I sent four nearly identical mails today, one each to MEPs Bendt Bendtsen, Anne E. Jensen, Morten Løkkegaard, and Jens Rohde at their respective europarl.europa.eu email addresses.

I chose these four, since they are listed as the 4 Danish MEPs who voted against certain amendments to ACTA (mentioned by Marietje Schaake on Reddit) in 2010 according to votewatch.eu here (please adjust the search criteria to match those relevant to you).

Below is the text of the mail to Bendt Bendtsen, wherein I identify myself as a Danish Conservative voter (the three others are from an allied party, where I identify my political stance with are more general term), but also as a somewhat tech savvy internet user, thus wanting an explanation for the past negative vote, clarification on their current stance on ACTA ratification, and offering assistance in understanding (and hopefully, eventually, agreeing with) the huge public opposition. If I get the time later, I will translate into English in the comments – if someone else wants to do so for me, they shall be most welcome

Subject: Tidligere afstemning om ændringer til ACTA

Kære Hr. Bendtsen,

I henhold til http://www.votewatch.eu/cx_vote_details.php?id_act=1189&euro_vot_valoare=-&euro_vot_rol_euro_grup=&euro_vot_rol_euro_tara=&vers=2&order_by=euro_parlamentar_nume&order=ASC&last_order_by=euro_parlamentar_nume&limit=0&offset=0&nextorder=ASC&euro_tara_id=17&euro_grup_id=&euro_vot_valoare=-&euro_vot_rol_euro_grup= ser jeg, at De stemte imod ændringsforslag til ACTA d. 24.11.2010.

Som konservativ vælger, men også som moderne internetbruger med omfattende teknologisk viden, vil jeg gerne udbede mig en forklaring på dette, samt sikre mig, at De ikke er fejlinformeret, såfremt De påregner at stemme for at ratificere ACTA i sin nuværende form.

Skulle dette være tilfældet, står jeg gerne til rådighed med henblik på at påvise, hvorfor ACTA i sin nuværende form, som den forholder sig til spørgsmål af elektronisk karakter, er aldeles uacceptabel, samt hvorfor dens udfærdigelse og ratificering har været, er og vil være et groft uanstændigt anslag mod både demokratiske grundprincipper og basale frihedsrettigheder.

Alvorligst,

Sune Mølgaard
Risskov, Århus

N.B.: Being in a hurry, I opened the message body of the mail to Anne E. Jensen with “Kære Hr. Bendtsen,”, instead of personalising the opening to her. I sent a follow-up email apologising for this, but requesting her answer none the less.

If the reader remembers the days of Windows 95 and NT, she should also remember the teardrop attacks.

It would appear that some brave MS programmer pined for those days of remote BSODs, and thus has reintroduced this beloved feature in the SMB2 protocol driver in Vista and Windows 7.

Kudos!

Hal Licino did an interesting experiment, suggesting that Hotmail loses an indecently high number of mails containing attachments. Worth noting, he did the experiment with paid for accounts, not the free ones, even though the numbers would be outrageous even if that was the case.

Lost any mails in transfer lately? Using Hotmail? Go sue someone!

HardOCP.com writer Brian Boyko took Vista for a spin, using it exclusively on his home machine for 30 days, resulting in 30 Days with Windows Vista.

It is a lengthy piece, seems unbiased, and he even puts in a nice little disclaimer, stating that he is by no means an MS-basher. It could be hard to tell, though, from what he has to say about Vista.

The only mildly interested readers should at least read the conclusion (reachable from the article front page).

I will probably never be heard touting the security and reliability of Windows. Never have, can’t see it happening anytime soon. It would seem however, that the UK’s Royal Navy is more easily impressed.

Cue Windows 2000 for Warships… Am I the only one who remember the case of Windows 2000 and LAX not mixing well?

Once again, a UAC vulnerability has been found. And once again, MS fails to see it as a problem…

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Remember the “Burst vs. Microsoft” case?

At some point in time, Microsoft were ordered to deliver copies of email correspondence relating to Burst, but told the court it would be infeasible. The order was none the less repeated, but before said emails were delivered, the case was settled. Robert X. Cringely covered the case, and he recently received an email from a contractor involved in backup procedures within Microsoft.

The following timeline seems to cover the problem of the email correspondence:

• Microsoft is ordered to hand over the emails.
• Microsoft informs the court that this would be infeasible
• None the less, Microsoft instructs their contractors to gather backups from the specified period, and store them at a given location
• The court repeats it’s orders
• The backup contractors discover that the previously gathered tapes are “mysteriously missing”, and are held responsible by Microsoft
• The case is settled out of court without Microsoft producing the emails

How very convenient, and how very sad.

As may be known to you, proposals for open, XML-based document formats have been submitted to the ISO/IEC. Open Document Format (wikipedia article), ODF, meets the usual requirements for being an open standard, and on the outside, MS’ competing format Office Open XML (wikipedia article), OOXML, appears to do so as well.

ISO adoption of the OOXML format has been blocked by IBM, backing ODF, which has sparked this open letter from MS, stating among other things that

When ODF was under consideration, Microsoft made no effort to slow down the process because we recognized customers’ interest in the standardization of document formats.

While it is true that MS did not hinder the standardisation process, it certainly did not forgo chances to hinder the adoption of it by interested parties: Inside story: How Microsoft & Massachusetts played hardball over open standards, Computerworld.com.

Furthermore, while a proposed standard may be openly presented, that certainly does not mean that it is openly implementable, as this article shows.

I will let it suffice to ask, if a standard containing the tags “lineWrapLikeWord6″, “useWord2002TableStyleRules” or “useWord97LineBreakRules” conveys a sense of openness or interoperabilty, considering that the formats for Word 6, Word 97 and Word2002 are strictly closed.

Seems MS has an answer for Joanna Rutkowska (her blog entry), with regards to the situation described in my last post.

Contrary to all statements leading up to the Vista relase, she quotes Mark Russinovich of MS as writing that UAC is not “a security boundary”, and thus that:

Because elevations and ILs don’t define a security boundary, potential avenues of attack, regardless of ease or scope, are not security bugs.

So, not only is the much hyped security measures not reagarded as security measures by MS, and thus their failing to provide security is a non-bug.

Now isn’t that lovely?