Microsoft Sneaks into Your House with Secrete Update!

Microsoft is coming under fire for reportedly delivering a Windows fix without telling it’s users about it…even if you opted to be notified first. The revelation, first reported at Seattlepi.com, says Microsoft may now reconsider the way they update our machines.

A Windows product manager conceded Microsoft “should have been clear in our explanation of this process earlier,” but the practice has raised serious concerns over privacy: “Writing files to a user’s PC without notice is behavior usually associated with hacker websites,” said an article in newsletter Windows Secrets. “The question being raised is, ‘Why is Microsoft operating in this way?’”

Listen Bill, I liked the Seinfeld ads, and I really dig the “I’m a PC” ads, but I can’t have you sneaking into my house in the middle of the night and messing around with my computers. Steve Jobs wouldn’t do that, but then again Steve keeps trying to get me to download Safari every time he updates iTunes.

The point is Microsoft, you guys are just starting to dig yourselves out from under a decade’s worth of morass, let’s not complicate it by causing security concerns, cause I just can’t take another I’m a Mac commercial!

Blabrmouth.com Weekend Update

Will The Real Rupert Murdoch Please Stand Up?

I am going to just come out and admit it, I love Rupert Murdoch. I love the way this guy plays the buy/sell game. He is a pirate with a pen. He is another in a long line of founders who like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sam Walton, and Michael Dell either know what’s

Housing Bill: Too Little Too Late for One

After a year of putzing around, we finally have a housing bill. By a vote of 272 to 152 (and I hope the 152 of you feel good about yourselves) the bill will become law pending President Bush’s approval and final passage in the Senate.

UAL Stock - Who is Buying This Mess?

I Then immediately checked my watch to see what time it was, then I checked the calender to see what year it was…yep, still 2008. Then I asked myself, who in the hell is buying up shares of UAL in this day and age? What short selling, trying to

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It appears that the embattled security firm Blackwater is getting out of the security business. Seems they are upset that they have become the poster boys for anti-war proponents and since being in the protection game wasn’t really their

U.S. Future: Oil Dependency Not The Problem

The U.S. economy has hummed along for the last fifteen years outpacing the rest of the world by double digits. Things were good. Businesses expanded, homeowners realized massive increases in the value of their homes and they

Pandit’s Gambit: Bad for Business - Good for Baseball?

That’s right home gamers, Vikram Pandit, the embattled (French for about get canned) CEO of the world’s largest financial institution has been a busy little beaver trying to put lipstick on this pig of a stock since Citi

Will The Real Rupert Murdoch Please Stand Up?

I am going to just come out and admit it, I love Rupert Murdoch. I love the way this guy plays the buy/sell game. He is a pirate with a pen. He is another in a long line of founders who like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sam Walton, and Michael Dell either know what’s best for their companies or think they do and will do anything they can to advance the business.

Rupert has been on a hot streak with the acquisitions of Myspace and the Wall Street Journal’s parent, Dow Jones, which he laid in wait for a long time. He also gave it the old college try with DirectTV to consolidate his BskyB holdings, but that didn’t work out so well.

You know why this guy is cool?

Because he is a swashbuckling newspaper man at heart in a world that is quickly devouring print media. So Mr. Murdoch creates controversy whenever he can in order to keep us all honest, and his companies relevant. The latest is a masterstroke. It’s kind of a game that we used to play as kids and it goes a little like this;

Remember when someone would do something to you, and you wouldn’t retaliate right away, but you would make the other guy sweat it out just wondering when you were going to get him back? Well that’s what Rupert is doing over at the WSJ. There must be an over/under pool somewhere with odds on a board pinpointing the exact month, week, or day that Rupert is going to stick his editorial nose into the day to day operations of the Journal and send the staff of the last bastion of civilized business (and profitable) print media screaming into the night.

If it means anything, my money is on late October!

What If Steve Jobs left Apple? 5 Things That Would Happen Within a Year

What If: Steve Jobs left Apple toady

Steve Jobs has done some remarkable things with Apple. He single-handedly revived a cultural icon that was going to be extinct without him. Steve just rolled out that latest incarnation of the iPhone this week to many aghast faces. You see, Steve is looking a bit thin these days, even for him. Now, that’s not a bad thing, I mean, he is in California where they eat bark and shrubs and such.

But there is one little problem. Steve went  nine months with pancreatic cancer before he told anyone. Now I don’t think Steve owes anyone an explanation, but then I read this line;

In response to questions about his health, an Apple spokeswoman said Jobs was hit with a “common bug” in recent weeks but he still felt it was important to participate in the Apple conference. The spokeswoman said he’s now on the mend with the aid of antibiotics.

Is this explanation passing anyone’s smell test? Not me. I’ve had the flu and never wound up needing to go clothes shopping. I hope everything is fine with Mr. Jobs, but I wonder what would happen to Apple if he decided to leave. here are some thoughts;

1. There is at least a 20% premium baked in to the price of the stock, that would be given back within a two weeks.

2. There would be a huge void in perceived leadership from the general public. Understand, I don’t mean the dyed in the wool Apple minions, I mean people who own an iPod, maybe an iPhone, but who haven’t drank the Cool-Aid entirely.

3. There would be a huge void in actual design and  technology leadership. Steve has driven this department to the point where Apple has opted for form over function.

4. Apple would surely loose it’s cool factor. This would happen quickly as well because Jobs makes it cool to be a geek.

5. Apple would lose it’s independence. I have no doubt that a Jobsless Apple would be a take-over target almost immediately, and folded up neatly into another major electronics company, most likely European, that would steal all of Apple’s ideas and leave it a shell after exploiting Apple’s people, technology, and patents.

So, let’s avoid all this Steve, if there is nothing wrong and it is just a bug then please, eat a friggin’ sandwich, I am waiting for Sally Struthers to start doing on-sites from Cupertino!