Free Republic

Microsoft's "SmartScreen Filter" is blocking Sarah Palin's new website (sarahpalinchannel.com). When I went to the site anyway (it's hard to do), the videos would not play. Whatever is wrong may have been caused by a deliberately orchestrated group of people reporting the site as unsafe to Microsoft, or it may simply be that Microsoft simply does not like Sarah Palin. Regardless of the cause, it may help if people go to the site and click on the "Report this site does not contain threats" choice.

The shocking announcement that Microsoft is cutting 18,000 jobs is still sinking in. Most of those employees do not have a realistic chance of obtaining as good a job as the one they are losing. In the United States, the number of engineering jobs has been sharply declining. In 2002 the number of electrical engineering jobs in the United States was 385,000, but despite increased demand for technology, the job total dropped to only 300,000 last year. And that number is not even for American workers, because thousands of these jobs are soaked up by the H-1B visa racket,...

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) criticized Microsoft founder Bill Gates for calling on Congress to increase STEM worker visas while the company plans to cut 18,000 jobs next year. “Super billionaires aren’t happy apparently. … They declare we need to import more foreign workers,” Sessions said on the Senate floor Thursday. “Mr. Gates says we need to let more and more people into our country to take those kinds of jobs.” Sessions was referring to an op-ed in which Gates called on the House to pass the bipartisan Senate immigration reform bill. That legislation would increase the number of worker visas...

On Thursday, Microsoft announced it would cut 18,000 jobs (14% of the company workforce) in the next year, the largest reduction in company history. Since its acquisition of Nokia, experts predicted there would be some layoffs, but the number is double the amount predicted. Stephen Elop, head of Microsoft’s device unit (the hardest hit by the layoffs) and former CEO of Nokia, proceeded to bury the news about 12,500 layoffs in the eleventh paragraph of a corporate memo. Elop begins the memo with a cheery “Hello there,” stating Microsoft’s strategy is “focused on productivity and our desire to help people...

Not content to blow both feet off with a shotgun, Microsoft is going for the kneecaps now by blackmailing it’s customers. If you are still dumb enough to use Windows, you are about have your wallet shaken down by Microsoft in a familiar yet still unwelcome way.We don’t feel the need to sugarcoat this much because the company’s behavior is so blatant and uncaring it is almost staggering. Worse yet the victims, that would be almost all Windows users, have only themselves to blame because the pattern has been well laid out for years now. Microsoft has been unapologetically blackmailing...

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp will slash up to 18,000 jobs, or 14 percent of its workforce, this year as it almost halves the size of its newly acquired Nokia phone business and tries to transform into a cloud-computing and mobile-friendly software company. The larger-than-expected cuts, announced on Thursday, are the deepest in the company's 39-year history and come five months into the tenure of Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella. He outlined plans for a "leaner" business in a public memo to employees last week.

SEATTLE — Microsoft said Thursday that it planned to eliminate up to 18,000 jobs over the next year in a shake-up intended to help the company move more quickly in the market. The cuts are the largest in the company’s 39-year history, representing about 14 percent of its work force. Microsoft will make the deepest cuts from the businesses it acquired from the Finnish phone maker Nokia. About 12,500 of the jobs being eliminated will come from the Nokia groups, resulting from the closing of a factory in Hungary and other changes. That is about half the number of employees...

<p>In a letter to employees early Thursday, Microsoft CEO Sataya Nadella said the tech giant will slash its workforce by as many as 18,000 jobs over the course of the next year, with the first round of 13,000 cuts coming within the next six months.</p>

The action will be much bigger than the 5,800 job cuts announced in 2009, The New York Times said. Microsoft reportedly will announce the biggest round of layoffs in its history on Thursday as massive changes wrought by new CEO Satya Nadella start to take hold at the struggling IT giant.

Obama administration fights to seize Microsoft emails held in IRELAND in landmark legal battle The U.S. Justice Department is claiming that Microsoft must hand over emails that the company stores in databases in Dublin, Ireland, in a case that is being watched closely by tech companies legal scholars. The U.S. federal government is claiming that it can force any company that conducts business operations within its borders to comply with warrants for data stored on its databases, even if those databases aren't physically located within the United States. Several companies that operate within the U.S. keep databases in other countries....

How many times do I have to write about the problems discovered in Common Core teaching? This time it deals with Pearson Education, one of the leading companies that helps develop and train Common Core teaching. According to their website: “As the leading education services company, Pearson is serious about evolving how the world learns. We apply our deep education experience and research, invest in innovative technologies, and promote collaboration throughout the education ecosystem. Real change is our commitment and its results are delivered through connecting capabilities to create actionable, scalable solutions that improve access, affordability, and achievement.” [Emphasis mine]...

Microsoft will end free mainstream support for Windows 7 on January 13, 2015. That means no more security patches if hackers find holes, no more updated features or performance improvements. This move will mostly affect consumers. Businesses that pay for extended Windows 7 support, as most of them do, will be supported for another five years, until January 14, 2020. That's important, because many businesses are right now are in the process of upgrading their old Windows XP PCs, but they're moving to Windows 7, not Windows 8. There's some speculation that, given the popularity of Windows 7, Microsoft might...

It's been clear for some time that the iPad has taken the enterprise by storm as employees tote it to work and companies buy fleets of them. But Apple's PC, the Mac, has never been as dominant in the workplace, until now, according to new research from long-time Microsoft rival, VMware. VMware queried 376 IT professionals and found that they are increasingly being asked to buy and/or support Macs in the enterprise by employees who want Macs, not Windows machines. "Microsoft Windows has dominated enterprise desktops for close to three decades but it appears its reign is coming to an...

In the past, one thing that’s always separated Google from its rivals has been the ability to use Google services across many platforms. Whether you owned an iPhone, an iPad, a Mac, or a Windows PC, you always had access to Google services like Search, Maps, and Docs. Of course, Google would prefer that you use Android and Chromebooks, but that rarely felt like a requirement. At this year’s Google I/O conference, we’re starting to see a different strategy emerge. Google is now making the case that if you want the full Google experience, you need to use Android devices...

When the General Services Administration (GSA), the agency in charge of supplying products and communications for US government offices, chose Google Apps for email and calendaring functions back in 2011, fear was no doubt struck into the heart of Microsoft. After all, the Microsoft MSFT -0.71% Office franchise has been the number one pick of Government agencies for decades. That the GSA would chose an upstart like Google GOOGL -0.35% was something of a shock. Well, the stress in Redmond continues with news today that the GSA has selected Smartsheet to be its online collaborative project management tool. This is,...

I gave a cursory read to the Code of Conduct in the updated Microsoft Services Agreement, which, among other things, states under Prohibited Uses states, You will not upload, post, transmit, transfer, distribute, or facilitate distribution of any content (including text, images, sound, video, data, information, or software) or otherwise use the service in a way that: ...Threatens...defames...degrades, victimizes, or intimidates an individual or group of individuals for any reason, including on the basis of age...sexual orientation, race or religion, or incites or encourages anyone else to do so. Obviously, this is purposely ambiguous and broad ("for any reason"!), but...

Computerworld - Microsoft has quietly stopped serving security updates to Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) on consumer and small business Windows 7 PCs unless the customer has successfully applied an April update for the browser. [....] Users who have not installed the IE security update issued on April 8 -- identified by Microsoft as MS14-018 -- on Windows 7, and who rely on Windows Update to download and install fixes, did not receive the June 10 IE update. Nor will IE11 receive any future updates, security or otherwise, until that MS14-018 has been installed. Windows Update will not display the appropriate...

While Microsoft and Google are rivals in many arenas, Microsoft makes a substantial profit from patents used by Android vendors. However, despite Microsoft's commitment to transparency, these agreements have only been revealed in legal surroundings -- until now.Patent licensing deals agreed between the Redmond giant and Android device makers grant Microsoft revenue for every device made using the company's intellectual property. In November last year, Nomura analyst Rick Sherlund estimated that Microsoft was making as much as $2bn in Android patent licensing agreements. These funds are believed to be covering losses in the tech giant's entertainment division, covering Xbox, Windows...

Silicon Valley got a dose of tech star power when Bill and Melinda Gates arrived at Stanford Sunday to deliver the 2014 commencement speech. The couple are the founders and co-chairs of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest private foundation. "Sharing a mutual commitment to a better world, Bill and Melinda Gates have taken on some of the planet's toughest challenges. This boldness is an ethos that we also embody at Stanford, and one we seek to instill in our graduates ... " Stanford president John Hennessy said. Condoleezza Rice Backs Out of Rutgers Commencement Amid Protests...

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 13, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- The claim by Melinda Gates, a Catholic, that the multi-billion dollar Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does not fund abortion is "an outright deception," says Father Shenan J. Boquet, president of Human Life International. Gates has made headlines in recent days after she wrote June 2 that the foundation "has decided not to fund abortion."