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INTEREST: Researchers use browser to elude Microsoft Vista memory protections
by billing 14 Aug '08

14 Aug '08

...from: http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid14_gci1324395… Researchers use browser to elude Vista memory protections By Dennis Fisher, Executive Editor 07 Aug 2008 | SearchSecurity.com LAS VEGAS -- Two security researchers have developed new techniques that bypass the memory protection safeguards in the Windows Vista operating system through the use of browser exploits. In a presentation at the Black Hat briefings, Mark Dowd and Alexander Sotirov demonstrated the new methods they've found to get around Vista protections such as Address Space Layout Randomization(ASLR), Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and others by using Java, ActiveX controls and .NET objects to load arbitrary content into Web browsers. By taking advantage of the way that browsers, specifically Internet Explorer, handle active scripting and .NET objects, the pair have been able to load essentially whatever content they want into a location of their choice on a user's machine. The attacks themselves are not based on any new vulnerabilities in IE or Vista, but instead take advantage of Vista's fundamental architecture and the ways in which Microsoft chose to protect it. In their presentation at Black Hat., Dowd and Sotirov stressed that despite their advances in getting around the Vista memory protections, there are still a number of security mechanisms in place in the operating system to mitigate attacks. Internet Explorer running in Protected Mode, for example, can protect against attacks that overwrite some files. Also, some of the pair's attacks will be addressed in future versions of third-party software, including Flash, which will opt into ASLR in its next release. The message that emerged from Dowd and Sotirov's presentation is that although Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., went to great lengths to upgrade the security of Vista over that of Windows XP, there are still ways in. "The protection mechanisms in Windows Vista are not very effective at preventing browser exploits," Sotirov said in the presentation. "The game has changed and browsers are now the major threat. Even on Vista where ASLR is enabled, we're able to put our data where we want." "The genius of this is that it's completely reusable," said Dino Dai Zovi, a well-known security researcher and author. "They have attacks that let them load chosen content to a chosen location with chosen permissions. That's completely game over. What this means is that almost any vulnerability in the browser is trivially exploitable." Many of the defenses that Microsoft added to Vista and Windows Server 2008 are designed to stop host-based attacks. ASLR, for example, is meant to prevent attackers from predicting target memory addresses by randomly moving things such as a process's stack, heap and libraries. That technique is useful against memory-corruption attacks, but Dai Zovi said that against Dowd's and Sotirov's methods, it would be of no use. "This stuff just takes a knife to a large part of the security mesh Microsoft built into Vista," Dai Zovi said. "If you think about the fact that .NET loads DLLs into the browser itself and then Microsoft assumes they're safe because they're .NET objects, you see that Microsoft didn't think about the idea that these could be used as stepping stones for other attacks. This is a real tour de force." In the paper on which their presentation was based, Dowd and Sotirov say that while their attacks may give attackers the upper hand right now, they expect Microsoft and other vendors to respond quickly. "In this paper we demonstrated that the memory protection mechanisms available in the latest versions of Windows are not always effective when it comes to preventing the exploitation of memory corruption vulnerabilities in browsers. They raise the bar, but the attacker still has a good chance of being able to bypass them. Two factors contribute to this problem: the degree to which the browser state is controlled by the attacker; and the extensible plugin architecture of modern browsers. The authors expect these problems to be addressed in future releases of Windows and browser plugins shipped by third parties," they say in their conclusion. "This is not insanely technical. These two guys are capable of the really low-level technical attacks, but this is simple and reusable," Dai Zovi said. "I definitely think this will get reused soon, sort of like heap spraying was." This story was updated and corrected to include more accurate information on Dowd and Sotirov's attacks from their paper and their session at Black Hat. The research paper on this can be downloaded at: http://taossa.com/archive/bh08sotirovdowd.pdf

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FYI: desktop mounting of your ccu UNIX volume...
by billing 31 Jul '08

31 Jul '08

...will see a short disruption this coming Sunday afternoon. For anyone mounting their CCU UNIX directory on their OS X desktop by using "Connect to server..." and specifying afp:// rigel.cc.umanitoba.ca, there will be a short outage of this service on Sunday afternoon this weekend. The exact time for this outage is unknown (beyond Sunday afternoon) as this is just one stage of many updates being done but it should not last more than 10 minutes or so.

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FYI: Sun's VirtualBox: open source virtualization for OS X, Windows, Linux, OpenSolaris
by billing 18 Jul '08

18 Jul '08

...from a list subscriber: > VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for > enterprise as well as home use. > > Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and > OpenSolaris > hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including > but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), > DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD. > > http://www.virtualbox.org/ > > Related to the aobve, which actually what pointed me to it: > > Virtualization continues to be a big topic among Mac users with > Intel-powered Macs. Products from Parallels and VMware allow you to > easily run many different operating systems on your Mac, each within > its own protected virtual environment. Recently, a third player > entered the market -- Sun, with its VirtualBox product. > > http://www.macworld.com/article/134584/2008/07/mwvodcast59.html > > Usual disclaimer: just read about it for the first time, haven't yet > tried it. > I downloaded the installer and here's the "caution" given during the install process: Sun xVM VirtualBox for Mac OS X Welcome to Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6.2 for Mac OS X! This installer will guide you through the installation process. In a minute from now, you will be able to execute virtual machines running different operating systems on your desktop. You will find that VirtualBox delivers a great feature set and excellent performance. As one of the strengths of VirtualBox is user friendliness and excellent operating system integration, we are looking forward to receiving feedback, especially suggestions on how to make VirtualBox the most user friendly OS X application. Send your feedback to info(a)virtualbox.org Currently, we are aware of the following restrictions: • No support for Host Interface Networking • No support for Internal Networking • No support for audio input • No support for VT-x/AMD-V (rarely required) • No support for raw disk access • The numlock emulation isn't implemented yet • The VirtualBox kernel extension is currently accessible from all user accounts Note that we are planning to address all known issues. Should you experience a crash in any of the VirtualBox applications (VirtualBox, VirtualBoxVM, VBoxSVC, VBoxHeadless, VBoxManage), please include the CrashReporter log in the report if possible. You can find the CrashReporter Logs in: {user-dir}/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/ Wayne

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FYI: The Economist tech view of Windows XP, Vista, "7", and Midori("green")
by billing 10 Jul '08

10 Jul '08

The Economist magazine (http://www.economist.com) "is the premier source for the analysis of world business and current affairs, providing authoritative insight and opinion on international news, world politics, business, finance, science and technology, as well as overviews of cultural trends and regular industry, business and country special reports." The Economist magazine is published weekly and each week they also make much of the material available in audio/PodCast format. One of the podcasts looks exclusively at "Technology and Science". In this weeks Economist technology podcast they report on what's been happening with Microsoft XP and Vista. Tthere is also mention of Microsoft's commitment to XP upgrades and patches 'till 2014 Microsoft Windows "7" and the version of Windows to come after "7" currently called "Midori". http://gizmodo.com/5021126/microsoft-midori-is-a-secret-post+windows-operat… The podcast can be found at: http://downloads.economist.feedroom.com/economist/t_assets/20080707/2008070… ...or... http://preview.tinyurl.com/5d5sye ...also of interest related to "What's happening with Microsoft VISTA?": http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E00E0DA163DF933A05755C0A96E… http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jh… http://blogs.computerworld.com/intel_backstabs_microsoft_by_abandoning_vista June 26, 2008 - 6:40 P.M. Intel backstabs Microsoft by abandoning Vista Preston Gralla The news that Intel has decided it won't upgrade its PCs to Vista must be especially bitter for Microsoft because court documents show that Microsoft may have launched its ill-fated "[Vista Capable] PC" scheme at the behest of Intel. Is this the kind of payback that Microsoft expected? According to the New York Times, Intel has decided that it won't upgrade the PCs of its 80,000 computers to Windows Vista. The Times reports: "...the company made its decision after a lengthy analysis by its internal technology staff of the costs and potential benefits of moving to Windows Vista, which has drawn fire from many customers as a buggy, bloated program that requires costly hardware upgrades to run smoothly." [...] A refresher for those who might not remember the "Vista Capable PC" scheme: It was a marketing scheme in which people claim that Microsoft misled consumers into buying the Windows Vista Capable PCs, even though the PCs couldn't run the most important features of Vista. According to court documents released in a suit related to the scheme, Microsoft's John Kalkman sent an email to Scott Di Valerio, who was in charge of the company's relations with PC makers, noting that the Vista Capable PC scheme was being launched on behalf of Intel: "In the end, we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded. This in turn did two things: 1. Decreased focus of OEMs planning and shipping higher end graphics for Vista- ready programs and 2. Reduced the focus by IHV's to ready great WHQL [Windows Hardware Quality Labs] qualified graphics drivers. We can see this today with Intel's inability to ship a compelling full featured 945 graphics driver for Windows Vista." http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/02/28/did-microsoft-lower-its-standards-t… Kalkman makes clear in the email that it was a mistake to try and bail out Intel: "...it was a mistake on our part to change the original graphics requirements. This created confusion in the industry on how important the visual aspects of visual computing would play as a feature set to new Windows Vista upgraders." So Microsoft went out on a limb to bail out Intel, and this is the payback it gets? They're no doubt talking about back-stabbing at Redmond these days.

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FYI: Problems opening older WORD documents in Microsoft WORD 2008(12)?
by billing 30 Jun '08

30 Jun '08

...from: http://www.macworld.com/article/134138/2008/06/officeupdates.html?lsrc=mwwe… Opening Old Word Files By Christopher Breen mailto:mac911@macworld.com Mac 911 Tip of the Week Reader Jim Harper feels like Word 2008 has severed his ties with the past. He writes: "I'm running Tiger and when I upgraded to Microsoft Office 2008 from Office 2004 I cannot open Word files created with my 90s Microsoft Word versions. Any solution available?" Yes. Start by updating your copy of Office to the very recently released Microsoft Office for Mac 12.1.1 Update. This update is supposed to address an issue where older Word files won't open when you double-click them. http://www.macworld.com/article/134138/2008/06/officeupdates.html?lsrc=mwwe… I use the phrase "supposed to" in this context because it may not work. Microsoft has issued contradictory information on this subject. In a support note, Microsoft states that the 12.1.1 Update "fixes an issue that prevents Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac Service Pack 1 (SP1) from opening Word documents when you double-click the document or when you download the document from a Web site." Yet, Knowledge Base document 953266 states that "The Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.1 Update blocks users from opening older Word for Mac documents by using the methods that are mentioned in the 'Symptoms' section." And those symptoms include double-clicking on a document, dragging a document to the Word 2008 for Mac program icon, dragging a document to the Word 2008 for Mac program icon that is in the Dock, and executing an AppleScript that uses the Finder to open a Microsoft Word document. And the reason? Apparently these older documents may pose a security threat and opening them in such ways puts you at risk. Of course Microsoft is happy to let you open them by choosing Open from the File menu, which is somehow more secure because... uh, it's more inconvenient?

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FYI: two OSX trojan horse programs encountered
by billing 23 Jun '08

23 Jun '08

...from: http://www.intego.com/news/ism0803.asp INTEGO SECURITY MEMO - June 20, 2008 OSX.Trojan.PokerStealer Trojan Horse Attempts to Take Control of Macs Exploit: OSX.Trojan.PokerStealer Discovered: June 20, 2008 Risk: Low Description: A Trojan horse has been found in the wild masquerading as program for Mac OS X called “PokerGame”. The Trojan in question is a shell script encapsulated in an application, and is distributed in a 65 KB Zip archive; unzipped, it is 180 KB. The Trojan horse, when run, activates ssh on the Mac on which it is running, then sends the user name and password hash, along with the IP address of the Mac, to a server. It asks for an administrator’s password after displaying a dialog saying, “A corrupt preference file has been detected and must be repaired.” Entering the administrator’s password enables the program to accomplish its tasks. After gaining ssh access to a Mac, malicious users can attempt to take control of them, delete files, damage the operating system, or much more. Intego VirusBarrier X4 and X5 with virus definitions dated June 20, 2008 protect against this Trojan horse. Intego recommends that users never download and install software from untrusted sources or questionable web sites. = - = - = - = - = - = - = INTEGO SECURITY ALERT - June 19, 2008 Apple Remote Desktop Vulnerability Allows Malicious Programs to Execute Code as Root Exploit: ARDAgent root privilege escalation Discovered: June 19, 2008 Risk: Critical Description: A vulnerability has been discovered that allows malicious programs to execute code as root when run locally, or via a remote connection, on computers running Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5. This vulnerability takes advantage of the fact that ARDAgent, a part of the Remote Management component of Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, has a setuid bit set. Any user running such an executable gains the privileges of the user who owns that executable. In this case, ARDAgent is owned by root, so running code via the ARDAgent executable runs this code as root, without requiring a password. The exploit in question depends on ARDAgent’s ability to run AppleScripts, which may, in turn, include shell script commands. When an application enables a root privilege escalation of this type, any malicious code that is run may have devastating effects. These may range from deleting all the files on the Mac (regardless of who owns them) to more pernicious attacks such as changing system settings, and even setting up periodic tasks to perform them repeatedly. Any application could use this vulnerability to obtain root privileges without users ever needing to enter passwords. Users could run malicious programs that they download from the Internet or receive from friends or colleagues, and, if the program exploits this vulnerability, simply launching it once would be sufficient for damage to be done. There are cases where this exploit does not work. If a user has turned on Remote Management in the Sharing pane of System Preferences under Mac OS X 10.5, or if a user has installed Apple Remote Desktop client under Mac OS X 10.4 or earlier and has activated this setting in the Sharing preferences, the exploit will not function. Most users, however, will not have this service turned on; generally only those users who want to observe or control other computers on their network will turn this on to do so. Note that Mac OS X 10.5’s Screen Sharing function has no effect on this vulnerability. This exploit can be triggered by any type of user account: standard user, administrator, or even a guest account. Therefore, a guest logged in using Mac OS X 10.5’s Guest Account feature has the ability to download an application and unwittingly run malicious code with no security warning.

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INTEREST: iTunes Store - biggest music retailer in USA; world's biggest online movie store
by billing 23 Jun '08

23 Jun '08

....from: http://www.macworld.com/article/134054/2008/06/itunesstore.html?lsrc=mwweek iTunes Store - five billion sold and counting by Peter Cohen, Macworld.com Jun 19, 2008 8:35 am Apple on Thursday announced that more than five billion songs have been purchased and downloaded from its iTunes Store. According to NPD MusicWatch figures, the iTunes Store is the number one music retailer in the U.S.; Apple also says that the iTunes Store is the most popular online movie store in the world, with people renting and buying more than 50,000 movies every day. The U.S. iTunes Store’s music catalog stretches to over eight million songs, more than 20,000 TV episodes and more than 2,000 films, including more than 350 movies in high-definition video.

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INTEREST: A.M.D. and Its War With Intel: predatory pricing?
by billing 21 Jun '08

21 Jun '08

...from: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/business/21nocera.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&… A.M.D. and Its War With Intel By JOE NOCERA Published: June 21, 2008 A few weeks ago, Stephen Labaton of The New York Times broke the news that the Federal Trade Commission had decided to open a formal antitrust investigation into Intel, the world’s dominant maker of microprocessors. Subpoenas had gone out not just to Intel, but to many of the computer manufacturers who rely on Intel chips. The investigation, as Mr. Labaton wrote, was going to revolve around “accusations that Intel’s pricing is intended to maintain a near monopoly on the microprocessor market.” The chief accuser, of course, was Intel’s main (some would say only) rival, Advanced Micro Devices. I say “of course” because I can scarcely remember a time when A.M.D. hasn’t been complaining about Intel’s supposed predatory behavior. But I can also recall the company’s many missteps and execution failures over the years, which have tended to undercut its claims. It was always a little hard to swallow A.M.D.’s argument that it was being hurt by Intel’s anticompetitive practices when it had such a long history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. In recent years, however, two things have happened. First, in 2003, A.M.D. came out with a chip called Opteron, which was far superior to anything Intel had on the market. Indeed, this was one of the few times that Intel was the company stubbing its toe; it took a year before it had a competitive chip. What’s more, the Opteron was aimed at the highly profitable server market, which has long been Intel’s domain. It is fair to say that Intel was none too happy with this state of affairs, and it wasn’t too long before A.M.D. was complaining that Intel was cutting deals to keep computer makers from straying, even though many of them wanted to use the Opteron. Which perhaps explains the second thing that happened: A.M.D.’s accusations finally began to gain some traction. In 2005, after a lengthy investigation, Japan’s Fair Trade Commission asserted that Intel had violated the country’s antitrust laws by, in effect, paying Japanese computer manufacturers to limit their business with A.M.D. That same year, A.M.D. sued Intel in federal court, charging predatory pricing; the case is scheduled to be tried in February 2010. Meanwhile, the European Commission began looking into Intel’s pricing practices; it has since made several preliminary rulings that don’t bode well for the chip giant. And in South Korea this month, Intel was fined $25.4 million for giving rebates to two South Korean computer manufacturers, which had the effect of “excluding” A.M.D., according to the Korea Fair Trade Commission. Intel has said it will appeal. (The New York attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, has also started an investigation, but he’s just piling on.) With all this ferment, it was probably inevitable that the F.T.C. would follow suit. If the rest of the world is busy imposing sanctions on Intel for abusing its monopoly power, it hardly looks good for the nation’s chief antitrust enforcer to be sitting on its hands. When I made some inquiries this week, the strong sense I got was that the commissioners wanted to get to the bottom of the Intel accusations once and for all, and needed subpoena power to gather all the evidence they needed. But in antitrust, the notion of “getting to the bottom of it” is notoriously squishy, and this case is squishier than most. There is no question that Intel offers large discounts to its big customers, along with rebates, quarterly marketing dollars and other goodies. Because those discounts are directly related to how much business a manufacturer gives to Intel, it necessarily has the effect of excluding A.M.D.—since it’s the only other company competing for the business. Is that predatory behavior? Or is that good old-fashioned competition? What makes antitrust so maddening is that the answer depends as much on who is asking the question — and where — as it does on the evidence. • Let’s start with a simple question: Are discounts good or bad? When I put it like that, the answer is obvious: discounts are clearly good. They allow consumers to buy things at lower prices. Indeed, price competition is at the very heart of free-market capitalism, and it is the natural result of competition. It’s what we as a society want companies to do. For as long as we’ve had antitrust laws in the United States, predatory pricing — pricing intended solely to prevent a rival from being able to compete — has been against the law. After all, if a big company drops its prices on a short-term basis to drive a smaller rival out of business — and then can raise prices with impunity because it has eradicated its competitor — consumers are ultimately harmed by the price cuts. But our definition of predatory pricing has tended to vary over time. In the 1950s and 1960s, United States antitrust enforcers — and the courts — tended to view many forms of discounting as predatory. One sorry result was that actions that actually helped consumers were considered illegal practices. But in the 1970s, that all changed, as legal scholars argued persuasively that anticompetitive behavior had to be defined in more rigorously economic terms, and that there needed to be a high standard of proof that monopolistic behavior was harming consumers. This became known as the Chicago School of antitrust theory, and in time, the courts embraced many of its theories. One consequence is that today, it is almost impossible to bring a discounting case, even if it has exclusionary consequences. It is presumed by the courts that discounting benefits consumers. The only form of discounting that is now viewed by the courts as proof of predatory behavior is pricing below cost. When I spoke to Robert E. Cooper, a lawyer at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, who is representing Intel, he cited a series of Supreme Court cases, going back 20 years, that has come down in favor of discounting — even enormous discounts based on market share, which have the effect of excluding rivals. Intel insists that it doesn’t price below cost, and given the nature of these things — selling in huge volume brings Intel’s own costs down, thanks to economies of scale — it will be almost impossible to prove otherwise. Does this mean that Intel is all warm and fuzzy when it is negotiating with the big computer manufacturers? Not remotely. Roger Kay, the president of Endpoint Technology Associates, and a very close observer of the Intel-A.M.D. wars, laid out a scenario to me that he thought likely. A computer manufacturer sees its market share declining. When it comes time to negotiate a new microprocessor contract with Intel, it is told that its volume has diminished so much that it can not longer get the same big discounts it has come to depend on for its own profits. But, the Intel salesman adds, if the company is willing to shift more business to Intel, and increase the volume a little, it will still get the discount. Naturally, the company agrees. Indeed, Mr. Kay says he believes this is precisely what happened in Japan, where the two companies that abandoned A.M.D. completely were Toshiba and Sony — which were both losing market share to competitors. “Thus,” he wrote me in an e-mail message, “Intel can claim it is doing nothing wrong and A.M.D. can claim its options are being foreclosed, and in a sense, they’re both right.” One reason A.M.D. has had more success pressing its case abroad than in the United States is that in many places in the world, the reigning antitrust view is what’s called the post-Chicago School, which holds that there are times when pricing above cost can still constitute predatory behavior. Indeed, the European Commission tends to put far more emphasis on competition than on consumers, and views with suspicion companies with oversize market share, like Intel But what happens if the commission rules against Intel — as seems likely — but the F.T.C. and the United States courts rule in favor of the company? That’s what happens these days with mergers that need government approval — Europe has turned thumbs down on a number of mergers involving two American companies, and as a result they haven’t gone through. The world economy really won’t function very well if multinational companies have to dance between dueling regulators. Either we need to adopt their standards, or they need to adopt ours. The Intel-A.M.D. shows, if nothing else, how untenable the current state of play is in antitrust. Despite its recent investigation, the F.T.C. has long been reluctant to pursue a formal investigation against Intel; I hear that even now many of its economists simply do not believe that Intel’s policies amount to predatory pricing. But there is one other reason why A.M.D. faces an uphill struggle pressing its case in the United States. Its own market share numbers don’t seem to back up its contention that Intel is preventing it from competing. According to data provided to me by Ashok Kumar, a well-known technology analyst with CRT Capital Group, A.M.D.’s overall market share in microprocessors was 17 percent in March 2005. By December 2006, it had risen to 25 percent. Today it has sunk back to 20 percent. The rise in market share is directly attributable to A.M.D. having strong products like the Opteron. But then Intel came roaring back, leap-frogging A.M.D.’s technology. Meanwhile, the smaller company’s latest high-end chip, code-named Barcelona, has been delayed when a flaw was discovered in it. A.M.D. has lost money for six quarters in a row. Apparently, some things never change.

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INTEREST: Wall Street Journal conference - D: All Things Digital
by billing 28 May '08

28 May '08

Once a year, the Wall Street Journal puts on the "D: All Things Digital" conference. This conference, created and produced by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, invites the computer and electronics top players to participate in "informal" conversations about the impact of digital technology on our lives now and in the future. Last year's feature was a session with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher talking with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates: VIDEO: D5: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates This year's speakers for D6 include Facebook’s Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Sony’s Chairman and CEO Howard Stringer, Time Warner’s President and CEO Jeff Bewkes, IAC’s Chairman and CEO Barry Diller and Amazon.com’s Chairman and CEO Jeff Bezos. There was also a joint appearance by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer. All the video can be found at: http://d6.allthingsd.com/ = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = Microsoft Windows 7 is currently scheduled to ship sometime in 2009. "D" saw the first Windows 7 demo: http://d6.allthingsd.com/20080528/windows-7-touch-demo/ = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = ...from: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/slow-fade-bill-and-steve-at-the-d-… May 28, 2008, 12:37 am Slow Dissolve: Bill [Gates] and Steve [Ballmer] at the D Conference By JOHN MARKOFF Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, is intent on performing what must be the world’s longest-running Cheshire Cat act. Mr. Gates — who is reducing his role at Microsoft on July 1 and will work only on specific projects but will remain as chairman — appeared with his longtime friend and business partner Steve Ballmer on the opening night of the Wall Street Journal’s “D: All Things Digital” conference in Carlsbad, Calif. During the 105-minute conversation, the two executives were most comfortable chatting about the past. They were cagey when it came to talking about the bid for Yahoo and what might happen next, and they were generally testy when they were challenged about whether Microsoft would continue to lag behind Apple in some areas. The hosts of the conference, Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, tried several times to draw the two men out on the company’s failed effort to acquire Yahoo, but neither man was willing to say much beyond his previous public statements. Mr. Ballmer did reiterate that he reserved the right to reopen Microsoft’s bid in the future, but he was unwilling to talk about the circumstances under which that might occur. Mr. Ballmer also repeated his recent statement that, having failed to see eye to eye on the price of the acquisition, the two companies are now talking about other unspecified partnerships. Mr. Ballmer and Mr. Gates were much more willing to reminisce about their days as college students at Harvard. Mr. Ballmer also described how Mr. Gates attempted to recruit him to Microsoft while his former classmate was attending Stanford Business School and living in a “fleabag” apartment in Palo Alto. Mr. Ballmer recalled that he had been reluctant, and that Mr. Gates had told him, “Too bad you don’t have a twin brother.” He said he called Mr. Gates back the next day and asked him if he would consider him for the job. The joint interview took a slightly odd turn when, halfway through, the Microsoft executives consented to give the audience of computer industry executives a “sneak peek” of the next version of Microsoft’s operating system, known as Windows 7. Although Windows 7 is not scheduled to ship until the end of 2009, Microsoft has been creating some consternation in the computer industry by talking about the new program as an opportunity to address some of the shortcomings of Windows Vista. On stage Tuesday evening, neither Mr. Gates nor Mr. Ballmer was willing to concede any major shortcomings in Vista. Mr. Ballmer said the company has shipped 150 million copies of the program, but he did acknowledge that Microsoft might have done some things differently “in hindsight.” He blamed compatibility issues that have led to criticism of the program on the company’s decision to focus on computer security problems. During the brief onstage demo of Windows 7, a Microsoft software designer made the puzzling choice to unveil a new “multitouch” feature by working with a paint program, evoking memories of the original Macintosh paint program in 1984. She then used the touch-sensitive technology with a photo collection and a mapping program, evoking comparisons to both the iPhone and Google Maps, which already have similar capabilities. (You can watch a video of the multitouch feature on the Microsoft Vista blog.) Another new feature appeared to be a circular pop-up menu that provided a “concierge” function. Fencing over the issue of whether Apple will get to market first with desktop multi-touch features, Mr. Ballmer implied that the two companies don’t compete directly. “We’ll sell 290 million PCs, and Apple will sell 10 million PCs,” he said. “They’re fantastically successful and so are we and our partners. But it’s a different job. Steve can flip his hand and sell a few models and I don’t take a thing away from him.” In response to a question from the audience, Mr. Ballmer insisted that Microsoft had not been damaged as a brand or in its strategy by its failure to acquire Yahoo. “The world recognizes even greater seriousness than when we started,” he said. “It’s certainly something we thought about before we put in the bid because there was no guarantee.” Mr. Gates was the less vocal of the the company’s two largest individual shareholders, but he did show animation at various points during the evening. Asked if he saw himself as a businessman, Mr. Gates responded, “Sure, sales minus costs equal profits. Is there more?” In response to a question asked by Tim O’Reilly, the computer book publisher and conference impresario, about whether Microsoft had a “big hairy audacious goal,” in the tradition of its original commitment to put a personal computer on every desk and in every home in America, Mr. Ballmer and Mr. Gates suggested that the company now had many big goals, but not a single overarching goal. The industry commentator and investor Esther Dyson suggested that the company did need a single goal, like transforming the nation’s health care system. Mr Ballmer responded that he wasn’t sure that tackling problems where software wasn’t fundamental to the solution was appropriate for Microsoft.

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FYI: MacBook helps save itself: "I know who that is — it’s Ian"
by billing 12 May '08

12 May '08

...from: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/nyregion/10laptop.html?_r=1&ref=technolog… May 10, 2008 Stolen Laptop Helps Turn Tables on Suspects By LISA W. FODERARO WHITE PLAINS — The thieves were voracious, filching flat-screen televisions and computer games, purloining iPods and DVDs, even making off with a box of liquor and a set of car rims in a burglary two weeks ago at an apartment three young people shared here. Luckily, they also took two laptop computers. One of the laptops was a Macintosh belonging to Kait Duplaga, who works at the Apple store in the Westchester mall and thus knows how to use all its bells and whistles. While the police were coming up dry, Ms. Duplaga exploited the latest software applications installed on her laptop to track down the culprits and even get their photographs. On Wednesday, the police arrested Edmon Shahikian, 23, of Katonah, and Ian Frias, 20, who lives in the Bronx. Virtually all of the property stolen from the apartment was recovered at the two men’s homes. They face charges of burglary and possession of stolen property; Mr. Shahikian was released on $3,500 bail, while Mr. Frias was at the Westchester County Jail, held in $7,500 bail. “It doesn’t get much better than their bringing us a picture of the guy actually using the stolen property,” Daniel Jackson, the deputy commissioner of public safety in White Plains, said in a telephone interview on Friday. “It certainly made our job easier. The fact that they knew who these guys were certainly added solvability.” The high-tech solving of the White Plains burglary, which was reported Friday in The Journal News, is one of several recent cases in which the police and crime victims have turned the keyboards on their adversaries, so to speak, taking advantage of computer software and other high-tech tools. In March in Modesto, Calif., for example, the police recovered a stolen computer containing vital personal information, including Social Security numbers, belonging to the public school system’s 3,500 employees. Detectives used tracking software on the computer to apprehend a suspect, who had a long criminal record. The police said he had stolen the computer from a data processing firm, perhaps with the intention of committing identity theft. Here in White Plains, a break in the case came on Tuesday when a friend of Ms. Duplaga’s sent her a congratulatory text message on the return of her stolen computer. “She said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ and her friend said, ‘Well, you popped up as being online,’ ” Mr. Jackson said. He said that Ms. Duplaga immediately signed on to another Macintosh computer and, using a feature called “Back to My Mac,” was able to gain access to her missing laptop remotely. She could see that that the person who had her computer was shopping for beds, Mr. Jackson said. Then it occurred to her that she could activate a camera on her laptop and watch the thief live. At first, the photo application revealed only a smoky room and an empty chair, Mr. Jackson said, but then a man sat down. Ms. Duplaga, again using remote technology, typed in the command to snap a photo. “When you take a picture with that computer, it shows a countdown, and when it does, this guy figures out what’s going on,” Mr. Jackson said. “It all clicks for him, and he puts his hand up to cover the lens, but it was too late. She had already taken the picture.” Had the suspect been a complete stranger, the photographic evidence would have been a “great lead,” but not the decisive clue, Mr. Jackson said. He said that when Ms. Duplaga described the tattooed subject of the picture to one of her roommates, the roommate replied: “Oh, I know exactly who that is — it’s Ian,” referring to Mr. Frias. Mr. Frias and Mr. Shahikian, it turns out, had been among the guests at a party at the apartment weeks before, and were friends of friends of the victims, as Mr. Jackson put it. Ms. Duplaga was able to retrieve a photograph of Mr. Shahikian from the laptop as well, but Mr. Jackson was not aware of the circumstances. Mr. Jackson said that Mr. Frias and Mr. Shahikian were arrested last year on a felony marijuana possession charge, but are not career criminals. The disposition of their cases was not known. Mr. Jackson said that Ms. Duplaga did not wish to be interviewed. On Friday, no one answered the door at the beige colonial-style house on Ridgeview Avenue where she rents an apartment diagonally opposite a church. The neighborhood is on the edge of the city’s downtown; in recent years, many of the prewar homes have been renovated. An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the case or on the phenomenon of tracking criminals through computer software. “Back to My Mac” is part of an online service that costs $99 per year and allows users to gain access to their personal computer from any connected Macintosh computer with the operating system Leopard. The software that Ms. Duplaga used to take a picture of the thief, called PhotoBooth, is standard on all newer Apple laptop models, perhaps an unintended new frontier in crime-fighting. “It’s certainly a great use of what was probably meant as a business product,” Mr. Jackson said. “But if she had taken the picture and didn’t know who he was, we wouldn’t be in the same place as far as the investigation goes.”

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