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Freeman’s full tweet reads: Exactly how much money do I need to give the Democratic Party for them to pull their shit together? Get angry. Get mean. Get low. We care about people. Awesome. That doesn’t mean we can’t occasionally slide a knife between some asshole’s ribs. Fellow Microsoft employees, including Program Manager Alex Dupler, appeared to endorse Freeman’s tweet, asking “where do I sign up?”

Update 5/15/15: I've clarified some of my findings at the bottom of this post. I've owned the 2015 MacBook for just over a month now. I've had a remarkably good time using it so far, and just yesterday I decided to upgrade my installation of Windows 8.1 to the Windows 10 Insider Preview. I had tried it out a couple months earlier through a virtual machine, and at the time I wasn't sure I wanted it as my main operating system. But after taking the plunge, I'm very happy to be using it. I wanted to record a few thoughts...

A remote code execution vulnerability exists in the HTTP protocol stack (HTTP.sys) that is caused when HTTP.sys improperly parses specially crafted HTTP requests. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could execute arbitrary code in the context of the System account. To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker would have to send a specially crafted HTTP request to the affected system. The update addresses the vulnerability by modifying how the Windows HTTP stack handles requests.

Lync to be retired. Microsoft's April update for Office 2013 is more than just a Patch Tuesday: for some users, it includes the new Skype for Business. A relatively low-key announcement from Microsoft today signals the beginning of the end for Lync, the Office collaboration tool that has run in parallel with Skype in the three years since Microsoft bought Skype. Office 365 customers using Lync Online are the first to receive Skype for Business Online in a rollout that will continue through into May. Skype for Business is also now available as a standalone plan.

A security researcher has identified a Tor exit node that was actively patching binaries users download, adding malware to the files dynamically. The discovery, experts say, highlights the danger of trusting files downloaded from unknown sources and the potential for attackers to abuse the trust users have in Tor and similar services. Josh Pitts of Leviathan Security Group ran across the misbehaving Tor exit node while performing some research on download servers that might be patching binaries during download through a man-in-the middle attack. Downloading any kind of file from the Internet is a dodgy proposition these days, and many...

Windows had no updates for a few weeks. Yesterday there were somewhere around 17 that kicked in with automatic update.My Win 7Pro desktop handled it apparently with no problem; my laptop was something else.The laptop is running Win7 premium and has always updated with no problem. This time, I left it running overnight and it would turn itself off. The following morning after it booted, it went through the configuring process, I got a cursor, but there was no taskbar. Pretty much nothing can happen without a taskbar, either logging in, starting the browser trouble shooting or anything else. I...

Alarm bells must be ringing in Microsoft's Redmond headquarters. Microsoft is close to releasing Windows 8 and it's shaping up to be another "Vista". Only this time the repercussions could be much worse. The critics who have been using Windows 8 are extremely negative on the new look and feel of the operating system: At Slate, Farhad Manjoo writes, "In my time with Windows 8, I’ve felt almost totally at sea—confused, paralyzed, angry, and ultimately resigned to the pain of having to alter the way I do most of my work." At Marketwatch, John Dvorak says, "Windows 8 looks to...

This week, Microsoft revealed a little of what to expect from the next Windows operating system. With its Windows Phone look and touch - literally - and tiles everywhere, it will be a major refresh, but there's a still a number of unanswered questions. Here are my top five: Can Microsoft keep desktop users happy with Windows 8? In demonstrations this week, Windows 8 is shown running legacy applications like Office side-by-side with the hip new OS. But the version of Windows 8 that runs on the ARM processor won't have legacy support. That creates an OS quandary. While Microsoft...

Microsoft Corp.'s operating systems run most personal computers around the globe and are a cash cow for the world's largest software maker. But you'd never confuse a Windows user with the passionate fans of Mac OS X or even the free Linux operating system. Unless it's someone running Windows XP, a version Microsoft wants to retire. Fans of the six-year-old operating system set to be pulled off store shelves in June have papered the Internet with blog posts, cartoons and petitions recently. They trumpet its superiority to Windows Vista, Microsoft's latest PC operating system, whose consumer launch last January was...

A US student is being sued for showing how to get around anti-piracy technology on a new music CD. Princeton graduate John Halderman published a paper online showing how to defeat the copy-protection software by pressing a single computer key. This has angered the company behind the software, SunnComm Technologies, which is now planning to sue him. It is just one of the firms working on ways to make it harder to copy and trade music over the internet. Press shift Mr Halderman found that SunnComm's MediaMax CD-3 software could be bypassed by simply holding down the shift key on...