57% of those questioned say they received unsolicited messages on their social networks last year, compared with 33% in 2008. The proportion who received either infected files or links to harmful material rose from 21% to 36%. Businesses Aware ... (view more)