When you buy an Android app from the Google app store, they give the app maker your full name, email address and the neighborhood where you live. This occurs without clear warning every single time you buy an app.
If you can’t trust Google’s app store, how can you trust them for anything?
See the original post at http://bit.ly/XO17F7
Last year, Craig Mundie posted about ICANN’s gTLD Reveal Day calling it “another step in the Internet’s evolution.”
Let’s hope we won’t see “one step up and two steps back.”
ICYMI, ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers organization) approved plans for new generic Top Level Domains (“gTLDs”) to add to the common domains you see today, like .com, .net, and .org among and others. It was impressive to see the level of interest in these new domains, with close to 2,000 applications for new unique domains from around the world. As Craig noted, Microsoft focused on eleven new top-level domain names that correspond to our well-known products, services and brands: .microsoft, .windows, .xbox, .office, .docs, .bing, .skype, .live, .skydrive, .hotmail and .azure…
“Our goal for our new TLDs is to promote responsible utilization of the Web and ultimately better experiences for consumers. Although we’re not yet talking about specific plans for the TLDs for which we’ve applied, we believe that – properly used – this expansion of domains can help deliver new services and capabilities to consumers and the Internet community as a whole. Appropriately utilized, the new TLDs can also protect the rights of trademark holders and brand owners, while promoting a safer and more secure computing experience.
“With so many new gTLD applications, there are bound to be cases where multiple players have applied for the same top-level domain, and ICANN has processes in place to help resolve those cases. We are just now reviewing all of the applications by other companies and organizations. We will work closely with ICANN and others to ensure competition and innovation are preserved for the industry, while also helping protect the rights and expectations of other stakeholders.”
Late last summer, ICANN’s own Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) published a report to address the issue of dotless gTLDs. This was partly in response to questions on whether or not new gTLD name registry operators would be able to use their gTLD as a valid Internet domain (e.g. http://microsoft instead of the common http://www.microsoft.com). The SSAC strongly recommended against the use of dotless domains, and opened a comment period on this issue, to get feedback from the community (you can read more here)…
“…the combined effect of these potential ambiguities makes it very difficult in practice to predict how a dotless domain name will be resolved in different situations. The result could be anything from fully expected behavior to a security incident in which the user of a domain name (or URL with the domain name embedded) communicates unknowingly with a party other than intended; or, as in the email example in Section 3.4 above, a failure of the system to provide any service at all. Additionally, this ambiguous behavior could be used to develop methodologies to compromise the session and allow for malicious activities with, for example, DNS redirection.
“The SSAC is aware that there currently exist TLDs that attempt to resolve dotless domain names. Our initial examination reveals that resolution of these names is not consistent or universal, and in particular, applications behave differently when presented with “dotless” responses. These behaviors occur for reasons illustrated in this paper. Recommendation: Dotless domains will not be universally reachable and the SSAC recommends strongly against their use. As a result, the SSAC also recommends that the use of DNS resource records such as A, AAAA, and MX in the apex of a Top-Level Domain (TLD) be contractually prohibited where appropriate and strongly discouraged in all cases.”
As we summarized in our comments, Microsoft supports and endorses the report’s recommendations against use of dotless domains. There are significant security considerations around the use of dotless domains with new gTLDs, generally a bad idea that would create significant security risks for people using the Internet. Dotless domain names are often resolved by operating systems, browsers and other products to addresses on the local network / intranet. Our recommendation is to use Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs) – sometimes referred to an absolute domain name – to ensure that people get where they are expecting when they type in an address on the Internet URL.
Last week, following broad coverage (as briefly noted on TechCrunch) on proposed dotless domains and how new gTLDs might be operated, I had a discussion with the folks over at TheDomains.com on the topic.
As we saw in the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) recommendation to ICANN last week, we believe it’s contrary to the free and open ideals of the Internet for a private commercial entity to act as gatekeeper to domains that consist of generic industry terms, like .search, .cloud or .app. ICANN should follow the GAC’s clear recommendation that any non-open domains that consist of generic industry terms be required to establish that they serve a public interest goal.
Allowing dominant market leaders to control such generic domains is like trusting a fox to guard the henhouse. We urge ICANN to abide by the GAC’s advice and to follow the SSAC’s conclusions in order to preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet, protect the billions of Internet users, and foster healthy competition.
Also available via https://aka.ms/dotless
Last week I read David Bills’ (our chief reliability strategist) post Data Center Knowledge. David is responsible for the broad evangelism of the company’s online service reliability programs. His latest item is a follow on to his posts articles “Designing
for Dependability in the Cloud” and Microsoft’s Journey: Solving Cloud Reliability With Software.
“In part three, I discuss the cultural shift and evolving engineering principles Microsoft is using to help improve the dependability of the services we offer and help customers realize the full potential of the cloud.”
David highlights the importance of identifying as many potential failure conditions as possible in advance in the service design phase, so we can map out how the service should react when the unexpected occurs. (So really, it’s expected, if you’ve mapped out the different potential issues far enough.)
“Many services teams employ fault modeling (FMA) and root cause analysis (RCA) to help them improve the reliability of their services and to help prevent faults from recurring. It’s my opinion that these are necessary but insufficient. Instead, the design team should adopt failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) to help ensure a more effective outcome.
“FMA refers to a repeatable design process that is intended to identify and mitigate faults in the service design. RCA consists of identifying the factors that resulted in the nature, magnitude, location, and timing of harmful outcomes. The primary benefits of FMEA, a holistic, end-to-end methodology, include the comprehensive mapping of failure points and failure modes, which results in a prioritized list of engineering investments to mitigate known failures.”
Akin to our work in scenario focused engineering, groups should look at the entire infrastructure, from the hardware and software we use to run our datacenters, along with the infrastructure and wetware we use to power them, to components in out cloud offerings.
Worth a quick read.
ICYMI, Google Reader, Google Voice App for Blackberry, Google Cloud Connect, and Snapseed Desktop are shutting down. Hilarity ensued on the Internet with the melt down on social media over the change. As Danny Sullivan noted here, “Google should have done better by Google Reader & Google users than to bury its closure in a “spring cleaning” post.”
All the talk about RSS Readers reminded me of how important it is to listen and respond (this from 2011 via TechCrunch).
But I digress.
If you’re impacted by this announcement, have no fear: there are options, many great options.
First off, Good advice from Sara Hevans (@prsarahevans) on how to backup your Google Reader account http://aol.it/Wq3UkJ
Once you’ve backed up, you’ll need a new reader.
With all these options, you may already have an option on your desktop: you can also use Outlook in Microsoft Office to subscribe to an RSS feed as noted here.
So if you’re looking for RSS subscription and management? our own Office 365 Home Premium has that: http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/cc511379.aspx
Quick links:
Also available via https://aka.ms/RSSfeeds
First off: the first rule of Daylight Saving Time is that there is no Daylight Saving Time (in Hawaii or a few parts of North America). The Second rule of Daylight Saving Time is that there is only one “S” in the term “Daylight Savings Time.”
Yes, that’s right: daylight saving time (aka DST) is here once again, which means it’s time to change your clocks this Sunday, March 10, 2013. As we have being doing since I can remember, and was fused into my soul for six months spanning 2006-2007, much of the United States and Canada will “Spring Forward” on Sunday at 2:00AM, as noted in plenty of news articles today.
Oh, sorry… flashback to 2007.
If you’re in SXSW this week, please keep this change in mind. IIRC, a few devices didn’t update correctly last year and hilarity ensued.
Here’s the public service announcement:
This year, DST in much of the US and Canada begins on March 10, several weeks earlier than in years prior to 2007. In 2007, most of the US and Canada “sprang forward” a few weeks earlier than in past years in accordance with the US Department of Energy’s Energy Policy Act of 2005 that was passed into law. DST will end later than it did prior to 2007, on the first Sunday of November (that would be Sunday, Nov. 4, in 2012); more details on the new DST start and end times can be found here). This results in a new DST period that is approximately three to four weeks longer than in previous years.
The switch to daylight saving time also means the time zone suffix changes, now using Daylight Time: for example, Pacific Standard Time is now Pacific Daylight Time (aka PDT). The other time zones move to Mountain Daylight Time (MDT), Central Daylight Time (CDT), and Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). Please note: there will be a quiz later, so commit these to memory.
(As my good friends in Windows noted, Chile joins the DST confusion with the late-breaking news that they will extends their own DST this year, now ending on April 27, 2013 and starting again on September 7, 2013.)
For more about this semi annual change, see National Geographic’s post on “When Does It Start and Why?”
“In recent years several studies have suggested that daylight saving time doesn’t actually save energy—and might even result in a net loss.
“Environmental economist Hendrik Wolff, of the University of Washington, co-authored a paper that studied Australian power-use data when parts of the country extended daylight saving time for the 2000 Sydney Olympics and others did not. The researchers found that the practice reduced lighting and electricity consumption in the evening but increased energy use in the now dark mornings-wiping out the evening gains.”
As NatGeo notes, there are a few exceptions to the DST rules. As noted, Hawaii and most parts of of Arizona don’t use DST. Hawaii not on DST I understand – it’s off the grid and who wants to worry about changing their watches on vacation? (Seriously, it does mess with small details like television programming and flight schedules from the mainland.) But Arizona? Something to do with the weather, as Chris Kline covered for the ABC affiliate in his article “Weird? Why Arizona doesn’t observe Daylight Saving Time…
“The history of daylight saving is tied to energy conservation. Switching to DST in the summer means more sunlight at night, which in turn means homes don’t have to turn on lights as early. According to the U.S. Government, that leads to energy and fuel savings.”
And Indiana. Ah, yes… Indiana. You’ll find everything you need to know about this in articles like this one for Indiana. Salon notes in their article Please end Daylight Saving Time…
“In fact, farmers generally oppose daylight saving time. In Indiana, where part of the state observes DST and part does not, farmers have opposed a move to DST.”
There are exceptions, such as the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona, which does observe daylight saving time. And according to entries on Wikipedia, there are a few exceptions in Canada not using DST, including a few areas (parts of British Columbia, Nunavut, Ontario and Quebec) and almost all of Saskatchewan.
C’mon, Saskatchewan…
What to do
So what should you do to make sure that your computers are ready for the change? If you use Microsoft Update on your PC at home, chances are you’re already covered. The December Cumulative Daylight Saving Time and Time Zone Update for Windows should already be installed on your PC. If you’re not sure, visit Microsoft Windows Update to check your PC and install important updates. At work, if an IT Pro (aka ‘hero’) manages your network, chances are good that the needed updates have already been installed on your computers and devices automagically.
In support of the changes to DST and time zones around the world, the December 2012 cumulative update is live on Windows Update (deployed December 13, 2011) and available at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2779562.
Recently, I received a question similar to one I answered previously on daylight saving time and time zone updates to Windows:
“We updated our systems earlier this year for daylight saving time [the rules for the US and Canada]. Is there anything we need to do? Should we also update our systems with the last DST update?”
Generally, the answer is yes. As I noted earlier here, it depends.
If you manage servers and a host of Microsoft software, visit http://www.microsoft.com/time for more details. And visit the support web sites of any other software companies to see if you need to apply any updates – it’s not just Microsoft software that may require updates. Keep in mind that it’s not just the US and Canada that made changes to DST and time zones: we have an upcoming change in Australia and others noted on the DST and Time Zone Hot Topics page.
If you don’t want to just live with it, as the New York Time notes, there’s even a way you can change the world: vote to eliminate Daylight Saving Time in the US here: http://wh.gov/fh4k
And remember: time is a precious thing. Never waste it.
Of interest, these top news articles for daylight saving time…
Tags: Microsoft, Daylight Saving Time, Daylight Savings Time,DST
Share this post: 
Also available via https://aka.ms/dst2013