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Microsoft Finally Allows Customers To Legally Download Windows 7 ISOs

MojoKid writes: It’s long been a pet peeve of many end users that Microsoft has made it such a challenge to procure a legitimate ISO image of its various operating systems. It seems like the company should have no problem offering them in an easy-to-find spot on its website, because after all, it’s not like they can be taken utilized without a legal key. Sometimes, people simply lose the disc or ISO they had, and so it shouldn’t be such a challenge to get a replacement. Fortunately, with a new feature on the Microsoft site, you are now able to get that replacement Windows 7 ISO. However, it’s behind a bit of protection. You’ll need to provide your legal product code, and then the language, in order to go through to the download page. If you’ve somehow lost your key but are still using the OS that it’s tied to, you can retrieve it through a few different third party tools. However, it does seem like not all valid keys work properly just yet, since some users are reporting valid keys throwing errors or not enabling a download for some reason. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft Finally Allows Customers To Legally Download Windows 7 ISOs

Uber data breach compromises IDs of 50,000 drivers

An Uber database containing the names and driver’s license numbers of 50, 000 current and former drivers was accessed by an outside party in 2014, the company announced today. Uber discovered the breach on September 17, 2014, and an investigation revealed one instance of unauthorized access on May 13, 2014. This means the information has been in the wild for nearly a year, though Uber drivers haven’t reported anything fishy and the database is now secure, the company said. Uber began notifying affected drivers of the breach today and is offering a free year membership with an identity protection company. Of the 50, 000 compromised names, 21, 000 were based in California, prompting Uber to also notify the California attorney general, the LA Times says. Additionally, the company has filed a “John Doe” lawsuit in an effort to gather more information about the third party. “Uber takes seriously our responsibility to safeguard personal information, and we are sorry for any inconvenience this incident may cause, ” Uber said. The data breach comes one month after Uber’s security protocols received a clean bill of health as part of an external privacy audit, though that was spurred by high-profile missteps with information about Uber’s passengers, not its drivers. In that report, the investigating agency recommended Uber start training its workforce in security issues and it further restrict access to data among employees. “At Uber, protecting the personal information of riders is a core responsibility and company value, ” CEO Travis Kalanick said at the time. “Delivering on that value means that privacy is woven into every facet of our business, from the design of new products to how we interact with riders, drivers and the public at large.” Filed under: Software , HD Comments Source: Uber

Walmart vs. Netflix DVD battle snags $12 each for 1.2 million people

Ready for a blast from the past? Ten years ago, Walmart’s plan to undercut Netflix on DVD-by-mail rental pricing failed, and the retail giant turned that part of its business over to the movie service in exchange for a cut of the revenue, referral bonuses and Netflix promoting Walmart’s DVD sales to rental customers . A class action lawsuit against the two followed in 2009, with customers alleging they illegally restrained trade and kept prices high. Walmart settled the case for $27 million in 2011, which will turn into about $12 (paid out in gift cards or cash) for the 1.2 million people who filed claims . While the deadline to file has long passed, the payout has been held up due to appeals in the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco against Walmart and Netflix — until now. This week judges ruled on a few items ( PDF , via Courthouse News Service ), including that the settlement was fair — that the nine named plaintiffs get $5, 000 each and a large portion went to lawyer’s fees upset a few class action members . At the time even Netflix had objections , worrying that Walmart was simply buying access to its customer list. Another factor in the ruling is that Netflix never considered Walmart a true competitor (it actually raised prices at the time , and didn’t lower them for competition, even from the much larger Blockbuster) the original ruling was correct, and subscribers could not prove they were injured by the tie-up. It’s not all good news for Netflix though, as the appeals court trimmed the $710k it was awarded for attorney fees, and turned down its request for $21, 000 to cover B&W Powerpoint documents. Of course, soon a million or so people will probably be making it rain drizzle with their $12 payouts, Netflix is now primarily a streaming company with over 57 million customers that just delivered season three of House of Cards , and Walmart, well Walmart has the Vudu Spark dongle. All’s well that ends well. [Image credit: Associated Press] Filed under: Home Entertainment , HD Comments Source: Online DVD Class , Courthouse News Service , The Hollywood Reporter

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Walmart vs. Netflix DVD battle snags $12 each for 1.2 million people

Call centres replaced by WhatsApp customer support

Add / Remove In the US, over 50 percent of companies currently provide customer service via social media, and we have already seen Places enabling customers to talk to any local business via text message. Moving customer relations online makes support teams more available and approachable, significantly cutting down on the stress and costs associated with call centres. Now, two new solutions from Germany and India are hoping to help the rest of the world’s businesses catch up — providing new platforms for digital customer service. Haptik is a mobile messaging assistant from India which enables customers to receive real-time support and information for over 200 international companies, including American Express, BMW, British Airways and many more. Users begin by downloading the app to their smartphone or tablet. They then send a query to Haptik via the WhatsApp-style platform and an assistant will respond within six minutes. The platform’s experts — who specialize in specific areas such as wireless and telecom or food and delivery — offer a huge range of services from finding a mobile plan, to locating a nearby ATM, to troubleshooting a customer’s IT problem. Users simply browse the categories in the app to see if Haptik can help with their particular problem. As more companies come on board, potential services offered will continue to expand. In Germany meanwhile, Hello.de offer a similar service using the pre-existing social messaging platform — WhatsApp — as well as social media sites including Facebook and Twitter. Businesses can outsource their customer services to Hello.de who will provide a gateway platform on WhatsApp where consumer problems and enquiries can be seen to by Hello.de’s e-commerce sales assistants. Additionally, their staff can respond to queries on Twitter and Facebook, managing the companies’ reputation and offering customers a more enjoyable alternative to lengthy, costly phone calls. Are there other businesses that could make use of these services? Website: www.hello-online.de & www.haptik.co Contact: www.hello-online.de/contact & www.haptik.co/contact

Hands-on with the fastest LTE network in Europe: 400Mbps down, 45Mbps up

LONDON—Today, I got to play around with Europe’s (and probably the world’s) fastest LTE network: when I opened up Speedtest.net, depending on how many people were standing in the room, my download speed was between 350 and 400Mbps, my upload speed was around 45Mbps, and my ping latency was just 20ms. Funny enough, beyond Speedtest.net, it is actually quite hard to use 400Mbps of bandwidth. When I loaded up a 4K video from YouTube, I only used around 40Mbps, or 10 percent, of my wireless uber-pipe. Ars Technica certainly loaded very quickly indeed. As it stands today, there are very few websites or services that will let you pull data down at 400Mbps, or where being able to download at 400Mbps even makes much sense. If we’ve learned anything from the last few decades of telecoms and networking, however, it’s that Internet usage will always expand until every last inch of available bandwidth is consumed. So while 400Mbps might seem a little bit over the top today, in five years you’ll probably wonder how you ever survived with anything less. For some background, I had a 400Mbps LTE connection at my disposal because I had been invited to Wembley Stadium in London to try out the first deployment of Category 9 LTE in the UK. It was a “live” deployment in that it used commercially available hardware, but it was still very much a tech demo—the Cat 9 base station only covered a small portion of the stadium, and there were only a handful of devices in the world configured to connect to this specific LTE network. The LTE network was operated by EE (one of the UK’s big four wireless carriers), the LTE base station was made by Huawei, and the mobile device that I used was a smartphone powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC . Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Verizon issues furious response to FCC, in Morse code, dated 1934

Verizon is just so mad at the Federal Communications Commission today that a normal press release wouldn’t do. After all, Verizon issues so many press releases denouncing the FCC for trying to regulate telecommunications that today’s vote on net neutrality required a special one to make sure it would be remembered. So Verizon wrote it in Morse code and set the date as “1934” to make the point that the FCC is taking us backward in time. Verizon sent out the press release in this e-mail: Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Verizon issues furious response to FCC, in Morse code, dated 1934

Remote valet mode and revolutionized parking: Ford’s Smart Mobility

Ford has a plan to help cut car emissions, and this time it doesn’t have anything to do with batteries, hybrid powertrains, or clever engine technology. Instead, the company is focusing on improving the parking experience, and its answer involves a crowdsourced real-time database of occupied and empty parking spots across the country, and remote control vehicles enabled by off-the-shelf commercial 4G LTE. At first glance that might not sound like it has much to do with reducing vehicle CO 2 emissions, but according to Ford, their data shows that hunting for parking spaces in urban environments can account for between 20 and 30 percent of a vehicle’s emissions. To find out more about what Ford has been working on, we spoke with Mike Tinskey, director of vehicle electrification and infrastructure at Ford. He told Ars about a pair of research projects that the car maker has been working on as part of a larger program called Smart Mobility. Smart Mobility involves 25 different experiments and pilot studies around the world, but these two have both been developed in conjunction with a team at Georgia Tech here in the US; Ford has had a long-running relationship with the group, which Tinskey describes as being analogous to the company’s research and advanced modeling arm for sustainability. According to Tinskey, Smart Mobility exists at the intersection of mobility and sustainability, with the overall goal of finding novel ways to reduce CO 2 . “When you look for places to do that, you start looking at antiquated things like parking, where people waste a lot of time, and a lot of CO 2 ,” he said. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

VLC Gets Extensions, Resume Playback, and Comes Back to iOS

Windows/Mac/Linux/Android/iOS: VLC is hands-down one of the best media players around and today it gets a little better by adding an in-app extensions store, playback resuming, and more. More importantly, the iOS version of the app returns to the App Store. Read more…

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VLC Gets Extensions, Resume Playback, and Comes Back to iOS

A Room-Sized 3D Printer Will Make Freeform Concrete Design Easy

Concrete is an amazing building material: cheap to create, strong when used correctly, and hard-wearing, too. But turning it into exotic and shapely forms can be prohibitively complex and expensive. Now, a 3D printer capable of producing one-off moulds as large as a phone booth could help turn architectural dreamw into affordable reality. Read more…

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A Room-Sized 3D Printer Will Make Freeform Concrete Design Easy

Harrison Ford will return in ‘Blade Runner’ sequel

Need more good news after today’s net neutrality ruling? Deadline and Variety report it has been confirmed that Harrison Ford will return to the role of Rick Deckard in the Blade Runner sequel that’s currently in the works. Ridley Scott is producing the film, Hampton Fancher (co-writer of the original movie) and Michael Green are writing, and Denis Villeneuve ( Prisoners ) is in negotiations to direct.The movie is supposed to start shooting next summer, giving Ford plenty of time to recover from any Star Wars-related injuries and us an opportunity to check out Amazon’s upcoming (and also based on a Philip K. Dick story) The Man in the High Castle series. Developing… [Image credit: Getty Images] Filed under: Misc , Home Entertainment , HD Comments Source: Deadline , Variety , The Hollywood Reporter

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Harrison Ford will return in ‘Blade Runner’ sequel

Ken May

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