Microsoft Story Online — Microsoft Full Story Online

Silent Install Firefox Plugin Backfires on Microsoft
posted by Kroc Camen on Sat 17th Oct 2009 05:27 UTC

Now a security hole has been found in a plugin that Microsoft have been silently installing into Firefox. Along with .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, Microsoft have been silently installing a Windows Presentation Foundation Plugin that allows the embedding of XAML applications (an XML-based UI technology) in web pages, called XBAP (XAML Web App). … The only thing that surprises me more, is that I’m not surprised that Microsoft could be this incompetent when it comes to the safety of all users of the web using Windows, regardless if they’re using IE or not.

Continue reading “Journal: Microsoft, Cyber-Security, Syllable, & Integrity”

2009/10/18

Journal: $400 per gallon gas in Afghanistan

03 Economy, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Ethics, Military

Full Story Online

$400 per gallon gas to drive debate over cost of war in Afghanistan

By Roxana Tiron

The Hill

10/15/09

The Pentagon pays an average of $400 to put a gallon of fuel into a combat vehicle or aircraft in Afghanistan. The statistic is likely to play into the escalating debate in Congress over the cost of a war that entered its ninth year last week.

. . . . . .

“It is a number that we were not aware of and it is worrisome,” Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Defense panel, said in an interview with The Hill. “When I heard that figure from the Defense Department, we started looking into it.”

The Pentagon comptroller’s office provided the fuel statistic to the committee staff when it was asked for a breakdown of why every 1,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan costs $1 billion. The Obama administration uses this estimate in calculating the cost of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

2009/10/18

Journal: Goldman Sachs Is Robbing Us Blind

03 Economy, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government

Dylan Ratigan

Anchor of MSNB

Oct. 15, 2009, 5:22 PM

Now this method of “business” is only possible if the government continues to allow these crooked insurance contracts to be written in secret, allows them to hold little or no money in reserve for payment and allows them to sell enough coverage on enough vital national assets that if there is a default — the taxpayer has no choice but to pay.

Needless to say, J.P. Morgan & Co. has never had more revenue and the Goldman Sachs bonus pool has never been bigger.

Considering the $23.7 trillion of taxpayer money being used to support these Corporate Communists one would hope they could at least make a few billion in profits with it. In context, making a few billion risking a few trillion is a rather pathetic return after all.

As we talked about last week – allowing these outdated banks to take control of our government and change the rules so they are protected from the natural competition and reward systems that have created so many innovations in our country, you not only steal from the citizens on behalf of the least worthy but you also doom them by trapping the capital that would have been used to generate new innovation and, most tangibly in our current situation, jobs.

2009/10/18

Journal: “Free Obama” and From What….

08 Wild Cards, Commerce, Ethics, Government, Military, Policies, Reform, Strategy, Threats

Full Op-Ed Online

Obama’s Delusion

David Bromwich

22 October 2009

Afghanistan is the largest and the most difficult crisis Obama confronts away from home. And here the trap was fashioned largely by himself. He said, all through the presidential campaign, that Iraq was the wrong war but Afghanistan was the right one. It was ‘a war of necessity’, he said this summer. And he has implied that he would accept his generals’ definition of the proper scale of such a war. Now it appears that Afghanistan is being lost, indeed that it cannot be controlled with fewer than half a million troops on the ground for a decade or more. The generals are for adding troops, as in Vietnam, in increments of tens of thousands. Their current request was leaked to Bob Woodward, who published it in the Washington Post on 21 September, after Obama asked that it be kept from the public for a longer interval while he deliberated. The leak was an act of military politics if not insubordination; its aim was to show the president the cost of resisting the generals.

Continue reading “Journal: “Free Obama” and From What….”

2009/10/182011/10/22

Journal: Entering the Era of State Capture

Commerce, Ethics, Government, Policies, Reform

The Baseline Scenario

What happened to the global economy and what we can do about it

Who is Carlos Slim?

The US increasingly displays characteristics that we have seen many times in middle-income “emerging markets” – new dimensions of vast inequality, forms of financial instability that benefit the best connected, and consistently easy credit for the privileged. But this raises the question: who exactly is going to dominate our economic and political landscape moving forward?

. . . . . . .

But we are entering a new, more global era of state capture, and the US government (or, more precisely, its credit) was handed over – rather meekly – during the past 12 months.

Continue reading “Journal: Entering the Era of State Capture”

2009/10/182009/10/18

Journal: The Quiet Costly Coup by Wall Street

Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Reform, True Cost

The Atlantic May 2009 by Simon Johnson

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.

2009/10/172009/10/17

Worth a Look: Innovation Orientation

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Key Players, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats, Worth A Look

We keep an eye on what folks's are searching for; this posting is inspired by one such search. Use Contact Page or comments section to engage–we respond to all contacts or comments within 24 hours.

First, use the menu–there will be overlap!

Best Practices in Management (52) Change & Innovation (60) Complexity & Resilience (45) Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design (55) Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean) (4) Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized) (34)

Voices Lost are a fundamental source of innovation once heard–diversity matters at all levels. It merits comment that “status quo” bureaucracies are death-beds, antithetical to innovation. This is why there is a “spike” or “lifeboat” theory of change. OSS and EIN may one day be recognized as the lifeboat that saved US Intelligence from oblivion. We are not holding our breath, but the reality is that there is more innovation in intelligence outside the wire–not federal, not expensive, and most certainly not secret–but the White House is too busy to realize it is being fed expensive waste.

Continue reading “Worth a Look: Innovation Orientation”

Full Op-Ed Online Obama’s Delusion

David Bromwich

Full Op-Ed Online

Obama’s Delusion