CEO Steve Ballmer Goes Out With A Song

Steve Ballmer was always a very passionate CEO and therefore his last meeting had to be one that everyone remembered. He has mentioned that he would leave Microsoft, and he is making this last meeting something that we are all going to remember.






Steve Ballmer has been at Microsoft for 33 years, and all that love for the company was let out at this meeting.

Steve let out a very emotional saying right before he let out tears while on the stage.

"Soak it in, you work for the greatest company in the world," Ballmer screamed on stage as his eyes welled up with tears.

Ballmer has always loved the company, and the people in it. Even after all these years that love for the company is still strong even after he leaves the company. His speech was very emotional, and The Verge has the exclusive video which you can see right below.

As you can see the speech was very heart felled, and it leaves us with questions like. Who will take his place, what will be the future of Microsoft.

The company has made questionable moves, and Steve Ballmer was a CEO that you either loved, or you hated him.

People loved what he did with getting Microsoft, into the mobile market, but they also hate him for Windows 8 and questionable business moves like making an RT and a PRO version of their Surface. This was arguably the worst decision he made since it made no sense to anyone.

Microsoft will have a bright future after his leave, but for now lets all bid farewell to Steve Ballmer and his work at Microsoft.

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Youtube Comments Block List

Youtube has rolled out their new comment system for larger publishers, and we have constructed a very large block list that should be added to your blacklist as well as blocked channels. These people and or sites have been known to spam Youtube channels, and are therefore going to be blocked. No self promotional spammers are added to the list, we are just adding website spammers such as those who promote phishing scams.

We are the first group to officially throw together a black list, and we have added several hundred items in the form of words, websites, and channels. This is the first iteration of the list, and it is available to download in the form of a .txt file. We are going to update the list with new words, websites, and channels in due time. However,this is the first update of this list. All of the items that can be copied have commas, don't remove these or they will not work in the blacklist.

Download The List Here

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Why Are Apple fans So Devoted?

When it comes to fan base in the technology field, Apple has the most devote fans of any company and no one seem to know why.


Samsung recently sent some disguised employees to report on the seen to try and understand what makes the fans so devoted. The fact of the matter is that Apple has the most devoted and loving fan base and no one can figure out why.


Their is a meme that says it all that basically broke down all of the features that IOS 7 gave iPhone users, and said “Android had all these features for years and no one bats an eye.” “Apple adds them to IOS 7 and everyone loses their mind”. The fact of the matter is that Apple is adding features that Android has had for years and their fans have gone crazy over it.


Now what is the exact reason for this, are Apple fans seem to think that Apple is naturally superior to Android in every aspect. Speed, Design, Apps, these are just some of the common arguments that people try to justify to me.


This is not true Android phones have better hardware, and are therefore superior in speed. The design is all personal preference, and the apps are all dependent on the developer and not the operating system. If you want to test the strength of the operating system then Android has the potential for more powerful apps, and we can see this through more memory intensive apps such as Avabel, and Order And Chaos.


However the real key to Apple’s success at controlling their fan base is that they release a phone timely every year that is an upgrade to the previous. So why should someone go and buy the new Android phone and re learn something when their new I device will be released, the same year and they are already accustomed to it.


While this only works for the true hardcore fans it still does not make sense for someone to wait 14+ hours to get a phone that is slightly better then the last generation, and is running the same operating system.

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Should Blackberry Sell?

Blackberry has been doing poorly for the past three years with no quarters of gains and last quarter of a loss of 1 billion dollars the company is doing very poorly. The market share is about 1.5% and they are going to lay off over 40% of their current staff.

The company has been doing so poorly that it will be the smartest move for Blackberry to sell. The reason I say that, is that they do have some interesting patents that might be wanted by other technology companies who are not in the mobile phone market.

Dell for instance would be a perfect buyer for this and here is the reason why. Dell has been doing quite poorly when it comes to their computers, and that is because they just don’t stack up with the competition anymore, and therefore they need an alternative market where they have a chance to succeed.

If Dell were to buy Blackberry, then they would be able to establish their place in the mobile market, but they will have to do something that many might or might not like. They will need to drop the current devices, and build and Android based device.

Why Android? Android is the most widely used mobile operating system on the planet, and for good reason. It is the most powerful, and it has the largest room for personalization by the company. So Dell could take the patents from Blackberry and put them into use for an Android device. This would be the chance for Dell to establish its place in the mobile market, and thus increasing their revenue, as well as recovering the company as a whole. 

Will Blackberry ever sell? Will Dell be a potential buyer? It will all depend but if RIM does not do something, they might as well file for bankruptcy. 

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Microsoft Joins Other Tech Companies With Buybacks

Microsoft is starting to have buybacks a buyback program that has a value of roughly 40 billion dollars.

A buyback is essentially where the company buys back their stock, in large amounts and the reason that they are doing it, is because it is more profitable for them rather then investing in another company. Microsoft is following what other tech companies, such as Apple are doing, and that is that they have so much money that they don't need to invest in other companies, and they are doing it to increase the value of the stock.

When an investor looks at a stock we need to look at the value of the stock, and look at what are the chances of this stick increasing. Microsoft's stock barely moves so as an investor why do I want to invest into a company where I am making pennies? So by buying back these stocks there are less around, and then the value of it goes up. When you analyze we mentioned we don't like making pennies, so Microsoft realizes "why would someone invest in our stock over Google's?" The fact is investing and making pennies is not good enough so by buying back those stocks it takes less shares to be sold for that value to increase.

Tech companies are the most inclined companies to buy back stock, and that is generally because there was too much stock in the market, so Microsoft might be doing something really smart. If Microsoft had a stock value of Google then the common man will be more inclined to invest in them.

Now wall street looked at this and the stock rose about $0.13 which is very little, and that is because wall street wants more stock and a larger program. More stock means that there are more potential sales however we have two types of investors.

Those who want to see large numbers and want to make a large amount of money. These people are more inclined to buy from Google.

Then we have those who are safer investors and they are looking for small but consistent change. They would go after Microsoft, because the stock does not really decline that much.

We will have to wait and see what this does to their value, but Microsoft does not really mess up on their buyback deals.

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Can Creating Your Own Encryption Keys Prevent NSA Spying?

Could we prevent NSA spying if every user was able to create their own encryption key? The NSA has been retrieving data from some of the largest companies for years, and that is because they were able to gain access to their servers (with or without permission details are still not known), and that means that they could in theory bypass encrypted information. What If we allowed every user to create their own encryption key.

When you encrypt something on lets say Google they have a set algorithm that will scramble those letters into nonsense data. Except to a programmer, who could in theory reverse engineer the algorithm. While this is very unlikely it is technically possible which would mean that if they did not know about the snooping a programmer managed to reverse engineer the algorithm and therefore know every encrypted piece of data. Now this is common with poorly built algorithms which are open to many flaws, but is it possible that every tech company made the same mistake or that there was some sort of work around.

Therefore if anyone had the ability to create their own encryption key would it be possible to block all of that snooping? For instance if everyone could write and disguise their own password could they get past it? The answer to this is yes and no, and it can be both. The reason is they cant discover every ones password UNLESS they all started to use the same formula. For instance a password of 123 is encrypted as abc, and this other guy is 456 with a password of def, then it would be possible. The best way for this to work is if everyone had their own unique system or tied it to something random. Famous equations can be reversed engineered easily.

For us to do this, we would literally have to rewrite most of our current security solutions, because the idea would take so much time, and resources but would it pay off.

The idea sounds amazing on pen and paper, however most users are lazy. Most people refuse to use 2-step verification why would they write their own encryption key? Security? Privacy? The fact is both of these would improve, but how do you convince the consumer to do something like this, and that is why the idea has not been explored. The average users do not care enough to actually work on something like this.

Comodo an internet security firm has started to use this in their cloud back-up service. They give 5 gigabytes free, so this might be something to look into if you wish to secure your documents under your own lock and key.

Visit Their Site: Here!

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Google To Ditch Cookies For Advertising

Google is said to be expermenting with a replacement with the common tracking cookie that we see today. This cookie is meant to track browsing history, and it will display advertisements based on your history. You have hundreds of these cookies, because there are hundreds of different ad networks out there. This solution might actually be able to rid those cookies, if it is adopted.


The proposed idea is an anonymous identifier for advertising. The name that it has been given is an AdID, and this would no longer track your browsing history, via the use of cookie, so in theory we wont have to worry about dumb tracking cookies anymore.

The idea sounds a little skeptical, and far fetched but think about it. Google owns about 33% of the world wide share for the Advertising market. This industry is about 120 billion dollars, so having a company like Google trying to revolutionize it would be interesting. The AdID would work something like this, instead of tracking VIA a cookie, Google could track it back to an anonymous source. Basicaly instead of monitoring it VIA a cookie they could either track it by your Google Account, OR they could track it by general search. Essentialy they would analyze the trends in site visits so if you visit this site, you are looking for technology based news, so Google will say 99% of people reach this page VIA technology related terms, and therfore serve and ad on the page based off of statistics, and not off of your own information.

If they track it back to your Google account, then Google would simply collect the data, by your search volume. Incase you did not know you can delete your Google search history, so if you do you will lose all that targeted advertising.

"Technological enhancements can improve users' security while ensuring the Web remains economically viable. We and others have a number of concepts in this area, but they're all at very early stages," Google spokesman Rob Shilkin"

While the above ideas are how I see it playing out, Google might do something more complicated but the idea of no more advertising cookies is amazing.

How would this work for other adnetworks? The adnetworks would have to follow some simple guidelines that Google says what you can do, and then they would send you the data. They will not get any sort of extremley targeted advertising. Such as an ad that mentions anything personal about you.

This data will be limited, and the data that advertisers get will even be limited even more. The point of this new system is to increase revenue and to get rid of advertising cookies, while giving the privacy back to the people.

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Microsoft To Buy Nokia's Phone Division

Microsoft is in the process of acquiring Nokia's phone division. The company is spending 7 billion dollars, and it will own all of the Phone Division of Nokia, as well as all its patents. This deal is an attempt for Microsoft to bolster its ownership of the mobile phone market. However was this truly a smart move for Microsoft? The company has failed with its latest Windows RT tablet, and they are barely beating BlackBerry when it comes to their market share.


Microsoft is paying seven billion dollars for the mobile phone division of this company. This deal was predicted earlier this deal and was surfacing around the internet. However will Microsoft buy the entire company at a later time? Nokia holds many high level patents that Microsoft could use to help dominate the market. So we might be expecting a larger deal in the long run.

Was this a smart move, Microsoft never took the mobile phone market by surprise, and they never did anything revolutionary. However at the same time this is their chance to manufacture their own phones, and to own the patents from Nokia which was at one point a powerful contender in the mobile phone market.

Microsoft was going to make this deal sooner or later, skeptics were calling it ever since Nokia agreed to sell windows phone devices, and now they made a partial ownership. Before they buy the entire company, they would have to look at the benefits. What does Nokia make? Most people know them for their phones. What does Microsoft use Nokia for? They made their phones other then that, there was nothing else in it for Microsoft.

Nokia is one of those companies, that had a lot of potential, and then it went down hill extremely quickly. It went bad for them when they agreed to use Windows Phone, that was when their market share went down to less then 3%.

Microsoft mostly did this to bring down costs, because Nokia was another party and the more parties that you have the more expensive it is for the product to be made. Microsoft cut out the middleman which in this case was Nokia. Now they can have a larger profit margin.

Nokia is the only reason that Microsoft made it to where it is in today's market, and now that they are gone we are relying on the full creativity of Microsoft.

Here is the logic of Microsoft.

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Google Street View Car In Three Seperate Accidents

A Google Street view car has crashed three separate times in Bogor. The driver was doing a visit to update the Google Street view, and during which he crashed into another driver. He was very polite, and took the other driver to the nearest garage to get the vehicles repaired. However during this time he thought to himself how much is this going to cost, after fearing extreme cost, the driver fled the area with his damaged vehicle.




The driver, then drove into another vehicle, and after which crashed into a parked truck. When police arrived they detained the driver, and took him in for questioning.

The police questioned the driver, and he was asked why did you flee the original accident, and he said I feared that the cots would be to high. The police, will release the driver, but he will need to repair the vehicle or get another one.

We are still unaware if the driver will be responsible for the repair costs, or if the company (Google) will pay the fines and the repair costs.

After all of this stress, the actual cost for repairing the damage to his windshield was roughly $17.60.

Let's go over what was wrong with this entire event.

1. You feared the cost of the repairs, and so you drove off in a broken car.
2. You drove off in a broken car with a cracked windshield.
3. You felt that the costs would be to great and that no one would assist you.
4. You hit a parked car?

It is one thing to fear the expense and drive off, but to do so when you can barely see out of your window you are just asking for trouble.

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Advanced Systemcare 7 Beta

Iobit has officially started their advanced Systemcare 7 beta. The product has quite a few changes that we are looking forward to. Not to mention that the UI has quite a few changes and in my opinion this is far better.

 This new update also has a great newly updated database, and it is configured for windows 8 and 8.1. They have added the ability to delete the cache of the windows apps. 

They are also having a vote on whether to delete the classic faces on the app for the newly configured letter grades.

 The community is quite pleased with the new locking however this program has a long way  before it is released to the public. However while it is in public testing we are unaware of its release date.  

The program that is currently releases are advanced SystemCare version  6.4 which was just recently updated with a number of database improvement.

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Nokia Android Phone Was Real

We now know that Nokia was experimenting with an Android device, before Microsoft bought out their mobile phone division. This shows that Nokia had a plan B in case of the failure of the Windows 8 devices.

This team was very small, and did not have a huge impact on the company, but it shows that they feared possible failure from the Windows Phone, or that they were interested in growing their company.

Now according to their acquisition deal with Microsoft, the Android division was not even brought up, Microsoft did not want anything to do with those prototype devices, so this shows that Microsoft is more concerned with dominating with their own phone, rather then getting the hardware, and then selling it with the Android Operating System.

Back in 2011 Nokia agreed to sell Windows Phone devices, and that contract would have been over during 2014 which would mean that Nokia would have probably dropped the Windows Phone, and instead would have used the more popular Android operating system.

Nokia will forever be haunted by the mistake of choosing Windows Phone over Android. The company has 3% of the smart phone market, but back in 2010 it had about 32% and people always look back and wondered what would have happened if they chose Android. As we know Android is the most common mobile operating system on the planet, while Microsoft and Blackberry have very little of the market and are both doing very poorly.

Since Nokia has sold their mobile phone division, this project will be gone, and then Nokia and us will be left with the question. What If?

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Google Passwords Are Dead

Google security executive has said that the security password is dead.  She states that the new start ups that rely only on passwords for their security, are putting their users at risk. Now she is technically right ever since 2-step verification became "main stream" companies have been adopting it to increase the security of their users. Companies who think that a simple password will protect their users are wrong, and it has been seen time and time again.

Heather Adkins, the manager of information security at Google has said that "our relationship with passwords are done," and that "passwords are done at Google." Ever since Google evolved to include their 2 step verification system many companies have decided to follow, and that is because it is far more secure then having a simple crackable password.

Google has issues every day, where they have to deal with someones account being hacked, and that is because they refuse to use the 2 step verification for their account. This is a major issue,and Google is slowly becoming sick of the constant intrusion of hackers because users wont use a more secure account, the issue is that Google cant force them to use 2 step verification either. The best thing that they could do is either offer an incentive, or give them a pop-up with some sort of video that explains how to set it up.

Google is also trying to innovate more ways to keep your account secure, unfortunately Adkins did not give any specific details as to how they plan to do this, but she did assure us that Google is trying to find a secure way for you to login and make it hacker proof.

Innovation with security is something that we have to really try and work on, and the issue is that their are not enough people who can innovate on this issue, and that this is not the main concern facing companies. Companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo who are the ones who we would expect to innovate on this issue don't really do so. Microsoft is working on their acquiring of Nokia's mobile division, and they are focusing a lot on their scroogled campaign.

How far can these companies innovate until they reach this same stand still, that they are at right now. Companies mostly play off of eachother, and one company will innovate then the other will use the exact same technology, and then they wait for another company to innovate then they copy it. The whole security industry is full of ideas being taken from a company to company and being used to innovate even further. The issue is they don't want to send their engineers to work on this idea when they guys down the street could be doing the exact same thing.

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Google To Be Sued Over Privacy Issues

The lawsuit against Google and illegal internet tapping is allowed to continue. The Federal Appeals court said on Tuesday that the case would proceed.


Google is being accused of stealing Email Passwords, images from homes, and or bi standards, by tapping into un encrypted network. This is a prime example why you should always have a password on your home wifi router to prevent people from accessing your wifi, and even though it is illegal to access someones wifi even if it has no password. The obvious exception would be public wifi that can be found at stores and restaurants.


The collection of this information was first brought to attention by a court in Germany three years ago. During this time, Google was also being sued by 12 other European nations for privacy issues with their Google Street View.


Google's argument for the case to be thrown out was that since the Wifi was accessible to the general public meaning that there were no passwords for router. The court however disagrees with this ruling, and Google is now being investigated for violating the wire tap law.


The counter argument was that since it was in someone else home, they have a right to privacy, and therefore Google violated their privacy.


Google will probably by their way out of this problem, and that is because they have the tendency to bribe the plaintiffs. They are currently suing the company for $10,000 which is mere pocket change to Google. Not to mention that the company does not need to be in another court hiring more lawyers so bribing their way out of it would be the best bet.


Google is also working with Microsoft to sue the NSA over the amount of information that they are allowed to disclose when the NSA asks for information. They want to be able to give more information such as how many people were asked, and what type of information that they asked for.


The court has said that the wire tap laws, and the privacy laws apply to private homes as well which means that Google has broken the law and their defense will be next to pointless.


Question?

Why doesn't Google learn to control their privacy issues?

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Microsoft And Google To Sue The NSA

Google and Microsoft are going through with their lawsuit against the NSA. They are suing for the request that it makes to be made public. After they tried to reach an agreement with the NSA they ended up failing in the end, and now they are going to continue the lawsuit. This is the first time that we have seen these tech giants work together to try and solve a problem


Microsoft's Vice President Stated
"For example, we believe it is vital to publish information that clearly shows the number of national security demands for user content, such as the text of an email. These figures should be published in a form that is distinct from the number of demands that capture only metadata such as the subscriber information associated with a particular email address. We believe it's possible to publish these figures in a manner that avoids putting security at risk. And unless this type of information is made public, any discussion of government practices and service provider obligations will remain incomplete."

They are taking a very strong stand against the government because they want all of their requests to be known by the general republic. While both of the companies comply with the requests on occasion they have the power to say no, and they have the ability to release some of the requests.

From The LA Times

"James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said the government would begin releasing its own reports on NSA surveillance activity.

"But the Center for Democracy & Technology said the reports would fall short of the level of detail needed to provide 'meaningful transparency.'

'The new data that the government plans to publish is not nearly enough to justify the government's continued attempts to gag companies like Google and Microsoft and prevent them from engaging in meaningful transparency reporting of their own,' said Kevin Bankston, the CDT's director of free expression. 'This level of transparency is too little, too late, and is no replacement for hearing directly from Internet companies about how they and their users have been impacted by the NSA's programs.'"

Are Microsoft and Google right to confront the government? Do You want them to?

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Google Watches Employee Snack Habit

Google being one of the largest companies in the world, and being one of the greatest companies to work at, is starting a study on its employees snack habits. The reason for this, is it wants to make sure that its employees are healthy and are more productive at work. This study is being conducted to adjust the position of their snack containers to see if they affect their employees consumption rates.




Google has had an issue with their employees snacking to frequently, and they think that this is leading to a slowdown in the productivity, and a stake at their employees health.

Google has hired a group of psychologists to study the behaviour of their employees to see when and were they go for their snacks. They have launched this little experiment to and it will be continuing for quiet some time.

If the company kept their current snacks but moved them away from their employees and kept them in a lunch room then the employees would be less likely to go for those snacks.

What if Google adds more snacks? For instance the company could add some healthier foods whether it is fruits to trail mix. The employees would be more productive and healthier at the same time.

The other option is to try and disguise the unhealthy snacks by blending them in with their healthier alternatives. They could place it in the center away from plain site, they could change the container, they could move them further away from the healthier snacks which means employees would be more likely to grab the healthier alternatives.

Google as also tried to analyze the unhealthy snacks with the amount of employees that leave the company each year. While we don't have any exact numbers we do know that the company wants to minimize their numbers and if it is being analyzed then the numbers might be concerning.

There are some who are questioning the lengths that the company is going to analyzing the snack behaviours of their employees, however the employees don't seem to mind the idea, and they might be welcoming to a change in the scenery. This will reduce the amount of calories that their employees will consume.

What are your thoughts on this experiment? Is it to far? Or is Google doing the right thing?

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