Vista hits Microsoft where it hurts…

Ok, so now we are starting to see the full scope of the Windows Vista debacle.  When Windows Vista originally advertised and specs for it started coming out, I was all against it.  Most of Windows Vista is designed around MPAA/RIAA DRM and content control schemes.  Please keep in mind that I have very strong feelings against DRM.  I’ll post a rant about DRM some other time.  However, as a computer tech and geek worth his weight, I decided I would install and use Windows Vista for some time.  I’ve been running it on my Dell Vostro notebook for a few months now and the experience hasn’t been so bad.  It has had it’s ups and downs, but I get that with every operating system.  So Vista has been an OK experience for me so far.  Then I heard about the Microsoft class-action lawsuit based on the “Vista Ready” marketing scam.  The scam goes like this:  prior to the launch of Windows Vista, hardware was sold with a “Vista Ready” logo stuck on it.   Many times, the hardware was not up toe the minimum requirements for Vista or was just barely over the absolute baseline.  Then after Vista officially launched, a lot of people who bought the cheapest possible hardware that was “Vista Ready” found out that they couldn’t run Vista.  Shock and surprise!  Imagine that, when you buy crap computers, you can’t run an operating system like Vista on the bottom grade computer.  Now, Microsoft is facing a possible 8+ Billion dollar lawsuit.  But why worry.  Microsoft can afford it, can’t they.  Opps that’s right.  Microsoft is about to layoff 5,000 people. And let’s not forget that they just posted the first financial loss to Wall Street.   Starting to look a little grim….

http://www.crn.com/it-channel/212902345

Microsoft Bill For ‘Vista Capable’ Put At $8.52 Billion

By Damon Poeter, ChannelWeb
5:53 PM EST Fri. Jan. 23, 2009

Demand for PC components may have fallen off a cliff in recent weeks, but Microsoft could be forced to pony up for $8.52 billion-worth of memory and graphics cards, according to an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the ongoing “Vista Capable” class-action lawsuit.University of Washington economist Keith Leffler estimates that it would cost Microsoft between $3.92 billion and $8.52 billion to upgrade notebook and desktop PCs that the company labeled “Vista Capable” but which were not able to run the full version of the Windows Vista operating system, Computerworld’s Gregg Keizer reported Thursday.

The software giant disputes that figure as “absurdly” valued in a court filing that along with Leffler’s report was unsealed by U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman Wednesday.

Microsoft launched Windows Vista in January, 2007 following a nine-month marketing campaign with components manufacturers, computer makers and retailers. During that period, Microsoft and its partners placed “Vista Capable” labels on notebooks and desktops that while able to run the entry-level Home Basic edition of Vista, in many cases could not run more advanced versions of the operating system.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which is set for trial in April, say that because Vista Home Basic does not include features like the Aero Glass graphic user interface present on more advanced versions, the operating system shouldn’t have been called Vista in the first place. And because the “Vista Capable”-stickered computers they bought didn’t have the hardware necessary to move to versions which had those supposedly Vista-defining features, like Vista Home Premium or Vista Business, the plaintiffs say they were defrauded.

The “Vista Capable” labeling campaign began on April 1, 2006. Leffler estimates that 19.4 million PCs — 13.75 million notebooks and 5.65 million desktops — were labeled “Vista Capable,” according to the unsealed report.

Leffler came up with his total upgrade costs by calculating how much it would cost to upgrade each of the 19.4 million PCs with 1 GB of memory and graphics cards or onboard chipsets able to run Aero, according to Keizer. Leffler put the maximum cost of upgrading the desktops at $155, while positing that the notebooks’ integrated graphics would be more tricky to replace and would cost between $245 and $590 per unit. The total price tag for Microsoft would thus range from $3.92 billion to $8.52 billion and in some cases would include complete replacements of notebooks that could not be feasibly upgraded, Leffler testified.

Microsoft in its response argued that giving litigants “a free upgrade to Premium-ready PCs would provide a windfall to millions.”

Obama & Socialism

http://thehill.com/dick-morris/the-obama-presidency–here-comes-socialism-2009-01-20.html

The Obama presidency: Here comes socialism

By Dick Morris

Posted: 01/20/09 06:12 PM [ET]

2009-2010 will rank with 1913-14, 1933-36, 1964-65 and 1981-82 as years that will permanently change our government, politics and lives. Just as the stars were aligned for Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson and Reagan, they are aligned for Obama. Simply put, we enter his administration as free-enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America. We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden — a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes. Obama will accomplish his agenda of “reform” under the rubric of “recovery.” Using the electoral mandate bestowed on a Democratic Congress by restless voters and the economic power given his administration by terrified Americans, he will change our country fundamentally in the name of lifting the depression. His stimulus packages won’t do much to shorten the downturn — although they will make it less painful — but they will do a great deal to change our nation. In implementing his agenda, Barack Obama will emulate the example of Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Not the liberal mythology of the New Deal, but the actuality of what it accomplished.) When FDR took office, he was enormously successful in averting a total collapse of the banking system and the economy. But his New Deal measures only succeeded in lowering the unemployment rate from 23 percent in 1933, when he took office, to 13 percent in the summer of 1937. It never went lower. And his policies of over-regulation generated such business uncertainty that they triggered a second-term recession. Unemployment in 1938 rose to 17 percent and, in 1940, on the verge of the war-driven recovery, stood at 15 percent. (These data and the real story of Hoover’s and Roosevelt’s missteps, uncolored by ideology, are available in The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes, copyright 2007.) But in the name of a largely unsuccessful effort to end the Depression, Roosevelt passed crucial and permanent reforms that have dominated our lives ever since, including Social Security, the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, unionization under the Wagner Act, the federal minimum wage and a host of other fundamental changes. Obama’s record will be similar, although less wise and more destructive. He will begin by passing every program for which liberals have lusted for decades, from alternative-energy sources to school renovations, infrastructure repairs and technology enhancements. These are all good programs, but they normally would be stretched out for years. But freed of any constraint on the deficit — indeed, empowered by a mandate to raise it as high as possible — Obama will do them all rather quickly. But it is not his spending that will transform our political system, it is his tax and welfare policies. In the name of short-term stimulus, he will give every American family (who makes less than $200,000) a welfare check of $1,000 euphemistically called a refundable tax credit. And he will so sharply cut taxes on the middle class and the poor that the number of Americans who pay no federal income tax will rise from the current one-third of all households to more than half. In the process, he will create a permanent electoral majority that does not pay taxes, but counts on ever-expanding welfare checks from the government. The dependency on the dole, formerly limited in pre-Clinton days to 14 million women and children on Aid to Families with Dependent Children, will now grow to a clear majority of the American population. Will he raise taxes? Why should he? With a congressional mandate to run the deficit up as high as need be, there is no reason to raise taxes now and risk aggravating the depression. Instead, Obama will follow the opposite of the Reagan strategy. Reagan cut taxes and increased the deficit so that liberals could not increase spending. Obama will raise spending and increase the deficit so that conservatives cannot cut taxes. And, when the economy is restored, he will raise taxes with impunity, since the only people who will have to pay them would be rich Republicans. In the name of stabilizing the banking system, Obama will nationalize it. Using Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to write generous checks to needy financial institutions, his administration will demand preferred stock in exchange. Preferred stock gets dividends before common stockholders do. With the massive debt these companies will owe to the government, they will only be able to afford dividends for preferred stockholders — the government, not private investors. So who will buy common stock? And the government will demand that its bills be paid before any profits that might materialize are reinvested in the financial institution, so how will the value of the stocks ever grow? Devoid of private investors, these institutions will fall ever more under government control. Obama will begin the process by limiting executive compensation. Then he will urge restructuring and lowering of home mortgages in danger of default (as the feds have already done with Citibank). Then will come guidance on the loans to make and government instructions on the types of enterprises to favor. God grant that some Blagojevich type is not in charge of the program, using his power to line his pockets. The United States will find itself with an economic system comparable to that of Japan, where the all-powerful bureaucracy at MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) manages the economy, often making mistakes like giving mainframe computers priority over the development of laptops. But it is the healthcare system that will experience the most dramatic and traumatic of changes. The current debate between erecting a Medicare-like governmental single payer or channeling coverage through private insurance misses the essential point. Without a lot more doctors, nurses, clinics, equipment and hospital beds, health resources will be strained to the breaking point. The people and equipment that now serve 250 million Americans and largely neglect all but the emergency needs of the other 50 million will now have to serve everyone. And, as government imposes ever more Draconian price controls and income limits on doctors, the supply of practitioners and equipment will decline as the demand escalates. Price increases will be out of the question, so the government will impose healthcare rationing, denying the older and sicker among us the care they need and even barring them from paying for it themselves. (Rationing based on income and price will be seen as immoral.) And Obama will move to change permanently the partisan balance in America. He will move quickly to legalize all those who have been in America for five years, albeit illegally, and to smooth their paths to citizenship and voting. He will weaken border controls in an attempt to hike the Latino vote as high as he can in order to make red states like Texas into blue states like California. By the time he is finished, Latinos and African-Americans will cast a combined 30 percent of the vote. If they go by top-heavy margins for the Democrats, as they did in 2008, it will assure Democratic domination (until they move up the economic ladder and become good Republicans). And he will enact the check-off card system for determining labor union representation, repealing the secret ballot in union elections. The result will be to raise the proportion of the labor force in unions up to the high teens from the current level of about 12 percent. Finally, he will use the expansive powers of the Federal Communications Commission to impose “local” control and ownership of radio stations and to impose the “fairness doctrine” on talk radio. The effect will be to drive talk radio to the Internet, fundamentally change its economics, and retard its growth for years hence. But none of these changes will cure the depression. It will end when the private sector works through the high debt levels that triggered the collapse in the first place. And, then, the large stimulus package deficits will likely lead to rapid inflation, probably necessitating a second recession to cure it. So Obama’s name will be mud by 2012 and probably by 2010 as well. And the Republican Party will make big gains and regain much of its lost power. But it will be too late to reverse the socialism of much of the economy, the demographic change in the electorate, the rationing of healthcare by the government, the surge of unionization and the crippling of talk radio. Morris, a former adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of Outrage. To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to www.dickmorris.com. To order a signed copy of their new best-selling book, Fleeced, go to dickmorris.com.

Western Digital for the win!

I am so glad that I have been using Western Digital drives for quite some time.  Seagate used to be a good brand but lately they’ve been on the lagging edge of quality.  And here’s why I don’t use Seagate/Maxtor drives.

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/21/0052236
“Two months after acknowledging that their flagship 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11s could hang while streaming video or during low-speed file transfers, Seagate again faces a swell of complaints about more drives failing just months after purchase. Again, The Tech Report pursued the matter until they received a response acknowledging the bricking issue. Seagate says they’ve isolated a ‘potential firmware issue.’ They say there’s ‘no data loss associated with this issue, and the data still resides on the drive;’ however, ‘the data on the hard drives may become inaccessible to the user when the host system is powered on.’ If users don’t like the idea of an expensive data-laden paperweight, Seagate is offering a firmware upgrade to address the matter, as well as data recovery services if needed. By offering free data recovery, Seagate seems to be trying to head off what could become a PR nightmare that may affect several models under both the Seagate and Maxtor brands.”

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/17/0115207&tid=198
“The latest firmware updates to correct Seagate woes have created a new debacle. It seems from Seagate forums that there has yet to be a successful update of the 3500320AS models from SD15 to the new SD1A firmware. Add to that the updater updates the firmware of all drives of the same type at once, and you get a meltdown of RAID arrays, and people’s backups if they were on the same type of drive. Drives are still flashable though, and Seagate has pulled the update for validation. While it would have been nice of them to validate the firmware beforehand, there is still a little hope that not everyone will lose all of their data.”

While nobody is looking…

During the inauguration of the United States of America’s 44th President Barrack Obama, while no one is looking and the media is flooded with coverage of the event and every possible detail, the Washington Post decides to publish this article about a massive data breach where millions of credit card transactions may have been compromised.  Why post this during the inauguration?  Couldn’t they have posted this the day after so that other news agencies and media outlets could pickup the story and get the word out that the compromise of a credit card processing company had happened?

Well, the short version is Heartland Payment Systems was infected with a sniffer application on their network and had millions of transaction recorded.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/01/payment_processor_breach_may_b.html

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/20/1930252
“Brian Krebs over at the Washington Post just published a story that Heartland Payment Systems disclosed what may be the largest data breach in history. Today. During the inauguration. Heartland processes over 100 million transactions a month, mostly from small to medium-sized businesses, and doesn’t know how many cards were compromised. The breach was discovered after tracing fraud in the system back to Heartland, and involved malicious software snooping their internal network. I’ve written some additional analysis on this and similar breaches. It’s interesting that the biggest breaches now involve attacks installing malicious software to sniff data — including TJX, Hannaford, Cardsystems, and now Heartland Payment Systems.”

Obama not ending the radical’s hatred of America…

I seem to remember how many liberals were telling everyone that the world would love us once President George W. Bush was out of office. Well, thanks to Drudge and Yahoo, looks like Iran is already unhappy. This one photo is so telling about how delusional the state of the liberal mind is:

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//090113/ids_photos_wl/r1645453159.jpg/

Journalism is dead and the journalist are starting to notice…

Journalism is dead and the journalist are starting to notice… Obama and the journalists that are in bed with him are starting to scare the other journalists. I find it kinda funny. Many conservative talk show hosts such as Levin, Rush and Hannity have been talking about the mass media and their bias for Obama for months now and finally other ‘journalist’ are noticing. I’m can’t help but wonder how much longer this media love of Obama can last.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2009/01/12/sun-times-journalists-shut-out-obama

Sun-Times: Journalists Being Shut Out by Obama

By Warner Todd Huston (Bio | Archive)
January 12, 2009 – 21:43 ET

According to Sun-Times columnist and long-time Chicago journalist, Carol Marin, journalists at Barack Obama news conferences have come to realize that Obama has pre-picked those journalists whom he will allow to ask him questions at the conference and many of them now “don’t even bother raising” their hands to be called upon.

One wonders why journalists are allowing this corralling of the press? Would they have allowed George W. Bush to pre-pick journalists like that? Would they meekly sit by and allow themselves to be systematically ignored, their freedom to ask questions silenced by any Republican? Would journalists so eagerly vie with one another for the favor of Bush like they are Obama’s?

For her part, it seems that Carol Marin is starting to wonder at the “bizarro world” that is being invented by the pliant and smitten Obama loving press corps.

As ferociously as we march like villagers with torches against Blagojevich, we have been, in the true spirit of the Bizarro universe, the polar opposite with the president-elect. Deferential, eager to please, prepared to keep a careful distance.

The Obama news conferences tell that story, making one yearn for the return of the always-irritating Sam Donaldson to awaken the slumbering press to the notion that decorum isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The press corps, most of us, don’t even bother raising our hands any more to ask questions because Obama always has before him a list of correspondents who’ve been advised they will be called upon that day.

Will the rest of the press retake their manhood and again become the tough guys they have always claimed to be or are they going to stay so smitten by Obama and their love for The One that they will allow themselves to continue being forced into a subservient role?

One has a sinking suspicion that the press is allowing itself to become Obama’s lapdog extraordinaire.

Wow.  I hate advertisers.  I really hate those advertisers that actually think that invading my privacy and treating my like nothing more than a target for their flying garbage.

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/08/2038216

“Lexus has announced plans to send targeted messages to buyers of its cars based on the buyer’s zip code and vehicle type. Unlike regular spam, these messages will be delivered directly to the buyer’s vehicle, and will play to the vehicle’s occupants as audio. Lexus has promised to make the messages relevant to the car buyers.” Imagine the fun that some targeted malware could do — not that such a thing could happen to a Lexus.

Hippies and WiFi

I saw this today and I laughed so hard that I had to share this with other people.  I mean, seriously, do people actually consider this as some kind of science?  And exactly how do you measure this “negative energy” and how could you prove that the energy given off from this Orgone Generator is “positive energy”?  Is this “energy” even measurable by any reliable or proven scientific method or is it like every other hippie idea and just something you have to “feel good” about?  I can’t stand this drivel given off by some people as if it is something to be taken seriously.  I know that Fox News is reporting it as news but the underlying ideals that some kind of “mystic energy” is being given off by a radio transmitter is absolutely rediculous.  Damn.  I hate hippies.  I should probalby sit down one day and write up all of the reasons to hate hipppies, but I’m afraid it would take too long.

Hippies Say WiFi Network Is Harming Their Chakras
http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/07/1439210
Which links to the original articles at: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,475206,00.html

Anti-Globalism writes “A group of hippies is complaining that a recently installed WiFi mesh network in the UK village of Glastonbury is causing health problems. To combat the signals from the Wi-Fi hotspots, the hippies have placed orgone generators around the antennae.” Although there have been many studies that show no correlation between WiFi and health issues the hippies say, “Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”

Microsoft to hide Irish Tax Haven data of subsidiaries that have saved it billions of dollars in US taxes

I can’t help but wonder if our new President Barrack Obama would keep his promise of making US corporations keep jobs in this country after reading this article.  While the article is not really about job, it does speak volumes about Microsoft’s business practices when they use Ireland as a way to dodge US taxes and remove millions of dollars from the US economy.  Between the contemptible thieves of Wall Street and the horrendous leadership that allowed the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac disasters to happen, I can’t be too surprised to discover this one.  And the next logical question that comes to mind is:  How can I pull this off?  Could I somehow hide my earnings from US tax interest by moving it off shore to some other location.  I’m sure there probably is, but I just don’t make enough money yet to get away with it.

http://www.finfacts.ie/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10005150.shtml

US software giant Microsoft has taken steps to shield from the public, the value of Tax Haven transactions of two Irish-registered subsidiaries that have enabled it to save billions of dollars in US taxes.

Ha’penny Bridge, Dublin – Microsoft’s Round Island One is Ireland’s biggest company. It operates from the offices of corporate lawyers and reported  €3.23 billion ($3.88 billion) in fiscal 2004 pretax profit and paid $308 million in Irish corporate tax.

The company applied to the Irish Companies Office on Monday to re-register its Round Island One and Flat Island Company subsidiaries as companies with unlimited liability. Unlimited companies have no obligation to file their accounts publicly. The two companies operate from the Dublin offices of corporate lawyers Matheson Ormsby Prentice.

The move to change the legal status of the subsidiaries follows a November 2005 report in The Wall Street Journal and weeks after the US Treasury Department said it was developing new rules to prevent US groups transferring intellectual property and patents abroad as a way of minimising their exposure to US tax.

Last November, The Wall Street Journal wrote that “a law firm’s office on a quiet downtown street [in Dublin, Ireland ] houses an obscure subsidiary of Microsoft Corp. that helps the computer giant shave at least $500 million from its annual tax bill. The four-year-old subsidiary, Round Island One Ltd., has a thin roster of employees but controls more than $16 billion in Microsoft assets. Virtually unknown in Ireland, on paper it has quickly become one of the country’s biggest companies, with gross profits of nearly $9 billion in 2004.”

Flat Island Company made a profit of $802.4 million in 2004 on sales of $2 billion, but paid no tax. It issues licences for software in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Ireland’s low corporate tax rate of 12.5% on trading profits has been a magnet for multinational companies who are responsible for 90% of Irish exports and a significant contributor to the success of the modern Irish economy, commonly known as the Celtic Tiger.

In addition, an Irish tax exemption on patent income, has promoted the parking of US multinational company overseas profits in Ireland, through transfer pricing and other accounting measures. Ireland is the most profitable location of US multinationals and in the period 1998-2002, the profits of US companies with Irish facilities doubled.

Ireland’s annual corporate tax revenue is about €5.3 billion ($6.3 billion). The Wall Street Journal said in its report that a Microsoft Dublin-based company that is used for routing patent a royalty income from overseas operations, paid the Irish Revenue $300 million in taxes last year.

Up to 50% of Irish corporate tax revenue may relate to taxes paid on income earned by US multinationals outside Ireland.

Microsoft’s effective global tax rate fell to 26 percent in its last fiscal year from 33 percent the year before. Nearly half of the drop was attributed to “foreign earnings taxed at lower rates,” Microsoft said in a Securities and Exchange Commission August filing. Microsoft leaves much of its profit in Ireland, including $4.1 billion in cash, avoiding U.S. corporate income taxes. But it still can count this profit in its earnings.

Microsoft did not explain why it chose to re-register the two subsidiaries when questioned about the move. “As part of our strategy to facilitate and support future business growth, Microsoft is re-organising some of its legal entities within the group,” it said in a statement to The Irish Times. “Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited (MIOL) is the primary operating legal entity in Ireland, employing over 1,200 people in four operations based in Sandyford. MIOL remains unaffected by any changes and will continue to publicly file its financial statements.”

IRELAND TOP LOCATION OF US MULTINATIONALS’ PROFITS

Ireland is the world’s most profitable country for US corporations, according to analysis by US tax journal Tax Notes. In a study by the journal’s Martin Sullivan that was published in 2004, it was found that profits made by US companies in Ireland doubled between 1999 and 2002 from $13.4 billion to $26.8 billion, while profits in most of the rest of Europe fell. In his analysis Sullivan termed Ireland a ’semi-tax haven’ for US firms, because firms are involved in real productivity in contrast with locations such as Bermuda.

Between 1999 to 2002, US multinational corporations increased profits in countries with no taxes or low rates by 68% while sharply reducing profits recorded in countries where they engage in substantial business activity, the study published in the journal Tax Notes shows.

In 2002, US companies reported $149 billion of profits in 18 tax-haven countries, up 68% from $88 billion in 1999, according to Tax Notes, which analyzed the most recently available Commerce Department data. This compares with a 23% increase in total offshore profits earned by US multinationals during the same period-total profits of US multinationals’ foreign subsidiaries around the world stood at $255 billion in 2002.