Microsoft’s Live OneCare security suite is not as secure as they think. OneCare is Microsoft’s foray into the security suite world. that is already hot contested by companies such as Symantec and Mcfee. Now one would think that since it’s made by Microsoft, it should be able to do a pretty good job, protecting other Microsoft products (namely, Windows XP/Vista and IE), right? Wrong. Various security experts who conduct security suite tests, including AV-Comparatives (www.av-comparatives.org) have already pish-toshed Microsoft’s attempts. Andreas Clementi, the AV-Comparatives reviewer has gone as far s suggesting that OneCare might not even bve included in the next comparison, because it’s just no good!
Microsoft was quick to do the necessary PR clean-up job promising to look into the test and make sure that OneCare does better. Of course since OneCare is still a registered security suite, certified by the International Computer Security Association, it will continue to be sold. We must concede that it is still early days, and OneCare can obviously get better. What worries us is that it is a Microsoft product. Which is obviously being scrutinsed by every hacker and script kiddie for flaws . Do we really want to be using security software from the most virus-targeted company in the world? Of course in a few years Microsoft may make us eat this very paper we’ve printed on, by using the whole experience to build another stable and secure product-and we’ll be only too glad to pay for the ketchup to help digest the paper. It’s ironic, isn’t it? All those virus writers out there are unknowingly helping Microsoft clean-up their code, resulting in more stable products by the day. Perhaps 25 secruity patches down the line, OneCare will win the 2008 anti-virustest. I look forward to the day.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
MS To Blame For Piracy? (The russian perspective)
Russia is amongst the top 10 nations responsible for usingpirated software. According to studies conducted by Bussiness Software Allaince (www.bsa.org), 83% odcomputers sold in Russia run on pirated software. Incidently, the top ten pirated pirated software countries are listed below:-
Vietnam 90%
Zimbabwe 90%
Indonesia 87%
China 86%
Pakistan 86%
Kazakhstan 85%
Ukraine 85%
Cameroon 84%
Russia 83%
Bolivia 83%
Russia IT minister Dmitry Milovantsev recently said that the cause of high piracy rates in Russia was more the fault of software vendors than that of the users! Now that may sound like a really tal claim, and a lot of you will be going, "Oh no, not another person moaning about how Microsoft should take into account the earning of the average Russian!" Do Russians really want a crippled version of XP, like the one India saw a few years ago? Will the Russian public pay to have a Windows version which allows only three windows to open at a time, especially when the "free" version that is available from the local market costs almost nothing and gives you full functionality? It's an old debate, and we are not going to get into that...
Those of you who want to sit down and start shooting off an e-mail to Mr. Milovantsev and point out that open source is always a viable alternative might want to hold off hitting "Send" on that pirated Outlook window for a while... apparently, in a bit to reduce piracy, Microsoft does not allow hardware partners to sell computers without Windows loaded. So Russians have no choice but to buy from smaller assemblers or fork out the cost of the Windows OS that's preloaded on their machine. But the bit that really stinks is that if you buy from these PC manufacturers, still insists on using an Open Source OS, and do not want Windows loaded, you have to shell out an extra $50 to have the company remove Windows! Now that's just a cost of formatting your PC- they won't load Linux for you!
We've heard of extreme measures being adopted to combat piracy, but this one takes the cake! Hopefully with Vista's new phone-home type security, which forces you to uninstall it if you haven't payed for it, will get rid of such ridiculous policies.
For those of you who are interested on knowing where India stands on the piarcy list, don't worry, we aren't in the top twenty however with 72% piracy, and an evergrowing number of users buying assembled PCs, we will have to spread awareness if we want to avoid being put on the list of shame!
One thing you need to remmember is that this 72% figure means that for every 100 Indian users who buy a computer, only 28 buy genuine software. So according to BSA, even though Vietnam tops the list of shame in terms of percentage, it is not the country with the most PCs running on pirated software. Take China for example: studies and estimates put the number of Internet accessing users in China (not PC owners), stand at around 120 million.
Lets supply BSA'a stats to this figure: 86% x 120 million = 103.2 million Chinese users run pirated software. Compare this figure to vietnam's entire population of 84 million humans, and you should get what we're saying...
Vietnam 90%
Zimbabwe 90%
Indonesia 87%
China 86%
Pakistan 86%
Kazakhstan 85%
Ukraine 85%
Cameroon 84%
Russia 83%
Bolivia 83%
Russia IT minister Dmitry Milovantsev recently said that the cause of high piracy rates in Russia was more the fault of software vendors than that of the users! Now that may sound like a really tal claim, and a lot of you will be going, "Oh no, not another person moaning about how Microsoft should take into account the earning of the average Russian!" Do Russians really want a crippled version of XP, like the one India saw a few years ago? Will the Russian public pay to have a Windows version which allows only three windows to open at a time, especially when the "free" version that is available from the local market costs almost nothing and gives you full functionality? It's an old debate, and we are not going to get into that...
Those of you who want to sit down and start shooting off an e-mail to Mr. Milovantsev and point out that open source is always a viable alternative might want to hold off hitting "Send" on that pirated Outlook window for a while... apparently, in a bit to reduce piracy, Microsoft does not allow hardware partners to sell computers without Windows loaded. So Russians have no choice but to buy from smaller assemblers or fork out the cost of the Windows OS that's preloaded on their machine. But the bit that really stinks is that if you buy from these PC manufacturers, still insists on using an Open Source OS, and do not want Windows loaded, you have to shell out an extra $50 to have the company remove Windows! Now that's just a cost of formatting your PC- they won't load Linux for you!
We've heard of extreme measures being adopted to combat piracy, but this one takes the cake! Hopefully with Vista's new phone-home type security, which forces you to uninstall it if you haven't payed for it, will get rid of such ridiculous policies.
For those of you who are interested on knowing where India stands on the piarcy list, don't worry, we aren't in the top twenty however with 72% piracy, and an evergrowing number of users buying assembled PCs, we will have to spread awareness if we want to avoid being put on the list of shame!
One thing you need to remmember is that this 72% figure means that for every 100 Indian users who buy a computer, only 28 buy genuine software. So according to BSA, even though Vietnam tops the list of shame in terms of percentage, it is not the country with the most PCs running on pirated software. Take China for example: studies and estimates put the number of Internet accessing users in China (not PC owners), stand at around 120 million.
Lets supply BSA'a stats to this figure: 86% x 120 million = 103.2 million Chinese users run pirated software. Compare this figure to vietnam's entire population of 84 million humans, and you should get what we're saying...
Vista Vs. XP For Gamers
Ever since the launch of Microsoft's latest operating system, Window's Vista, confusion has reigned on the Web. Since it's mostly gamers who are early adopters of the latest hardware and OS upgrades, it's no surprise that windows vista is on every gamer's mind. "Should I switch, or should I ditch the idea?" sems to be the question. And the answers are not hard to come by. Quite the reverse actually; there are just too many answers at this point in time, and all of them contradicting the other in some way or the other.
It's obvious that no previous operating system from the Microsoft stables has created so much buzz-whether it's apple fans crying foul fr alleged "copying" of Mac OS X's pretiness, or Windows fanatics raving about Aero, to confused PC gamers standing in the corner shaking their heads at all the commotion while console gamers happily ignore everyone and everything as they rejoice with their PS3s! and Xbox 360s!
Respected geek sites-Extreme Tech. Tom's Hardware and the likes have done every Vista review possible, including benchmarking the performance differences between a clean Vista install vs. an upgrade from Windows XP. Incidently, an upgrade from Windows XP seems to be better for gaming than a clean install of Vista, according to benchmarks.
Facts remain facts, however, and currently, Windows XP is slightly ahead in terms of performance for most games. This may be because those games were built for windows XP, or just the fact that Windows XP has lower hardware requirements, but the message is clear; if you want the best performance you can eke out of your hardware for current generation games, stick to Windows XP!
So that's it? Am I telling gamers not to upgrade to Windows Vista? Keeping up the confusion that reigns, I'll say yes and no! For some of you the answer is yes, don't upgrade; for a smaller number it's no, upgrade immediately, and for the majority... well... I just don't know, and you'll have to make up your own minds.
Here in India when it comes to gaming Hardware demographics are a little more of a complicated affair. The majority of computer owners have aging hardware that has no right to be running even Windows XP, very obvious that if those users upgrade to windows Vista, they'll have to deal with really slow PCs. Those with better hardware are seldom gamers. Now we come to PC gamers segment, which again is broken into two segments: the first and larger segment comprises of computers that have pretty decent configurations- an equivalent of an Athlon 64 or Pentium D, 1 GB of DDR RAM, and a good DirectX 9 graphics card with 256 MB of RAM. The second and the smallest section of the public is the hardcore gamers with on top of the line hardware- Core 2 Duo/AM2, 2 gigabytes of RAM, and the latest DirectX 10 capable cards.
For the first gamer segment, switching to Vista right now may be a problem and kind of pointless. The reason being: Vista brings to table DirectX 10 compatability, which the next generation games will run on. If you're going to be running DirectX 9, it's perhaps best you do it on the operating system it was designed for.
For the top-of-the-line-or-nothing-else gamer Vista is probably what you should be looking for future-proofing. That said before switching to Vista, make sure your hardware your hardware manufacturers are making Vista drivers-this is for al your hardware.
The majority of Indian PC gamers will probably play it smart with the wait and watch game, which isn't such a bad idea - atleast until some good DirectX 10 games come out and alland all the initial teething problems for Vista are solved. For now, just watch the Vista news flashes on various sites, all the benchmarks, and chuckle contentedly.
It's obvious that no previous operating system from the Microsoft stables has created so much buzz-whether it's apple fans crying foul fr alleged "copying" of Mac OS X's pretiness, or Windows fanatics raving about Aero, to confused PC gamers standing in the corner shaking their heads at all the commotion while console gamers happily ignore everyone and everything as they rejoice with their PS3s! and Xbox 360s!
Respected geek sites-Extreme Tech. Tom's Hardware and the likes have done every Vista review possible, including benchmarking the performance differences between a clean Vista install vs. an upgrade from Windows XP. Incidently, an upgrade from Windows XP seems to be better for gaming than a clean install of Vista, according to benchmarks.
Facts remain facts, however, and currently, Windows XP is slightly ahead in terms of performance for most games. This may be because those games were built for windows XP, or just the fact that Windows XP has lower hardware requirements, but the message is clear; if you want the best performance you can eke out of your hardware for current generation games, stick to Windows XP!
So that's it? Am I telling gamers not to upgrade to Windows Vista? Keeping up the confusion that reigns, I'll say yes and no! For some of you the answer is yes, don't upgrade; for a smaller number it's no, upgrade immediately, and for the majority... well... I just don't know, and you'll have to make up your own minds.
Here in India when it comes to gaming Hardware demographics are a little more of a complicated affair. The majority of computer owners have aging hardware that has no right to be running even Windows XP, very obvious that if those users upgrade to windows Vista, they'll have to deal with really slow PCs. Those with better hardware are seldom gamers. Now we come to PC gamers segment, which again is broken into two segments: the first and larger segment comprises of computers that have pretty decent configurations- an equivalent of an Athlon 64 or Pentium D, 1 GB of DDR RAM, and a good DirectX 9 graphics card with 256 MB of RAM. The second and the smallest section of the public is the hardcore gamers with on top of the line hardware- Core 2 Duo/AM2, 2 gigabytes of RAM, and the latest DirectX 10 capable cards.
For the first gamer segment, switching to Vista right now may be a problem and kind of pointless. The reason being: Vista brings to table DirectX 10 compatability, which the next generation games will run on. If you're going to be running DirectX 9, it's perhaps best you do it on the operating system it was designed for.
For the top-of-the-line-or-nothing-else gamer Vista is probably what you should be looking for future-proofing. That said before switching to Vista, make sure your hardware your hardware manufacturers are making Vista drivers-this is for al your hardware.
The majority of Indian PC gamers will probably play it smart with the wait and watch game, which isn't such a bad idea - atleast until some good DirectX 10 games come out and alland all the initial teething problems for Vista are solved. For now, just watch the Vista news flashes on various sites, all the benchmarks, and chuckle contentedly.
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