Security Bullet In
Communiques from the security front, sir
Monday 11 December 2006, 4:50 PM
Piracy "good for Russian economy", says Kaspersky representative
Russia would technologically "still be in the stone age" without the effects of software piracy, according to Timur Tsoriev, Kaspersky corporate communications and pr manager.
He told me that piracy was becoming less of a problem in Russia now, as people are getting more solvent and want to buy quality goods rather than counterfeit products.
However, he said that the Russian IT economy would not be as buoyant as it is without the effects of piracy, as people in the nineties simply could not afford Microsoft licences, whereas now they can. Piracy gave Russians the means to gain competitive IT skills, allowing them to generate wealth, according to Tsoriev.
It is still possible to buy countefeit software under the counter in most shops, said Tsoriev -- it's often sold alongside legitimate software.
Tsoriev said that Microsoft does not pursue enforcement actions in Russia because piracy actually creates a market for its goods -- as everybody uses Windows, Microsoft focuses on selling to businesses.
Friday 8 December 2006, 3:00 PM
Kaspersky questions the value of parental controls
Apparently parental controls are "bullshit", according to a director at Kaspersky.
The controls, which led last month to Microsoft's co-president Jim Allchin confidently asserting that he was happy to let his seven-year-old son on his locked down computer without antivirus, were roundly dismissed by Kaspersky product director Veniamin Levtsov over a hearty Russian lunch on a Kaspersky Labs press trip to Moscow.
"Parental controls are bullshit," said Levtsov. "They only work for 10 to 14 year old boys."
Apparently this small demographic is relatively unimportant. Kaspersky will not be including parental controls in its next offering, due out January, but eventually will be forced to due to the fact that other antivirus vendors will follow Microsoft's lead.
Microsoft has been making much of parental controls, trumpeting them as a wondrous security feature.
"We will include parental controls eventually because others are -- but we'll just be ticking boxes," Levstov told ZDNet UK.
Friday 1 December 2006, 5:00 PM
Sat nav sends ambulance on 400 mile round trip
Oops. An ambulance meant to be carrying a patient a short distance in Essex was accidently sent 200 miles in the wrong direction by a faulty satellite navigation system, reports the Manchester Evening News.
"The crew had been tasked with taking the male patient 12 miles across Essex from King George Hospital in Ilford to Mascalls Park Hospital near Brentwood - a 12 mile journey which should have taken about 30 minutes.
But a fault in the ambulance's on-board satellite navigation system sent the London Ambulance Service crew on an eight-hour round trip to Manchester.
A spokesman for the ambulance service said the crew set off in the early hours of Tuesday morning. They didn't reach Mascalls Park Hospital until the early afternoon.
He said the crew hadn't been to Mascalls Park before and only realised they were heading in the wrong direction when they reached the outskirts of Manchester."
Whoever said a blind reliance on the powers of technology was foolhardy? Plan B, anyone?
