Posted 06/06/09 at 11:05:23 PM by Justin Kerr

Russia’s state run anti-monopoly service has launched a formal investigation into Microsoft over cutbacks in the supply of Windows XP. The agency believes that Microsoft has violated antimonopoly legislation by intentionally limiting the stock of Windows XP to Russia in both retail, and OEM editions which come preinstalled on new PC’s. Analysts claim that Windows Vista continues to be available, while the ongoing demand for XP both by the public, and the government, remains unsatisfied.

Microsoft has yet to formally address the issue, but according to the Moscow regional office, nobody from the anti-monopoly service has tried to contact them. "We (have) always answered antimonopoly service questions in full and intend to continue this practice in future," Microsoft spokeswoman Marina Levina said by telephone. Full scale investigations by the antimonopoly service in Russia are rare, and Microsoft will be given more details by July 24th.

The accusations being made in Russia are drastically different than previous antitrust cases leveled by the EU and USA. In both these cases, the complaints were focused on software bundling for which it was fined $708 million in 2004 by the EU.

Could Microsoft be intentionally limiting Windows XP supply in Russia to help push Vista?

Read More

Posted 10/10/08 at 06:46:20 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Elcomsoft, a Russian firm, has devised an ingenious method of breaching WiFi’s WPA and WPA 2 encryption systems, according to a report at SC Magazine.

The technique leverages the parallel processing power of Nvidia’s latest graphics cards to speed up the “password recovery” process by 10,000 per cent. Global Security Systems (GSS) has advised enterprises to deploy VPNs for safeguarding their WiFi networks.

We, too, can only advise you to secure your office WiFi network using VPN encryption before professional industrial sleuths start waging brute forcing blitzkriegs using ordinary graphics cards.

Read More

Posted 07/19/08 at 12:09:47 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Google wants to further strengthen its grip on the online contextual ads business. To this end, it has announced that it is going to acquire a leading Russian contextual advertising company, Begun, for $140 million. Begun’s network encompasses 143,000 Russian websites and 40,000 publishers. Rambler Media, the majority owner of Begun, will buy the remaining stake in the company and in turn sell the entire company to Google. According to Rambler, the online search ads business in Russia is expected to grow by 50% in a year’s time. The acquisition will allow Google to expand its wings over the lucrative, Russian-speaking internet landmass.

Read More