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Tech Support Blog

When You Are Facing The U.S. Government, It Helps To Have A Lawyer Like Mary E. Snapp!

A few years back, Microsoft had some legal troubles.  The U.S. government decided to aggressively pursue the Microsoft Corporation for antitrust violations.  This resulted in a restructuring of much of the way Microsoft does business and as Microsoft progresses past that dark chapter in its corporate history, it is once more growing steadily.  The results of the government probes and prosecution would have been much worse, had it not been for Mary E. Snapp.

Mary E. Snapp is the Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel in the Law and Corporate Affairs branch of Microsoft.  She specializes in providing legal advice for the Products and Services Division of Microsoft.  As Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of the vital Products and Services division, Snapp oversees 150 lawyers working to protect Microsoft’s legal claims for some of the most widely-used Microsoft products.

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What The Hacking Of Symanetec Means To You.

The biggest problem in the tech sector is not supply chain problems, environmental regulations, lack of creativity or even limited battery life.  The biggest problem in the tech sector, like so many industries, is hubris.  Hubris, the pride that leads one to believe that they are invincible, flawless, destined for greatness/market dominance/perfection, is the true scourge of the tech sector.  Why?  Quite simply it is the vainest form of hubris wherein the largest technology companies come to believe that because they have hired the absolute best and brightest tech school graduates, that the pool is empty, no other geniuses exist.  Virtually every major tech company believes that they have the individuals and teams who are the most skilled and most creative.  That belief makes them blind to the creative programming geniuses who work outside the corporate structure.

Symantec was so blinded when hackers cracked into their servers and downloaded the source code for Symantec’s pcAnywhere and Norton Antivirus.

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Copying Versus Copyright

After the federal government took down the file-sharing website MegaUpload, many people have renewed the copyright debate. MegaUpload, and the associated site MegaVideo, were some of the most popular websites on the Internet, with millions of page views a day. The Justice Department’s quick and efficient takedown of MegaUpload has scared many of the other major file-sharing websites.

FileSonic and FileServe have both suspended users’ ability to download any content that the users did not upload themselves. This reaction, immediately after the MegaUpload takedown happened, is meant to save them from the same criminal charges the owners of MegaUpload are facing.

Other than file-sharing sites changing the way they function, there have been many mixed reactions to the Justice Department’s actions. Some say that it was unconstitutional, as users who had legal files on MegaUpload cannot access those files anymore. Others praise the decision and swift action for stopping online piracy.

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Arguably The Coolest Portable Hard Drive On The Market: LaCia’s Rugged Triple USB 3.0 Hard Drive!

With all of the emphasis on USB flash drives for portable storage, it is easy to forget that portable hard drives are even a viable option for consumers any more.  Portable hard drives, however, offer you more stable digital storage and, usually, greater capacity than can be found on the less-stable flash drives.  LaCia makes it impossible to deny the power and coolness of portable hard drives, though, with the Rugged Triple USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive!

The Rugged Triple Portable Hard Drive is a state-of-the-art portable hard drive from LaCia, one of the leading computer hardware manufacturers concerned with computer security.  LaCia is synonymous with data protection the world round and the Rugged Triple may well be their masterpiece product.

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Brian Krzanich Ascends At Intel!

With a new year comes a plethora of corporate shake-ups.  2012 is no different and Intel, the world’s leading manufacturer of microchips, was one of the big companies to celebrate after the annual Consumer Electronics Show by moving key personnel around.  While several well-known members of Intel’s executive staff moved around – like David Perlmutter, whom the Board promoted to Chief Product Officer – there was perhaps no greater beneficiary of the corporate shake-up than Brian Krzanich.  Brian Krzanich is now the Chief Operating Officer of Intel!

Brian Krzanich was Intel’s Vice President and General Manager for Manufacturing and Supply when he was tapped to be the new Chief Operating Officer.  Krzanich served as General Manager for Marketing and Supply since 2007 and before that, he worked for four years as part of the Assembly Test team, ensuring quality control at Intel was up to the company’s lofty standards.  Brian Krzanich first came to the attention of Intel’s executives when he devised a process to manufacture technologies at the .13 micron-process level.  This was a breakthrough at the time and helped put him on the radar of those he will now work with as Chief Operating Officer.

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A Mystery No Longer: A Layperson’s Guide To FireWire!

If you have been around an Apple store lately, you may have heard a lot of jargon shot at you.  Apple has such a pervasive subculture that those who are in it seem to find it inconceivable that anyone could not be a part of their subculture.  As a result, Apple salespeople often rattle off specifications and jargon at such a speed at to appear daunting to those who are not technically inclined.  One of the most frequent words Apple salespeople toss out with the expectation that you know what they are talking about is “FireWire.”

You may have been too afraid to ask, but you are not foolish for not knowing what FireWire is.

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Dieting When You Want To Eat Out Is Made Easier By The YumPower App!

One of the most popular New Year’s Resolutions in the United States is to make a commitment to lose weight or improve your health through better management of your diet.  To that end, there are a lot of impressive ways that technology can help you in your fight to lose weight.  Sites like CalorieCount and devices like the DietMate Weight Loss Computer can be real assets if you are trying to lose weight.  But, if you do not want to buy a new computer device or if you eat out a lot, those products may not work well for you.  For you, there is the YumPower app!

YumPower is an application for smartphones from HealthPartners.  The premise of the application is ridiculously simple; when you tell the app your current location and the type of diet you are on, it finds proximate restaurants to you that will meet your dietary needs.  Even more impressive, YumPower not only indicates which restaurants you can eat at, but it informs you of the menu items that meet your dietary needs.  So, for example, YumPower asserts that for those who are on a low calorie diet, Denny’s has nine options for your dining pleasure!

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A Billionaire With A B.S., Marc Benioff Innovates With Salesforce!

There are few industries where you can rise to become a billionaire with little in the way of formal education.  In fact, outside the entertainment industry, the most probable way to become a billionaire fast is through the technology sector.  The innovation of computer devices and electronic products requires intelligence and creativity. The technology industry still rewards people who have a great idea without a lot of formal education on their resume.  Marc Benioff is one such creative and intelligent mind who has used the technology sector to amass a fortune.

Marc Benioff is the founder and CEO of Salesforce.com.  In 1999, Benioff saw the potentials of the Internet to deliver software to customers in a non-traditional way.  Believing that the Internet represented a vast pool of data and computing power, Benioff conceived of the idea of computer users operating software that they did not actually have installed on their computers.  Yes, Marc Benioff is generally considered to have conceived of Cloud computing long before it was effectively marketed!

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Rebecca Black Had A Pretty Awesome 2011!

The Internet is a remarkably shifty place.  Like the most clique-oriented teenagers, the Internet is home to overnight successes and equally fast crashes in popularity.  The Internet is, in many ways, the ultimate medium for those who have short attention spans.  Perhaps that is why there have been remarkably few Internet music phenomena.  The latest celebrity in music to have gotten her start from exposure on the Internet is also, arguably, the one who has gained the most from her time as an Internet phenomenon.  That person is Rebecca Black.

Rebecca Black was thirteen years old when she became an Internet phenomenon with her song “Friday.”  ARK Music Factory produced the song “Friday” and its creation was a gift from Black’s mother to Rebecca.  When the video for “Friday” was released on YouTube, it languished for a month before exploding with popularity.  On March 11, 2011, “Friday” started picking up millions of hits and the song and Rebecca Black became trending topics on Twitter.  Despite having a vastly disproportionate number of “dislike” ratings by viewers, “Friday” became a legitimate Internet success when YouTube users downloaded the video over 165 million times. The video earned tens of thousands of dollars in royalties and revenue-sharing from advertising through YouTube.

But how did Rebecca Black become an Internet phenomenon and what did she do with her sudden celebrity?

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The Future of Data Storage

Have you been considering upgrading the storage capacity of your laptop? Are you thinking about data backup? Since different laptops store data in various manners, there are actually quite a few options to consider when upgrading your laptop’s storage capacity.

The oldest type of storage, and the bulkiest, is the traditional hard disk drive. Hard disk drives have been around since the 1950s, though they are drastically smaller now than they were then. Hard disk drives use a rigid spinning disk to store information and they have been growing in storage capacity at a pace that has kept them relevant for the advances in technology.

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Patented - Patent Numbers: 6,898,435, 8,832,424 and 9,477,488
Additional Patents Pending