Windows Factor

A solution provider in Florida that owns the domain name windowsserver2008.com has re-directed the URL to Apple's online store, where visitors are greeted by a giant image of the recently unveiled MacBook Air.

On Wednesday, the enthusiast blog Inside Microsoft reported the odd development and suggested that the windowsserver2008.com domain had been bought by a Mac fan and re-directed to Apple.com in order to embarrass Microsoft.

However, on its webpage, domain owner Symmetry Technical Consultants of Coral Gables, Fla., actually lists itself as a Microsoft Certified partner, which is the second highest designation within the vendor's channel program. ChannelWeb couldn't find any mention of Apple products on the Symmetry's Website.

Symmetry, which offers a variety of desktop support, networking, managed services, connectivity, and software support services, registered windowsserver2008.com in October 2006 and owns the rights to the domain until October.

The prank has reportedly been causing quite a stir within Microsoft, although ChannelWeb was unable to reach company officials for comment.

Earlier this month, sources told CRN that Windows Server 2008 had reached the final stages of testing, and Microsoft is expected to release it to manufacturing prior to next month's Feb. 27 launch event in Los Angeles. Early reports from channel partners that have been testing release candidates of Windows Server 2008 have been glowing, as a result of features like virtualization, Network Access Protection, Internet Information Services 7.0, Server Core, Bitlocker, Terminal Services, and improvements to Active Directory.

News Source: CRN

The music industry in Germany has secured a legal victory over the hugely popular file-hosting service, Rapidshare. According to the rights holders, Rapidshare is going to have to stop its users from downloading infringing music tracks from its servers, or face the prospect of being shut down.



Last week TorrentFreak has reported on rumors that Rapidshare had, or was about to be, shut down, rumors that now look likely to resurface. The company, one of the world's largest 'one-click' file hosting services, has lost a copyright infringement case against German performing rights outfit, GEMA. Representing a claimed 60,000 members and more than 1 million rights owners worldwide, GEMA has taken an aggressive stance in pursuing legal action against Rapidshare, trying to force it to be accountable for the infringing actions of its users.

For its part, Rapidshare has always insisted that it cannot be held responsible for these actions, such as when users upload copyright works (in this case, music) to their servers for subsequent downloading by others.

On 23 January 2008, the district court in D?sseldorf (Landgericht) disagreed with this assertion after GEMA succeeded in convincing the court that Rapidshare should take responsibility for infringements carried out within its service.

GEMA are trying to imply that as a result of the decision, Rapidshare will be forced to take preventative action to stop GEMA works from even getting onto their servers, rather than a DMCA-style after-the-fact removal. GEMA says that if Rapidshare are forced to filter they will likely end up with a service that's not worth operating, so they may decide to shut it down completely.

The GEMA press release has been published before the complete court decision, so it should be digested with at least a degree of scepticism, considering the huge amounts of spin employed by anti-piracy agencies and the music industries alike.

In a statement, Dr. Harald Heker, Chairman of the board at GEMA said: "This decision is a milestone in the fight against the illegal use of our repertoire", which was almost a carbon-copy of a statement he made about the decision from a previous court case against Rapidshare. He went on to explain that measures have to be put in place for the protection of rights holders and claiming that file-hosts are not responsible for what their users do, is no longer an option. "With this decision of general principle," he said, "the course of future action against comparable services has been smoothed."

In their press release, GEMA speaks about the decision of the District Court of D?sseldorf but also mentions a decision from the District Court of Cologne.

TorrentFreak spoke to Christian Solmecke a lawyer at the Cologne Chambers of Lawyers Wilde & Beuger, to see what is likely to have happened in these cases.

He told us: "The normal way is as follows: GEMA files a lawsuit against Rapidshare because of alleged copyright infringement on three or four songs. If GEMA wins, Rapidshare is then obliged not to host these particular songs."

Lots of anti-piracy and industry bodies state that it's possible for file-hosting services and even ISPs to monitor, police and filter copyright works from their servers and networks. This case is no different, except this time it's the court that has demanded this type of action.

Christian explains: "From a legal point of view, it is interesting that the District Court of D?sseldorf decided that Rapidshare has to carry out a lot of preventive actions (if the GEMA press release is correct on this point, of course). This could mean that Rapidshare has to check all of its hosted material for copyright infringements - which is nearly impossible."

The instruction for Rapidshare to take preventative action is new, and despite another similar court case reaching a different decision. Christian explains: "Only 30 kilometers away from D?sseldorf, we've already had a similar law suit in Cologne. In that case the Oberlandesgericht (Higher Regional Court and Court of Appeal) decided that Rapidshare is only obliged to delete specific songs stated by GEMA. They were not obliged to take preventative action."

"The future will tell us which interpretation of the law is correct." Christian told us. "Perhaps in one or two years we will get a decision on this question from the Federal Court of Justice."

As the world struggles to update its laws to cope with the digital revolution, the courts - and lawyers - are being kept very busy indeed. So back to the original question: Is Rapidshare going to be closed down - or be left with no alternative but to shut itself down?

Well - maybe??maybe not.

Christian finishes up: "I believe that Rapidshare will appeal against the decision of the Landgericht (District Court) of D?sseldorf. If they do so, we will have to wait and see what the Oberlandesgericht (Higher District Court) of D?sseldorf (as the Court of Appeal) says."

In the meantime, while the legal wheels turn and turn, Rapidshare.com and Rapidshare.de continue to operate as usual.

News Source: TorrentFreak

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Out Next Week!

If you have been waiting for Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista, well, you can now mark your calender. We just received word that Microsoft has scheduled Windows Vista Service Pack 1 for release to manufacturer (RTM) on Monday, February 4, 2008. That's just 3 days away! The OEMs will also receive Windows Vista Service Pack 1 during that week.

Microsoft will be deploying Service Pack 1 in two "waves". Wave 0, which is the one released on February 4, will only include five languages - English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese. The second wave, Wave 1, is scheduled for release 1-2 weeks later, and will cover all 36 basic languages, including Chinese.

Microsoft claims Windows Vista SP1 will provide key improvements on the security, performance and reliability of Windows Vista by providing :

* All previously released updates since RTM
* Performance and reliability improvements in core scenarios such as file copy, network browsing, and improved response time to resume from sleep.
* Support for new types of hardware, and several emerging standards.
* There are improvements to the administration experience. One of the most important changes we?re making is that BitLocker now supports encrypting for multiple volumes.

Of course, Service Pack 1 will also disable two common methods of hacking Windows Vista, namely the OEM BIOS exploit and the Grace Timer exploit.

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=505

Windows 95: A Perfect Storm Product (Almost)

The ramp to the Windows 95 launch was in many ways very much like the ramp to the iPhone. Folks were excited about the offering, news programs ate up every code change, and there wasn't a month that went by in the release year where some major news service wasn't covering the offering. There wasn't a lot of other sustaining news, particularly in the technology market, and this was to be the big breakout product.

Application developers, seeing what appeared to be a massive wave, were all over themselves trying to build applications for the offering, and we had hardware vendors coming out of our ears who wanted to build specifically for Windows 95. This led to one of the most amazing launch events I've ever attended; the Microsoft campus was turned into a circus with the main tent showcasing the product in a presentation that concluded with the developers taking a bow.

The boxes containing the new product had white fluffy clouds on them and, coincidently Redmond, Washington had matching weather; the sky actually matched the art on the boxes. I mention this because it added significantly to the impression of the event. There were tents all over campus with hardware and software being shown, all designed to revolutionize the PC. You couldn't help but walk away seeing this as the future. I remember telling the Mac guys that they were so screwed because they had nothing that could match the impressions that were being created during that time. Had Microsoft continued to execute to that level, I believe Apple probably wouldn't have made it until Steve Jobs' return. But?



The "Almost" Part

Post-launch, the team crumbled. There was so much that was new, people started running into significant problems with the product, particularly when installed on older hardware. Drivers were a nightmare and the unique configurations that were resulting had significant system failures occurring in massive numbers. To deal with long wait times, Microsoft support did one of the stupidest things I've ever seen that company, or any company, do. They busied out the support lines to hold down the wait times ? this meant they had no idea how big the breakage was and couldn't staff up to take control of it if they wanted to. Sales cratered, Apple missed a bullet, and Windows 95 went from being the most amazing product that Microsoft had ever done to one that carries a stigma, even today.

But it was still driven by users into the enterprise at a relatively high rate because its aging predecessor simply wasn't up to the task. Its line ended with a whimper when Windows ME shipped. To this day, there is likely no product that holds lower regard in the operating system space than ME, and the professional market largely moved to Windows 2000/XP.

Since the worldwide release of Windows Vista one year ago today, people are doing more and getting more out of their Windows experience. From pictures and videos, to games and family safety settings, users are finding out that they can do more with Windows Vista.



To get the full picture of what the past year has brought for Windows Vista customers, PressPass gathered a group of people representing many different viewpoints: Neil Charney, General Manager, Microsoft Windows Client; Robin Mason, a mom whose family participated in the 8220;Life With Windows Vista 8221;, program (in which 50 ordinary families gave feedback for the development of Windows Vista); Jeff Price, Senior Director in the Windows Group at Microsoft ; Richard Russell, Principal Development Manager in the Windows Client Performance Group; Austin Wilson, Director, Windows Client Security Product Management; Kevin Unangst, Senior Global Director of Games for Windows; and Chen Shaopeng, Lenovo's Senior Vice-President and President of Greater China Region.

View Full Article: Microsoft PressPass

Mozilla Blog of Metrics announced some interesting numbers about Firefox add-ons server by Mozilla Add-ons:

• 4000 extensions available.
• Between 800,000 and 1 million downloads per day.
• About 4.5 million page views per day.
• About 100 million checks for updates occur every day, which represents the minimum number of add-ons currently in use. 96% of these come from Firefox installations.
• More than 600 million add-ons (themes + extensions) have been downloaded (obviously not counting updates).

Based on update ping logs, about 96% of Firefox users are on the 2.0 branch, 2% on 1.x and 1% have already made the jump to the latest and greatest and for-testers-only-yet 3.0 branch.

View Full Article: Mozilla Links

Google's top three executives had pledged to work together for 20 years in a pact they made shortly before the company's initial public offering in August 2004, Fortune magazine has reported.

Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, together with Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, say in a joint interview for Fortune's February 4 issue that the three had agreed to work together for two decades starting one month before the 2004 IPO.

"We agreed the month before we went public that we should work together for 20 years," said Schmidt, who added that he will be 69 years old by that time. Page would be 51 and Brin 50.

View Full Article: ZDNet News

Philadelphia (PA) - Tyrone Spellman has been convicted of murdering his daughter, in an angry rage that was ignited because she knocked over his Xbox.

According to media reports, Spellman's daughter Alayiah pulled on the cords of the Xbox, causing the system to fall down and break. Spellman then struck his daughter so hard that he cracked her skull, said prosecutors. He may also have thrown her across the room, according to initial claims.

Spellman, who confessed to the crime within 24 hours, originally told the police that Alayiah fell out of her bed, and then tried to claim his confession was only out of protection for his wife. Spellman's wife was asleep during the incident.

The Department of Human Services had previously been tipped by an anonymous caller that Alayiah's parents were abusive, but they were previously unable to find any evidence.

Spellman was convicted of third-degree murder and child endangerment, and faces up to 47 years behind bars.

News Source: TG Daily

Source: http://www.winvistaclub.com/

View the Full Analysis: Microsoft Watch