lawsuits Archive

  • Video: The Rejected Windows Marketplace Apps (Humor)

    Video: The Rejected Windows Marketplace Apps (Humor)

    Today, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile Dev team released a humorous video giving a sneak peek inside the Microsoft Apps Lab. Here, you get a behind-the-scenes look at a few of the apps Microsoft dreamed up for its new Windows Marketplace, but were forced to reject for various reasons ranging from stupidity to lawsuits to physical pain.

    Full Story

  • Sidekick failure rumors point fingers at outsourcing, lack of backups

    Sidekick failure rumors point fingers at outsourcing, lack of backups

    Filed under: ,

    Backing up your personal PC to external media might still be a novel concept for some, but any IT manager fresh out of school can tell you that regularly backing up mission-critical servers -- and storing those backups in multiple physical locations -- isn't merely important, it's practically non-negotiable, and it only becomes that much more critical before undertaking hardware maintenance. Alleged details on the events leading up to Danger's doomsday scenario are starting to come out of the woodwork, and it all paints a truly embarrassing picture: Microsoft, possibly trying to compensate for lost and / or laid-off Danger employees, outsources an upgrade of its Sidekick SAN to Hitachi, which -- for reasons unknown -- fails to make a backup before starting. Long story short, the upgrade runs into complications, data is lost, and without a backup to revert to, untold thousands of Sidekick users get shafted in an epic way rarely seen in an age of well-defined, well-understood IT strategies.

    The coming weeks are going to be trying times for both Microsoft and T-Mobile, a sideline player in this carnage that ultimately still shoulders responsibility for taking users' cash month after month and keeping tabs on the robustness of its partners' workflows. We're betting that heads are going to roll at both of these companies, formal investigations are going to be waged, users are going to be compensated in big ways, lawsuits are going to be filed, and textbooks could very well be modified to make sure that lessons are learned for the next generation of college grads tasked with keeping clouds running. Why there weren't any backups -- even older ones -- that could've been used as a restore point is totally unclear, so we're hoping Microsoft has the stones to come clean for the benefit of an entire industry that wants to understand how to make sure this never happens again.

    Sidekick failure rumors point fingers at outsourcing, lack of backups originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Full Story

  • Microsoft’s new security policy: lawsuits

    Microsoft’s new security policy: lawsuits

    The word for the day is "malvertising". It's a linguistic mashup that means "malicious advertising". Not deceptive, or antagonistic, but actually harmful. You know, the kind of online advertising that delivers a virus payload that jacks up your sister-in-law's computer and then she calls you and you have to try to troubleshoot it over the phone and she doesn't listen and just keeps clicking that damned mouse -- you can totally hear her clicking clicking clicking -- while you're trying to be methodical and solve the damned problem. You know, that kind of advertising. Well Microsoft has had enough, and they're finally going to do something about it! They're filing lawsuits against malvertisers! Thank the maker!

    Full Story

  • Sweden’s anti-piracy law sure seems to be working

    Sweden’s anti-piracy law sure seems to be working

    Sweden's anti-piracy law, IPRED, seems to be working, insofar as various Internet traffic monitors have seen a significant downturn in piracy. The day after the law went into effect, Web traffic fell by some 30 percent, and now, several months later (the law went into effect on April 1), an ISP there says piracy-related traffic is still “free-falling.”

    Full Story