Not quite so rushed this week. I’ve settled into my new job and am busy coding in Excel VBA. I have finished the Delphi project for my father with just a few fixes and reports to build. My new media player from A.C. Ryan was setup about 2 minutes after I received it, the networking auto configured before I even went to that part of the Setup screen. Verdict, almost infinitely better than the DVICO Android based box. My guitar pedal setup is almost complete with one final TC Electronics Toneprint based pedal, a Chinese sustain/compress and the TC Polytune coming in the mail to complete my setup. Basically all is right with my world J giving me a lot more time to focus on the IT news world.
A recent story I read on Microsoft pricing in the UK has broader implications that will make global pricing at the very least interesting over the next year or two. The world is on the edge of a global financial crisis that will be worse than the last one. We are seeing the beginnings of this in Europe where disposable incomes have dropped in a number of locations over the past few months. In response Microsoft recently announced that the expected price rises on volume licensing will not be as high as they originally said, due to “the weakening of the Euro currency in recent weeks.” The average rise was supposed to be about 29% from July 1. The minimum level has dropped from 7.5% to 1.7% and from 33.4% (yes it was really that high) down to 25.9% depending on the licensing program selected.
The silent issue here is that the EU and the UK pay far higher prices than customers in the US do and this is the case for just about every product when comparing the US to Europe and then the UK. There is no doubt in this case that Microsoft is gouging both Europe and the UK. They do the same thing in poorer Asian nations. Those that used to read my Bangkok Post column will remember that I would regularly raise this issue and its impact on piracy in Asia.
So my point here is that as the world’s markets start to collapse, and there is a good change this will be not long after I write this, Microsoft will have to reduce licensing levels and prices everywhere and not just in Europe. I do mean everywhere because the next crash will not be limited to just Europe or the US, it will hit everyone including China, Australia and the rest of Asia.
Some may wonder why I am not commenting on the Facebook float. It’s because I remember the last time there were problems with the IT bubble in Silicon Valley, this is not so much different.
Hands up if you remember Stuxnet? I posited at the time that it had to have been written by a government and probably Israel. Beyond that it was not that relevant who had written it, just that they had, it was impressive and it did what it was designed to do, mess with the Iranian nuclear processing.
Enter Obama who has realised that he is probably not going to be re-elected for a second term. We now have confirmation that it was a joint US-Israeli operation, code named Operation Olympic Games, that was unenthusiastically (on the US side) started in 2006 under the Bush administration and continued by Obama. If you want the whole story then read the upcoming Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power by David Sanger.
The whole history is an interesting story. It began with General James E Cartwright, head of a small cyberoperation inside the United States Strategic Command. The first stage was only an attempt to map the “air-gapped” computer networks supporting nuclear labs and reprocessing plants in Iran. Next with help of Unit 8200, the Israeli Defence Force's Intelligence Corps unit, came the development of the payload that would attack the P1 high-speed centrifuges. The team carried out tests on some they had captured from General Gaddafi. Iran bought the same kind on the black market. The worm was carried in by unwitting workers at the plant. Obama allowed the process to keep going after the discovery in 2010 with the development of a new version of Stuxnet. After the recent admission by the US that they have programs to develop offensive cyberweapons the book is the first admission that they have ever deployed them. The latest exposure of the Flame worm has not been linked to Olympic Games and no one is admitting anything at the moment. According to a source at F-Secure “Obama wanted to get credit for Stuxnet, as that makes him look tough against Iran.”
Industry News
Today (tomorrow) June 6th is the world launch of IPv6. So far about one percent of people are using it, so lots of room for growth and adoption. So who decided it was time? Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Comcast, Akamai, AT&T, Cisco, the Internet Society, Bing, and some others that’s who. The plan is to to motivate organizations across the industry – including Internet service providers (ISPs), hardware makers, and web companies – to prepare for and permanently enable Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) on their products and services as Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) address space runs out.” There are some kits available to make the switch. There was an IPv6 day last year but not much came from it. You probably won’t notice it and for the most part don’t care but there it is anyway.
Microsoft has annoye4d the advertising industry by announcing that “do not track” will be the default setting when Internet Explorer 10 is released. The privacy people are happy of course but the marketers aren’t. Just goes to show “some of the people, some of the time . . “ Not sure quite how to take this by according to Microsoft customers should have more control over what happens to their data and should be able to decide if they get personal advertising for not.
For those who just joined I’m just back from a parallel universe where Microsoft has the user’s best interests at heart. In our universe the Digital Advertising Alliance scoffs at such a suggestion. They claim to have been working worked with Microsoft and the government for over three years on proposals to ensure privacy and still allow tracking without "Do not track" being turned on by default. Or translated, we want to send you ads and want that horrible feature turned off. According to them Microsoft’s setting "threatens to undermine that balance, limiting the availability and diversity of Internet content and services for consumers." ROTFLMHO.
Firefox 13 is now ready for your update or download. There are new home and tab pages. If you about:home as an address you get access to settings and content options like downloads, bookmarks, history and so on. The new Tab page is drawn from the Safari Top Sites concept (or not). When you Windows-T, File-New Tab or click on the plus you now get a thumbnail set of your most viewed or favourites. With updates every month and a half there will be no more big feature upgrades but a continual chain of them like we find in the latest version. Google started it with Chrome, and then Mozilla followed. Microsoft didn’t, not really a surprise.
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