Archive for July, 2014

Why Microsoft Will Not Extend Windows 7 End-Of-Life

[This is mostly a summary of a discussion on Google Plus, that you can find here]

Recap: The world (or at least clueless tech journalists) was surprised to learn (once they bothered to look it up) that Microsoft will not extends Windows 7 end of “mainstream support” – which is scheduled for January 2015 (about 6 months from now). This was all planned way in advance – Microsoft basically committed to end “mainstream support” in 2015 by not releasing any service pack for Windows 7 since the beginning of 2010, instead they want people to move to the next version of their software. In most normal software markets, this is a no-brainer – who have heard of a Macintosh user still clinging to Mac OS X 10.7? or an Adobe Photoshop user who refuses to upgrade past CS3? But instead you now hear calls for Microsoft to extends Windows 7 an artificial life line, like it did with XP.

And here’s why XP will never happen again:

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מתכון: עוף חמוץ מתוק (לא בצבע ורוד)

הנה מתכון פשוט לאסקלופ1 עוף, ברוטב לא בסגנון סיני או בצבע ורוד או משהו כזה, אבל כן בטעם חמוץ מתקתק. הרכיבים לארבע מנות.

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  1. כמו שניצל, אבל בלי הציפוי [↩]

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Microsoft vs. No-IP and the failure of the US legal system

There is one thing that really troubled me about the Microsoft dynamic DNS fiasco that no one seems to talk about, which I really wanted to raise, but first here’s a short recap for those not in the know: Microsoft “cyber-security” department convinced a US federal court to issue an order to transfer 22 internet domains owned by the popular No-IP dynamic DNS service into their custody, in an attempt to remove specific hosts under those domains that are supposedly used as malware control centers.

The issue I have is very simple – under what conditions can it be possible for a private company, to ask a court to transfer ownership of a property from another private company? This sounds seriously like private policing and somehow it is endorsed by the judicial system ?!? Under what authority can something like this be allowed?

This situation is massively more grievous because the court order was given “ex-parte” – legalese for “without the other party appearing to defend itself”, but even if everything was over the table and in the clear, and the defending lawyer incredibly incompetent, what kind of argument a private entity can offer to get a court to simply transfer control of another private entity?1.

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  1. except obviously arguing that the property was stolen, which is clearly not the case [↩]

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