Josh Wieder

A ton of Skype users were unhappy with the update from Skype 6.x to 7.x. Most of what I have seen is complaining about a few minor changes to the user interface. In the usual baby/bathwater situation that follows this sort of thing, "Power Users" began circulating guides on how to modify hosts files to prevent TCP connections to skype and msn domains. You know, because making sure you have the correct proportion of whitespace is more important than stupid trivia like patching critical security vulnerabilities . To address this madness, Microsoft decided to get clever. In addition to sending the Skype 7 update through the Skype application and related packages like Lync, they would push it through as a Windows update - KB2876229 . The Skype application updates are pushed through *.skype.com and *.msn.com , while Windows updates come from domains like  *.microsoft.com , *.windowsupdate.com and *.windows.com . The looks over substance crowd hadn't yet reached the levels ...

Fast Company - The Vatican has selected EMC to source roughly 2.8 Petabytes of storage for a project to digitize the Vatican library, home to over 1 million books. Business Week - Skype service in China is actively monitored for certain key phrases that are offensive to the state. When a user inputs these phrases, the conversation is forwarded to Chinese intelligence. Skype is currently owned by Microsoft, and in China is partnered with TOM Online to provide service in the region (like India, China requires foreign entities to be minority stake holders with a domestic corporation in order to do business). Microsoft has not responded to requests to clarify the surveillance features in Skype beyond saying that they adhere to Chinese law when operating there. No word yet on whether American users are monitored as well (at this point, I would be more shocked if they were not) - the Chinese program bears striking similarity to the NSA program that became public shortly after 9/11, ...