Jim Geovedi and Pavel Durov

Jim Geovedi and Pavel Durov. Somewhere in South East Asia

Financial Times: Lunch with Pavel Durov

LUNCH WITH THE FT

July 3, 2015 11:56 am

Lunch with the FT: Pavel Durov

John Thornhill

Over spaghetti in London, the tech entrepreneur talks about founding Russia’s biggest social networking app, falling out with Putin and life as an international nomad

©James Ferguson

In the journalistic shorthand of his native Russia, Pavel Durov is unfailingly described as his country’s Mark Zuckerberg. Though flattering, the comparison with the Facebook founder does not seem quite right to me: it overstates Durov’s commercial success while, if anything, understating his personal accomplishments.

Like Zuckerberg, the boyish tech entrepreneur from St Petersburg created his country’s most popular social network, VKontakte, which revolutionised the Russian internet. But in 2011 Durov fell foul of the Kremlin by refusing to close down the pages of opposition activists as protests swelled against the returning president, Vladimir Putin. He became a target of increasing police harassment and was, in effect, forced to sell out of VKontakte to pro-Kremlin investors. Fired as the company’s chief executive in 2014, he quit Russia with $300m in his pocket and founded a new messaging app, Telegram. He now wanders the world preaching the virtues of secure communications and libertarianism.

Comparisons aside, Durov has certainly packed a lot into his 30 years and retains grandiose plans for the future. So I am a little surprised when a slim, unassuming man slips into a sleek Italian restaurant in Mayfair and introduces himself in quiet, near-flawless English. His appearance, all-black clothing and rebellious instincts have led to innumerable comparisons with the mysterious action hero Neo in the Matrix films. But Durov’s pale complexion, jet black hair, and doe eyes remind me more of a dreamy prince in a Disney cartoon.

He tells me that he chose Quattro Passi for lunch because he is staying nearby and likes the cooking. “Italian food is simple and healthy, and it’s easier for a vegetarian to choose something from the menu,” he says. It perhaps also reminds him of his childhood: Durov spent several years in Italy, in Turin, because his father Valery (who holds a PhD in philology and is an expert on ancient Rome) was employed there. “I was born in the Soviet Union. Then when I was three or four we moved to Italy and by the time we got back there was no more Soviet Union,” he says.

Snowden is my personal hero

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The restaurant is a hedge fund manager’s heaven of silver decorations, mirrors and taupe furnishings. We study the menu. Durov orders burrata and plain spaghetti with cheese for the main course. “White?” the waitress enquires. “White and, please, no salt or a minimal amount of salt. Thank you,” he replies. After asking whether they have any rye bread (they have none), he orders some homemade brown bread instead. This makes my order of minestrone and monkfish with cherries seem racy.

I ask him about his lifestyle as an international nomad. Durov, who says he is addicted to big cities but does not like the concept of countries, explains how he and a core team of four engineers from Telegram take their work with them round the world. “We choose a place and stay there for two or three months, then we relocate to the next place. Adiós.”

He travels on a passport from St Kitts and, over the past year, he and his team have worked out of San Francisco, New York, London, Paris and Berlin, and he is off again soon to Finland. The peripatetic lifestyle also suits his business, given that one of its great selling points is security. “Since the day we started Telegram 18 months ago we haven’t disclosed a single byte of user data to third parties, including government officials.”

Though Telegram is registered as both a British and a US company, it does not disclose where it rents offices or the legal entities it uses to rent them. This helps shelter his team from any “unnecessary influence”, he says, and enables the company to protect its 62m users from data requests from government. Telegram uses a distributed network of servers in several different jurisdictions, rather than a central hub like most other messaging apps.

The initial impulse for both of his companies has stemmed, Durov says, from satisfying a personal need: the wish to communicate with his university friends in the case of VKontakte, and the necessity of creating a secure messaging system with Telegram. He had the idea for the latter after he came under intense scrutiny from the Russian authorities in 2011. Armed police attempted to storm his apartment in St Petersburg and he realised that his communications were being tapped. He wanted a means of communicating securely with his 34-year-old brother Nikolai, a mathematician and engineer who helped found VKontakte and later developed the encryption code for the Telegram app.

“Our right for private communication and privacy is more important than the marginal threats that some politicians would like to make us afraid of. If you get rid of emotion for a minute and think about the threat of terrorism statistically, it’s not even there. The probability that you will slip on a wet floor in your bathroom and die is a thousand times higher than the probability of you dying as a result of terrorism.”

Quattro Passi

34 Dover Street, London

Burrata £12

Minestrone £12

Monkfish £24

Spaghetti with formaggio £18

Grissini £3

Fresh mint tea x 2 £10

Total (with service) £88.88

But those statistics can be used to support different conclusions, I counter. Maybe they show that the security services are gleaning vital information from data intercepts and are preventing many more terrorist attacks. Doesn’t end-to-end encryption, such as he uses, only tilt the field in the terrorist’s favour?

He argues it is simplistic to assume the relatively rare occurrence of terrorist incidents in the west is necessarily a sign of government’s effectiveness. Given the ease of committing terrorist acts, maybe it reflects the lack of terrorist intent. “I think we in western civilisation tend to overestimate our own abilities to solve the problems and challenges that we face,” he says.

For example, he continues, the pharmaceuticals industry persuades us we need to take pills to keep healthy. “But I don’t use anything pharmaceutical companies have to offer and I’m still healthy. Maybe we shouldn’t be too dependent on the advertisements companies want us to believe. Maybe we shouldn’t be too dependent on politicians trying to make us believe that we are safe only because of their actions.”

Moreover, if the security services really want to access a user’s data, he says, they can try going to Google and Apple. “Since there is always the probability that these companies can allow the security agencies direct access to your device, nobody can be 100 per cent sure, but one thing Telegram does is make mass surveillance impossible.”

 . . . 

I ask him if he approves of Edward Snowden blowing the lid off US and UK surveillance programmes. “Obviously, yes. He is my personal hero,” he replies. “We are the same age and in a way I regard his battle with the National Security Agency as a generational war. It’s the new versus the old.” Durov has never met Snowden other than by video conference but publicly offered him a job at Telegram — an invitation he declined. “Any government that likes to call themselves democratic should welcome Snowden and allow him to live in their country.”

While talking, Durov has carefully chopped his burrata into little pieces and eaten them but left the accompanying red peppers and rocket on the side.

Some 5bn messages are now sent via Telegram daily. But security is not the only reason for Telegram’s appeal, he says, explaining that it is the only mass-market messaging app that has opened its source code, thus encouraging other developers to use it as a platform. This enables developers to run educational programmes to learn Chinese, for example, or run chat groups or dating sites. “I see it as a tool for providing social good,” he says.

Pulling out his smartphone, which has a cracked screen, he demonstrates how a third-party developer over a weekend came up with a prototype dating app on Telegram’s platform. Almost instantly, he connects with a Julia, 32, in St Petersburg. “If I say, yes, I like her, and on the other side she would say yes, the bot will connect us,” he says.

That may be so yet, for the moment, Telegram is not making any money: the equipment, staff and traffic costs are burning about $1m of Durov’s cash a month. But he has long had a casual view of money — in 2012 he and his colleagues threw paper darts made of Rbs5,000 ($90) banknotes out of his office window in St Petersburg, causing fights to break out on the street below.

Although outside investors and companies want to invest in or buy Telegram, Durov says he is not yet prepared to open up the company. He says some US tech titans are so intent on making money that they exploit their employees, customers and competitors before giving their wealth away to charity. Durov hopes to develop his business and act for the good of society simultaneously.

Our main courses arrive and we move to what Durov call the “previous project”: VKontakte. Having taught himself coding to build his own computer games, he developed the social network while he was a liberal arts student at St Petersburg State University. Initially it was a platform on which students could share material from lectures they had skipped. It took on a life of its own as several thousand students used it to run discussion groups and post photos, blogs and private messages.

On graduation in 2006 Durov decided to develop it as a business and a means of keeping in touch with his peers. “So, I came up with the name, VKontakte [“in touch”] and I created everything from scratch — all the code, the design, the marketing strategy,” he says. “Mark [Zuckerberg] was lucky because he was studying at Harvard and from the first few weeks he could attract his roommate to help him do some of the coding. I had to do everything myself.”

. . .

Corruption is usually bad, but when the laws are really stupid and outdated . . . it can be a good thing

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Durov concedes he drew inspiration from Facebook, which was fast expanding in US universities at the time, and carefully studied what worked — and what didn’t. He had no difficulty finding talented engineers to develop the network and VKontakte flourished. It was, he says, a “libertarian’s paradise” in the unregulated internet market that then existed in Russia. “You could do anything,” he says. “Of course, there were stupid laws. You could get around them with the help of corruption, which is usually bad, but when the laws are really stupid and outdated and really limit innovation, it can be a good thing.”

The business and political climate changed rapidly in late 2011, however, when Russia’s then prime minister Vladimir Putin made it clear he was going to return to the presidency and mass protests erupted over disputed parliamentary elections. According to Durov, the government panicked and deluged VKontakte with demands to block opposition activity. Durov did not take the requests seriously, fearing he would simply lose traffic to Facebook and Twitter. “So, I made fun of it. I posted a tweet with a dog in a hoodie with its tongue hanging out,” he says. “I also published the scans of these official requests.” In 2012 he incensed Russia’s nationalists by tweeting on the anniversary of the end of the second world war that “Stalin defended from Hitler his right to suppress Soviet people”. “I think the tweet was accurate. Maybe the timing was wrong,” he now concludes. “Stalin killed more people than Hitler did. I hate these two guys equally.”

Durov had misread the mood very badly. There was the abortive raid on his St Petersburg apartment; he was charged with injuring a policeman in a traffic accident; and he and his partners were eventually bought out by pro-Kremlin investors. “I sold because I understood what was coming. I understood that any property I have in Russia is not an asset. It’s a liability. It could be used as leverage to make me do things I don’t want to do.”

Still, as a Russian whose great grandparents had been persecuted by Stalin and whose grandfather had been sent to the gulag in spite of being decorated three times during the second world war, Durov remains philosophical. He knows that far worse could have happened to him. He also sold just before the value of tech stocks nosedived. “I was pretty lucky to sell,” he says.

A fairly unappetising-looking plate of spaghetti is placed in front of Durov while I tuck into my carefully confected dish of monkfish. He says he remains hopeful the reactionary forces that are running Russia will weaken and a more open-minded generation of politicians will come to the fore. “But I regard myself as a tech entrepreneur, not as a politician or philosopher. I’d be happy to see libertarian values spread but it’s not something that I see as my mission.”

His views on other regimes around the world are not much more favourable. The EU is a “bureaucratic monster” that stifles enterprise with red tape and is too cumbersome to adapt to the changes of the 21st century. He admires the founding principles of the US but believes they have been corrupted by the country’s global dominance. “This is a country that has a monopoly in three fields: in technology with Silicon Valley, in entertainment with Hollywood and in finance with Wall Street. They have so much power. But power corrupts.”

He is wary of how some of the tech industry is evolving. “I think Facebook has become excessively affiliated with the government,” he says. “People have got tired of all of their lives being recorded and stored somewhere.”

Durov feels the conflict between Russia and Ukraine deeply but says he could never take sides. “From my mother’s side I am from Ukraine and from my father’s side I am from Russia. Personally I think they are probably the closest relatives in the family of nations.”

He believes a battle of ideas is raging in Russia that will determine the country’s future. As someone who during his military service studied how to wage propaganda wars, he admires the Kremlin’s approach, from a purely professional standpoint. “You can imagine a situation when the state propaganda is so good this new generation will actually believe centralisation is better than decentralisation, planning is better than improvisation, regulation is better than freedom. I can imagine that happening, but I hope it wouldn’t be the case.”

After our main courses are cleared away we both order fresh mint tea. I try to steer the conversation to more personal matters but he bats back a question about whether he has a partner. “I would rather not comment on my private life,” he says.

Throughout the lunch, Durov has been toying with his cloakroom check tag. On leaving he trades it in for a black baseball cap. Smoothing it over his head, he waves a shy goodbye and disappears into a sunny afternoon, leaving me wondering whether I have just met a guest from Russia’s future or an exotic relic of its all-too-brief libertarian past.

John Thornhill is the FT’s deputy editor and a former Moscow bureau chief

Illustration by James Ferguson

http://www.ft.com/intl/life-arts/lunch-with-the-ft

 

Cara Intelijen AS Jebol Data Ponsel dan Internet

http://us.m.news.viva.co.id/news/read/442718-cara-intelijen-as-jebol-data-ponsel-dan-internet

Cara Intelijen AS Jebol Data Ponsel dan Internet
NSA menggunakan program yang dinamakan Bullrun.

Renne R.A Kawilarang, Amal Nur Ngazis | Senin, 9 September 2013, 18:16 WIB

VIVAnews – Badan Keamanan Nasional (NSA) Amerika Serikat terungkap mampu mengakses data ponsel pintar baik dari iPhone, Android dan BlackBerry.

Guna mengakses data, badan intelijen itu disebutkan menjebol enkrispi data dengan menggunakan program yang dinamakan Bullrun.

Bukan hanya menjebol keamanan ponsel pintar saja, program itu juga menerobos sistem enkripsi di bank online, penyedia email dan layanan internet lainnya.

Dilansir Digitaltrends, Senin 9 September 2013, dokumen ini disebutkan berasal dari pembocor rahasia AS, Edward Snowden, yang kini mendapat suaka sementara dari Rusia.

Dokumen berlabel top secret itu menunjukkan NSA bisa menjebol HTTPS dan Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), teknologi enkripsi yang digunakan seluruh web guna menjaga semua transaksi dari semua jenis pengintaian. Akhirnya superkomputer milik NSA mampu menjebolnya.

Program Bullrun yang dibesut NSA dan lembaga mitra intelijen asal Inggris, GCHQ, juga mengganggu jaringan pribadi virtual (VPN) dan enkripsi yang digunakan untuk melindungi sinyal nirkable 4G.

Untuk mensukseskan tujuan mata-mata mereka, ungkap agen badan intelijen itu, dalam beberapa kasus sangat arogan, yaitu memaksa perusahaan teknologi memberikan kunci enkripsi layanan komunikasi, file maupun data pengguna.

Sebagaimana diketahui sebelumnya, menurut laporan dari Guardian, raksasa peranti lunak, Microsoft menjamin analis NSA untuk mengakses pra-enkripsi ke layanan internet pengguna.

Menurut Technewsdaily, NSA punya beberapa program untuk menjebol enkripsi layanan internet. Selain Bullrun, disebutkan masih ada program Manassas dan Edgehill.

Program itu juga bisa menyusup ke dalam komputer staf perusahaan, masuk ke server komputer perusahaan untuk mencuri informasi dan menjebol backdoor (akses komunikasi tanpa mekanisme autentifikasi).

Mekanisme lain, NSA dan GCHQ disebutkan dengan leluasa meracuni standar enkripsi terdistribusi secara terbuka, yang digunakan ratusan juta orang di seluruh dunia tiap hari.

Dengan demikian, standar keamanan itu diam-diam menjadi cacat.

Disebutkan juga, NSA menggunakan Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator atau Dual_EC_DRBG, sebuah generator nomor acak untuk pengoperasian banyak protokol enkripsi. Cara ini diketahui telah dikembangkan pada 2007 silam.

Dan pada tahun itu, Dual_EC_DRBG secara halus bisa meruntuhkan protokol enkripsi.

Cara Hindari

Ahli enkripsi AS, Bruce Schneier prihatin dengan upaya NSA itu. Ia berbagi tips agar data dalam ponsel pengguna aman meski itu tak menjamin.

Schneier merekomendasikan layanan internet anonim, Tor, agar data pribadi pengguna layanan internet aman. Layanan ini mengenkripsi email dan komunikasi lain dan memanfaatkan peranti lunak enkripsi open source, bukan open source komersil.

“Dugaan saya, produk enkripsi dari perusahan besar AS telah sangat dikenali NSA. Dan banyak orang asing mungkin melakukana ini juga,” tulis Schneier.

Disebutkan Tor hanya menawarkan keamanan parsial sementara standar keamanan open source lainnya seperti SSL telah terganggu. Standar enkripsi, Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) yang direkomendasikan Schneier juga terlalu usang, yang tentu saja mudah ditembus NSA.

Dalih Badan Intelijen

Terkait dengan enkripsi semua layanan internet, baik NSA maupun GCHQ menyatakan keamanan dan enkripsi diperlukan untuk menjaga As dan Inggris dari ancaman terorisme.

“Sepanjang sejarah, negara telah menggunakan enkripsi untuk melindungi rahasia mereka. Dan hari ini teroris, penjahat siber dan perdagangan manusia menggunakan kode untuk menyembunyikan kegiatan mereka,” dalih Direktur IntelijenNasional AS, James Clapper dalam pertanyataannya.

© VIVA.co.id

[slashdot] 400 GHz Graphene Transistor

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/08/21/1645230/mit-reports-400-ghz-graphen%20e-transistor-possible-with-negative-resistance

MIT Reports 400 GHz Graphene Transistor Possible With ‘Negative Resistance’

Posted by Unknown Lamer on Wednesday August 21, 2013 @12:50PM

from the switch-faster dept.

An anonymous reader writes”The idea is to take a standard graphene field-effect transistor and find the circumstances in which it demonstrates negative resistance (or negative differential resistance, as they call it). They then use the dip in voltage, like a kind of switch, to perform logic. They show how several graphene field-effect transistors can be combined and manipulated in a way that produces conventional logic gates. Graphene-based circuit can match patterns and it has several important advantages over silicon-based versions. Liu and co can build elementary XOR gates out of only three graphene field-effect transistors compared to the eight or more required using silicon. That translates into a significantly smaller area on a chip. What’s more, graphene transistors can operate at speeds of over 400 GHz.”

Gone* in 60 seconds

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/13/08/01/2024212/iphone-hacked-in-under-60-seconds-using-malicious-charger

iPhone Hacked In Under 60 Seconds Using Malicious Charger
Posted by timothy on Thursday August 01, 2013 @04:57PM
from the with-lucy-liu-I-hope dept.

DavidGilbert99 writes"Apple’s iOs has been known as a bastion of security for many years, but three researchers have now shown iPhones and iPads can be hacked in just under 60 seconds using nothing more than a charger. OK, so it’s not just a charger — but the Mactans charger does delete an official app (say Facebook) replacing it with an official-looking one which is actually malware which could access your contacts, messages, emails, phone calls and even capture your passwords. Apple says it will fix the flaw, but not until the release of iOS 7, the date of which hasn’t been confirmed yet. So watch out for chargers left lying around …"(For less in the way of auto-playing video ads with sound, check out the Mac Observer’s take, which concludes "[I]t’s nifty that Apple is addressing the issue in iOS 7. We’d also like to see it fixed in iOS 6. Apple has historically seen iPhone users upgrade to the newest version iOS in staggeringly high numbers, but eliminating this problem across the board seems the wiser choice.")

Intel NUC: the Next Unit of Computing

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/motherboards/desktop-motherboards/next-unit-computing-introduction.html

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6444/intels-next-unit-of-computing-hands-on

gantinya fan

2012 12 14 13 03 06

2012 12 14 13 02 58

2012 12 14 13 02 53

Useful Websites

Useful Websites

Here is a list of websites we have featured in the past that might come in handy. Remember to set FuckingHomepage.com as your start page if you haven’t already.

Educational/Learning

• khanacademy.org – video lectures on just about any subject
• ted.com – lectures by smart people
• academicearth.org – classroom lectures
• freerice.com – expand your vocabulary while feeding the hungry
• lizardpoint.com – a collection of geography quizzes
• mathrun.net – timed math quizzes
• classicshorts.com – the best short stories
• erowid.org – learn about drugs
• qwikia.com – turn a Wikipedia article into a video
• unplugthetv.com – a collection of intellectually stimulating videos
• factsie.com – a place to learn amazing and unusual historical and scientific facts

Learn Skills

• highercomputingforeveryone.com – learn to program in C
• thechesswebsite.com – a bunch of chess tactics, tutorials, and puzzles
• htmldog.com – learn html
• codecademy.com – learn to code through interactive lessons
• cookingforengineers.com – learn to cook
• digital-photography-school.com – learn photography
• memrise.com – learn a foreign language
• justinguitar.com – guitar video tutorials
• livemocha.com – a language learning community
• musictheory.net – learn music theory
• investopedia.com – learn and practice investing

Useful Web Apps

• mint.com – for budgeting your money
• billshrink.com – compare cell phone and credit card plans
• duckduckgo.com – a search engine that isn’t following you
• padmapper.com – maps out possible apartments/homes that fit your criteria
• printfriendly.com – make any webpage print friendly
• printwhatyoulike.com – print precisely what you want from any webpage
• privnote.com – write a note to someone that will self-destruct after they read it
• freecycle.org – a network of people giving away free stuff in their towns
• couchsurfing.org – crash on someone’s couch anywhere in the world
• recipepuppy.com – search for recipes based on the ingredients you have
• pipl.com – a search engine for finding people
• donorschoose.org – donate to a classroom in need
• charitynavigator.org – evaluates various charities
• govdeals.com – find cheap stuff the government is getting rid of
• newsmap.jp – popular news headlines
• radioreference.com – listen to radio channels across the nation
• jimmyr.com – link aggregator
• msworddit.com – Reddit in Microsoft Word form
• wepay.com – like paypal but less scummy
• thefuckingweather.com – a more profane look at the weather
• wolframalpha.com – a computational knowledge engine
• heavens-above.com – follow satellites and constellations
• whatismyip.com – figure out you I.P. address
• spreeder.com – improve reading speed and comprehension
• simplynoise.com – listen to white noise
• camelcamelcamel.com – tracks prices for any product
• ptable.com – an interactive periodic table
• retailmenot.com – find coupons for just about anything
• searchtempest.com – search all of craigslist with one search
• join.me – peek in on somebody’s computer screen
• thistothat.com – find out the best way to glue this to that
• woorank.com – find out what your website is missing, how you can improve it, and how to make Google recognize it better
• scribblemaps.com – draw on maps then share them with friends
• mailvu.com – video email
• rhymer.com – online rhyming dictionary
• homestyler.com – design your dream home
• wetransfer.com – an easy way to send big files
• mapofthedead.com – shows places around you to help you survive the zombie apocalypse
• pastebin.com – a place to paste text
• idelkeyboard.com – make it sound like you’re hard at work
• wherethefuckshouldigofordrinks.com – find somewhere to get a drink in your area
• dropbox.com – backup your sensitive document online
• seatguru.com – find out where the best seats are on your plane flight
• unlistmy.info – find out which websites store data about you, and tell them to unlist your info
• ifoundyourcamera.net – a collection of lost cameras
• sizeasy.com – check the size of items you buy online
• sleepyti.me – plan out your sleep schedule better
• ninite.com – download all the free software you want at the same time
• ripetrack.com – find out when certain fruits are ripe
• compassionpit.com – talk out your problems with others, or help others yourself
• paperbackswap.com – swap books with others
• reddpics.com – a look at Reddit’s favorite pictures
• swole.me – plan out your meals better
• weatherspark.com – a graphical look at the weather
• network-tools.com – network tools

Entertainment – Music, Movies, Sports, Books

• redditunes.com – Reddit’s favorite music
• grooveshark.com – great place to listen to tunes
• isitback.com – find out when your favorite television shows come back on air
• literature-map.com – type in an author and they will show you others of a similar style
• runpee.com – find out the best time to run to the bathroom during any movie
• songkick.com – searches your music library and tells you when your favorite musicians play in your area
• midomi.com – sing or hum a song you don’t the name of and it will identify it for you
• slashfilm.com – the best movie news blog on the internet
• nanocrowd.com – find out what movie you should watch next
• page99test.com – read page 99 of a book
• nophonetrees.com – talk to an actual person instead of a machine when you call customer service
• bookseer.com – get recommendations for your next read
• sbnation.com – awesome community of sports blogs
• justthefirstframe.com – just the first frame of today’s webcomics

Other Interesting Blogs

• thestuffofmen.com – cool stuff every man should own
• artofmanliness.com – learn man stuff
• thedailymiscellany.com – daily tips, DIYs, ane more
• getrichslowly.org – personal finance advice
• thedatingspecialist.com – seduction tips
• brainpickings.org – a human-powered discovery engine
• fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com – a look at politics through the numbers
• hackaday.com – a new DIY project every day
• shorpy.com – old and interesting pictures
• boston.com/bigpicture – amazing pictures covering the latest news around the world
• newscientist.com – science news
• uncrate.com – a place for stuff men love
• tastespotting.com – pictures of delicious food
• zenhabits.net – take a breath and read this blog
• foodgawker.com – more pictures of delicious food
• theburninghouse.com – a blog cataloging which possessions people choose to save from a burning home
• dwellinggawker.com – check out how amazing the inside of some homes look
• thesimpledollar.com – more personal finance advice
• veryquiet.com – world news and analysis
• mentalfloss.com – where knowledge junkies get their fix
• mrmoneymustache.com – financial advice through badassity
• studyblue.com – study tips
• lettersofnote.com – personal letters written by famous people

Source:

http://fuckinghomepage.com/websites

Awal Keruntuhan Microsoft?

http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-domino-effect-poor-pc-sales-could-unravel-company-7000008209/

—

Microsoft’s domino effect: Poor PC sales could unravel company

Summary: Poor PC sales and lackluster Windows 8 sales could have a significant knock-on, domino-like effect to the rest of the software giant’s business.

By Zack Whittaker for Between the Lines | December 3, 2012 — 12:32 GMT (20:32 SGT)

Microsoft’s entire business ultimately rests on PC sales, and PC sales are dwindling globally pretty badly.

The knock-on effect to the firm’s entire business could be hit in the coming quarters. Poor PC sales mean fewer Windows licenses sold, and that in turn could lead to a scaling back of business and enterprise servers offered by the company.

All the major technology players are all at the prom, but nobody wants to dance with Microsoft. It’s the geeky kid in the corner, sobbing its heart out.

Is Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer still smiling? (Credit: CNET)

Microsoft’s worries all rest on the mere mortal PC. The software giant has already made steps to alleviate some pressure on the PC market by offering its own post-PC tablet in two forms, the Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets, but is also offering a post-PC capable operating system for the wider PC market and tablets, which should theoretically fill the gap.

Microsoft tried, but something isn’t working. The platform is crumbling; the ecosystem isn’t being capitalized upon. The worry is that the decline in PC sales could hit other areas of Microsoft’s business. PC sales hit Windows sales and Office sales, therefore ultimately server software sales.

And that’s where it could all unravel.

1. PC sales are declining, Windows 8 isn’t helping

But research firm NPD said that in the first four three weeks (and one day) following the launch of Windows 8 ending November 17, sales of Microsoft-powered PCs fell 21 percent from a year earlier. Desktop PC sales are down by nine percent, while notebook sales down by 24 percent.

ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley notes that this could be just history repeating itself. Microsoft sold more "standalone Windows 7 software units" during its first week, but Windows 7-based PC sales were lower than they were with Vista.

Microsoft and PC manufacturers have a vastly symbiotic relationship. PC makers build the computers that Windows sits on, and Microsoft providers the software. But as PC sales are declining in favor of post-PC devices, the other half in the relationship has to try and spur on exciting new software in a bid to revitalize PC sales.

All in all, 40 million Windows 8 licenses have been sold to date, putting it far ahead of Windows 7 sales in the first month. Analytics firm StatCounter says this translates to 1.31 percent of the market compared to Windows 7’s first month, while rival Net Applications says Windows 8 is installed on 0.45 percent of all new computers in the first month, double that of Vista’s but a far distance behind Windows 7’s initial uptake.

It’s not catastrophic, but it’s not great. Other factors play into the fold.

2. iPads, Android tablets are eating away the consumer, BYOD market

This hasn’t been a sudden, overnight shift away from the traditional Microsoft-PC combination. The post-PC shift was upon us a year ago and really took force this year.

PC sales are down nearly 10 percent worldwide year-on-year. It’s not that overall device sales are down due to poor macroeconomic conditions or weak currency — it’s surely a factor — but the shift towards tablets, smartphones and "phablets," or part-phones, part-tablets, is pushing ordinary PCs out of the limelight in favor of post-PC devices.

IDC estimates that in the smartphone market, the BlackBerry will crumble in favor of iPhones and Android devices. By 2016, iPhones and iPads along with Android devices will rule the roost. It’s clear to see that bring-your-own-device, (BYOD) employees are shifting away from the more consumer-friendly devices with business appeal. The iPad is a perfect example of Apple not pushing enterprise factors on the enterprise, but allowing them to arrive to their own conclusions over time.

Apple sold 14 million iPads in the last quarter alone, and sold 4.9 million Macs. In total, that’s nearly 19 million devices. In comparison, Lenovo generated 13.7 million shipments, an increase of nearly 10 percent year-on-year, but the rest of the PC market suffered massive declines.

Microsoft is expecting 3-5 million Surface tablets to be shipped this quarter. It’s clear to see fromprevious ZDNet crowdsourced research that Microsoft may expect significantly more Surface devices, but it won’t fully plug the gap left by the dwindling PC market.

3. Developers are reneging on Microsoft’s platform

It’s still early days for Windows 8, and to be fair there’s no easy way to quantify the claims as actual fact that developers are leaving the Microsoft platform in droves. But developers are beginning to look elsewhere to other sources, and it’s a better time than ever following Barclay’s carte blanche of the iPad tablet in the enterprise.

One thing is clear: Microsoft’s app platform is hardly a hotbed of activity — a recent report suggested Microsoft had 20,600 apps in its Windows 8 Store — and Microsoft no longer has the healthy (albeit large) ecosystem of developers it once had.

It all boils down to the competitors again (see the previous point). Many developers are considering whether to go through the heartache of retooling and re-developing their apps for the ‘better’ platform (or at least the most popular, enterprise-grade platform): the iPad.

Loyalty among Microsoft developers is fraying. Compared to a year ago, it’s far easier to appease the BYOD crowd with iPad-ready apps than it is to stick with Microsoft’s platform.

The fact is, the vast majority of Windows software is private and outside the app store ecosystem. Microsoft’s dominance in the private space isn’t changing much.

But Microsoft and Research in Motion’s platforms are being shut out by developers because traditionally, hobbyists would focus on the iPad and Android ecosystems.

The application development shift is becoming more enterprise sponsored, in that a business plan has to sign off on an application, and will only do so if they know where the money is. The money is in the iPad and Android tablet market. Windows 8 and BlackBerry 10 will therefore likely be shut out in the cold.

4. Windows Phone is going nowhere

The ‘perfect’ companion to Windows 8 and Surface tablets is without doubt the Windows Phone platform, just as Windows Mobile was some years ago before it morphed into its present incarnation. But because Surface has yet to take off, despite its higher-than-expected sales orders from the start, it remains a hobbyist device and remains a far cry away from being an enterprise standard device.

If Windows Phone actually takes off, it’ll likely be more by accident than anything else.

BYOD employees remains focused on smartphones, but tablets still has yet to reach its peak. Analysts and research firms expect this to rocket in the coming years.

Latest comScore figures peg Microsoft’s mobile operating system at 3.2 percent, a month-on-month decline. RIM’s heavy and consistent decline will likely see Windows Phone take over, despite its own falling figures, in the first half of next year.

In spite of Microsoft’s partnership with Nokia with the Lumia smartphones, it may not stop the company from falling out of the sky into the abyss of the smartphone ocean.

Considering how poor Lumia sales have been in the last year, Microsoft’s only hope in order to revive its slumping smartphone division is to either build its own device or rest its hopes on more market leaders in the mobile space, such as Samsung, which has propelled Android sales through the roof — to the point where Apple wants to sue the living daylights out of it.

5. The knock-on effect of poor Windows, Office sales could hit other Microsoft businesses

The ultimate knock-on effect here of poor PC sales, ergo poor Windows sales, is that Office will become less important. That is, unless Microsoft can continue its steady momentum into cloud-based services that offer document sharing and collaboration in the cloud as it has with Office 365.

But servers and enterprise software is where Microsoft makes the vast majority of its revenue. With long-term business contracts and licensing sales, it can guarantee a steady stream of revenue. Though, if Windows and Office dwindles in the face of rival hardware and operating systems — notably with the post-PC curve — Microsoft’s back-end technologies will become less and less important.

Microsoft’s Server and Tools division brought in more than $4.5 billion in revenue during the company’s first quarter, and $5.5 billion from its Business division. Servers and enterprise tools are at the heart of Microsoft’s business, but without Windows PCs to operate and serve, the firm’s back-end software business could begin to crumble.

Topics: Microsoft, Tablets, PCs, Windows

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