Conficker: the Inside Story

Jim Giles at New Scientist has just posted a fascinating look at the beginnings of the fight against the Conficker worm.

Despite an unprecedented collaboration against them, Conficker’s accomplished creators have been able to bluff and dodge to gain control of machines inside homes, universities, government offices and the armed forces of at least three nations, establishing a powerful and lucrative network of “zombie” computers.

Good read. Accurate, too.

No Internet Explorer in Europe?

This story’s changing rapidly.

Ina Fried at CNN reported that she had seen a memo from Microsoft saying that the versions of Windows 7 sold in Europe will not have any browser pre-installed: if you want IE8, you have to get it and install it independently (presumably from a free CD).

For starters, there’s a huge chicken-and-egg problem: how do you download a browser (much less all of the Windows Live Essentials) when you don’t have  a browser?

But of course there are many other ramifications.

The EU has jumped into the fray. International political theater – and I have to admit that MS has taken the first round. Fur is flying. Let’s see how it shakes out.