The owner of Privacy.net and Network-Tools.com, Russ Smith, has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, Cisco, Comcast and TRUSTe.

The lawsuit claims that Comcast, Microsoft, and Cisco collected information about Smith’s IP addresses and either put them on a “blacklist” or gave them a poor “Reputation Score.”  Comcast even blocked his communication link with a mail server he operates outside the Comcast network.  The suit claims that in order to collect this information in the first place Comcast, Cisco and Microsoft violated eavesdropping laws.  The suit goes on to claim that Comcast, Microsoft, and Cisco failed to adhere to their privacy policies.  When Smith tried to use the privacy policies of Comcast, Microsoft, and Cisco to correct the spammer accusations the companies balked.  Comcast even told him it didn’t matter what the privacy policy said, he wasn’t getting the information.  He filed complaints with the TRUSTe organization that verifies the privacy policies of Microsoft and Comcast but that did no good.

via Privacy.net sues Microsoft, Cisco, Comcast and TRUSTe – Privacy.net.

From time to time I will utilize the services of network-tools.com for troubleshooting &c. I was rather surprised to find a link to this lawsuit. Needless to say it is an interesting and important one. Good luck to Mr. Smith.

It wold appear that this factory in China “dehumanizes” people.

The report by the National Labor Committee, a human-rights group based in Pittsburgh, covers the work environment in the Meitai Plastic and Electronics factory in Dongguan City, Guangdong, China. According to the report, released this month, workers sit on hard wooden stools for 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. Overtime is mandatory, with workers being given on average two days off per month.

It’s possible that the keyboard you’re typing on could be the product of sweatshop labor.

I got this email that I felt deserved to be re blogged from WashTech.

Microsoft laid off 872 workers locally last week, while NO Layoffs took place at Microsoft India. Outsourcing is sapping the American economy every day. Americans are training their own replacements every day.

www.washtech.org is looking for your opinions. We’re making short video recordings of people (need not be ex or present Microsoft employees) who want to share their outrage over how corporate America is draining the American middle class. Contact dang@washtech.org, or priyanka@washtech.org with “MSFT Video” in subject line. Participants’ identities will be 100% protected. We’ll walk them through the process.

Here again are the links to both stories referenced above:

https://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9126805

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/News_By_Industry/Jobs/Microsoft_to_axe_5000_no_job_cuts_in_India/articleshow/4018523.cms

Looks like Vista isn’t the only thing rotten at Microsoft. These are the games we play with corporations all the time. The “economy is bad” (granted it is bad) so now Microsoft can lay off thousands even though financially they really aren’t threatened and even remain profitable.

A blogger at MSFT Extreme Makeover thinks Ballmer has underperformed and they say this in their last post ever.

It’s sobering to realize that during Ballmer’s term as CEO, MSFT has underperformed almost all of its top tech peers (including AAPL, IBM, HPQ, SAP, INTC, CSCO, SYMC, NOK, ORCL, ADBE, RIMM, QCOM, Ebay, and AMZN), and badly lagged the major averages. We may even see our third plunge to test the 2000 lows during his watch. Unbelievable.

You can’t help but agree with them. It looks like there are a lot of people who want to leave Microsoft. If I were a headhunter I’d be looking at the full time and the perma temps.

Technorati : microsoft, steve ballmer

It would appear that Wall Street is souring in its outlook on Microsoft. Why? Well, that has to do with that horrible excuse for an operating system in Windows Vista. The sad thing is that pie in the face Steve Ballmer and gang are still trying to push this thing on everyone. I guess you can call it sweet retribution for the way they use temp workers over there. You know, they hire all these temps so that they won’t have to treat them like permanent staff. The temps are basically second class workers over there.

Eventually when Microsoft was smacked in the face with a ruling over a lawsuit saying that the temps were actually working long hours as if they were on staff resulting in a lot of money being owed to them; Microsoft tightened their polices on temp workers even more. Now temp workers have to take one hundred days off after they’ve been there for 365 days or something. So basically you’re good enough to be a temp at Microsoft and slave away for them, but you’re not good enough to be a full time employee of the corporation.