Traditional Computing
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Version 3, 29 June 2007 Copyright © 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. < http://fsf.org/ > Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Microsoft works to win desktop users over to the Start screen
The most striking, in-your-face, and noticeable part of Windows 8 is its new Metro user interface, and in particular, its Start screen . The Start screen is a replacement for the Start menu that has been a feature of Windows for the last 16 years. The Start screen is touch-friendly, fullscreen, and filled with live, active tiles. It couldn't look much more different from the Start menu. Microsoft is well aware of this, and has begun tweaking the Start screen in response to user feedback.
Impressed by FBI trojan, Germans write their own—and national scandal ensues
It has been pretty chaotic in German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet ever since the Chaos Computer Club dumped some alarming technology news in her lap. Turns out that the German government's "lawful interception" application, supposedly designed only to monitor IP telephone calls, is just a little more powerful than the police let on. Berlin-based CCC released its analysis of Germany's "Quellen-TKÜ" ("source wiretapping") trojan on Saturday. The results weren't pretty. Despite a constitutional court ban on the use of malware to crack PCs, the state-sanctioned malware's makers didn't even bother to add technical barriers ensuring that the code would only be used for tapping Internet telephone conversations. "On the contrary, the design included functionality to clandestinely add more components over the network right from the start, making it a bridge-head to further infiltrate the computer," CCC's report noted.