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The man who set the Pennsylvania Governor’s residence on fire on Sunday morning has been identified. Police arrested a suspect on Sunday. His name is Cody Balmer, he’s 38 years-old and he lives near the governor’s mansion. Balmer torched the governor’s residence during Passover. Shapiro is Jewish. Times Now reported: During a news conference, police confirmed that Balmer scaled fences, evaded state troopers, and ignited the fire. He was arrested in the Harrisburg area shortly after Governor Shapiro and his family were safely evacuated. Dauphin County District Attorney Francis Chardo stated that forthcoming charges will include attempted murder, terrorism, attempted...

MICROSOFT executives love telling stories against each other. Here's one that platforms vice-president Jim Allchin told at a recent Windows Vista reviewers conference about chief executive Steve Ballmer. It seems Steve was at a friend's wedding reception when the bride's father complained that his PC had slowed to a crawl and would Steve mind taking a look. Allchin says Ballmer, the world's 13th wealthiest man with a fortune of about $18 billion, spent almost two days trying to rid the PC of worms, viruses, spyware, malware and severe fragmentation without success. He lumped the thing back to Microsoft's headquarters and...

The chief executive of Microsoft responds to accusations that he threatened to kill Google and tells Martin Baker what it means to be Bill Gates's boss Steve Ballmer is a very big man. And the chief executive of Microsoft, who is now Bill Gates's boss, no less, is having quite a big day, even by his own standards. We meet in Microsoft City, just outside Seattle, where Microsoft is formally announcing a range of products aimed at small and medium-sized companies, complete with the 12th version of its ubiquitous Office software. Steve Ballmer: ‘It's gratifying to hear "good job" from...

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer vowed to "kill" Google in an expletitive-laced, chair-throwing tirade when a senior engineer told him he was leaving the company to go work for Google, the engineer claimed in court documents made public on Friday. The allegation, filed in Washington state court, is the latest salvo in an increasingly nasty court fight triggered when Microsoft executive Kai-Fu Lee jumped to Google in July in what Microsoft claims is a violation of a one-year, non-compete agreement. In a sworn statement made public Friday, Mark Lucovsky, another Microsoft senior engineer who left for Google in November 2004, recounted...

Single line of JavaScript allows systems to simply ignore authentication check Hackers have found a way to circumvent a check in Windows that aimed to prevent users of pirated copies from accessing software updates. By pasting a special JavaScript command in the address bar of the browser, users can disable the Windows Genuine Advantage 1.0 check that Microsoft took live last week. The Microsoft technology uses an ActiveX tool to force the user to go through an authentication check before he is allowed to access certain download sections on the Microsoft.com website. The JavaScript command simply instructs the computer to...