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Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft finalizes Skype acquisition (engadget.com) 1

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: Well, it's finally happened — Microsoft's acquisition of Skype has just been finalized, a little more than five months after it was first announced. Under the $8.5 billion deal, Skype CEO Tony Bates will be named president of the new Skype Division of Microsoft, and will have to report directly to Steve Ballmer.

In a post on the Official Microsoft Blog today, Bates seemed unsurprisingly enthusiastic about the acquisition, describing it as a marriage of two "disruptive, innovative, software-oriented companies. Microsoft is committed to the ubiquity of the Skype experience – communication across every device and every platform will remain a primary focus," Bates wrote. "And we've only scratched the surface."

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2011/10/13/tony-bates-weighs-in-on-microsoft-s-acquisition-of-skype.aspx

Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/14/microsoft-finalizes-acquisition-of-skype-tony-bates-shares-his/
Space

The Story of Baikonur, Russia's Space City 237

Posted by Zonk from the you're-the-rocket-man dept.
eldavojohn writes "There's an article up on Physorg about Russian space launch city Baikonur, rented by Russia from Kazakhstan. Although it is essentially the same as it was in the 60's and 70's, it is amazingly efficient and still operational. 'Even the technology hasn't changed much. The Soyuz spacecraft designed in the mid-1960s is still in service, somewhat modified. It can only be used once, but costs just $25 million. The newest Endeavor space shuttle cost $2 billion, but is reusable. Life and work in Baikonur and its cosmodrome are also pretty much what they were in the Soviet era. The town of 70,000 - unbearably hot in summer, freezing cold in winter and dusty year round - is isolated by hundreds of miles of scrubland.'" We last discussed Baikonur back in 2005.
Software

Do OpenOffice Users Save In Microsoft Format? 620

Posted by kdawson from the compatibility-or-purity dept.
superglaze writes "Looking through an article on the smartphone office suite Quickoffice, I noted a claim by a company executive that OpenOffice users usually save their documents in a Microsoft format, e.g. .doc. Hence the company has no plans to support .odf. I guess I can see the rationale for this — it helps if you're sending a document to an MS-using company — but what's this community's general experience of saving in .odf vs. .doc format?"

Feed Science Daily: Global Corporate Climate Change Report Released (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
The Carbon Disclosure Project, a collaboration of over 315 institutional investors managing more than $41 trillion of assets, releases new global reports, the largest and most comprehensive database of strategies from the world's largest corporations regarding the impact of climate change on shareholder value.
Microsoft

Microsoft to Allow PC Makers to Downgrade to XP 311

Posted by Zonk from the going-back-in-time dept.
mytrip pointed out a News.com story about a new Microsoft program to allow PC makers to downgrade from Vista to XP if they so choose. They're still pushing the new version of Windows very hard, but the option now exists for PC resellers to offer the now venerable OS. This is especially interesting as the article points out that OEM licenses for XP officially run out at the end of January. "Hewlett-Packard also started a program in August for many of its business models. 'For business desktops, workstations and select business notebooks and tablet PCs, customers can configure their systems to include the XP Pro restore disc for little or no charge,' HP spokeswoman Tiffany Smith said in an e-mail. She said it was too soon to gauge how high customer interest has been. 'Since we've only been offering (it) for about a month, we don't really have anything to share on demand.' A Microsoft representative confirmed there were some changes made over the summer to the options computer makers have with respect to XP, but the representative was not immediately able to elaborate on those changes."
Security

Internal Emails of An RIAA Attack Dog Leaked 427

Posted by Zonk from the i-believe-this-is-called-comeuppance dept.
qubezz writes "The company MediaDefender works with the RIAA and MPAA against piracy, setting up fake torrents and trackers and disrupting p2p traffic. Previously, the TorrentFreak site accused them of setting up a fake internet video download site designed to catch and bust users. MediaDefender denied the entrapment charges. Now 700MB of MediaDefender's internal emails from the last 6 months have been leaked onto BitTorrent trackers. The emails detail their entire plan, including how they intended to distance themselves from the fake company they set up and future strategies. Other pieces of company information were included in the emails such as logins and passwords, wage negotiations, and numerous other aspect of their internal business."
The Internet

Are In-Depth Articles Better Than Blog Postings? 157

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the think-before-you-speak dept.
athloi writes to tell us usability expert Jakob Nielsen is stressing the importance of well-thought-out articles as opposed to off-the-cuff blog postings. "Blog postings will always be commodity content: there's a limit to the value you can provide with a short comment on somebody else's comments. Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they're definitely easy to write. But they don't build sustainable value. Think of how disappointing it feels when you're searching for something and get directed to short postings in the middle of a debate that occurred years before, and is thus irrelevant."
The Internet

Submission + - Wikipedia gets state funding in Germany (heise.de)

Submitted by
tmk
tmk writes: "How can the Wikipedia be improved? The German government started today a project to train experts to contribute to Wikipedia. The goal is to write or improve several hundret articles about renewable ressources in the Internet encyclopaedia. The project ist funded by the German Ministry of Nutrition, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection. The German chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation is hiring a Wikipedian to coordinate the efforts."
Music

Apple's DRM Whack-a-Mole 352

Posted by CmdrTaco from the ouch-ouch-ouch-ouch dept.
Mateo_LeFou writes "Gulf News has a nice piece exposing the last couple generations of Apple's DRM strategy (you didn't really think they were abandoning DRM, did you?). Article focuses on how quickly the tactics are worked around, and how nasty the latest one is: purchased iTunes now have your personal data in them. Author suspects that this is to prevent you uploading them to a network."
Security

ISP Closes Webmail After Spammers Get Addresses 142

Posted by CowboyNeal from the simplest-solutions dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Error prone British ISP PlusNet, who you might remember for accidentally deleting 700GB of customer's e-mail last year, have done it again with a major security gaffe. Their webmail service was compromised this week, and spammers got hold of customers' e-mail addresses who they've been happily spamming away ever since. They've since made the decision to close their webmail service, in the ultimate admission of incompetence for the now BT owned ISP. In an e-mail to their customers, Network director Phil Webb goes on to recommend that their customers install security software, along with telling them that they shouldn't call up to complain. One might suggest that they need to practice what they preach."
Microsoft

Microsoft Votes to Add ODF to ANSI Standards List 231

Posted by Zonk from the curiouser-and-curiouser dept.
RzUpAnmsCwrds writes "In a puzzling move, Microsoft today voted to support the addition of the OpenDocument file formats to the American National Standards List. OpenDocument is used by many free-software office suites, including OpenOffice.org. Microsoft is still pushing its own Office Open XML format, which it hopes will also become an ANSI standard. Is Microsoft serious about supporting ODF, or is this a merely a PR stunt to make Office Open XML look more like a legitimate standard?"

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