Windows 8 Will be Launched on October 26

So much has been said about the Windows 8 that almost nothing was left to be known except for its release date. But now, this mystery has been solved too.

Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows division officially announced, at the annual sales meeting of Microsoft, that the latest software of Windows will be launched on October 26th, 2012.

Windows 8 will be launching on both PCs and as an upgrade on October 26.

Earlier, a Microsoft official (Tami Reller to be exact) had already announced that the new Windows is coming in October, but it is only now that we have come to know of its exact release date.

File-Sharing & Streaming On the Rise

Recent research released by one of the network security companies confirmed that P2P file-sharing and online streaming are on the rise, compared to statistics from previous years.

The regular report from the network security company offered a thorough view on global data usage, based on evaluating traffic from over 2,000 companies throughout the globe, and covering a period from November 2011 to May 2012.

Taking into account that the lines between professional and private life still blur, the results of the report show that many employees prefer using personal technologies such as Netflix and Tumblr at work. That’s why the key to out new digital reality is not to ignore the existence of these programs or ban them, but to manage their usage by policies which provide modern workforce with the needed flexibility without impeding on the business.

The businesses find out that they are able to successfully employ network security controls which enable Internet application usage for the workers while meeting quality-of-service standards for business-critical programs and managing security threats.

The report found out 3 important things:

1. Streaming video bandwidth consumption has increased by over 300%: if you compare the statistics with the last report, you understand that the total bandwidth consumed by streaming video has more than tripled, reaching 13%. Moreover, 34 streaming programs were employed on 97% of the covered organizations’ networks. Such increase was thanks to services like YouTube and Netflix in America and PPStream in Asia and Pacific.

2. P2P file-sharing is currently gaining popularity with the consumption spiking with 700%. 7 P2P clients and 13 browser-based file-sharing applications were found on 90% of networks throughout the globe.

3. Social networking remains a strong player gathering many file-sharing enthusiasts. For instance, Tumblr and Pinterest became very popular in the past 6 months. Meanwhile, at least one social networking client was found on 97% of the covered companies, with an average of 29 different social networking applications found on each company.

Another interesting finding: almost 1/3 of every dollar spent on bandwidth supports streaming media or file-sharing, with these two categories encompassing about 250 apps, most of which are dedicated to personal use.

Declaration of Internet Freedom

A few days ago, online leaders, including the EFF, Public Knowledge, Free Press, and the Mozilla Foundation, have issued a document titled “Declaration of Internet Freedom”.


The declaration stands for a free and open web and calls not to censor the Internet. Although the document doesn’t propose any specific policy, it hopes to put a line in the sand about what things should look like. Meanwhile, its principles were designed to be accepted by the political arena.

The document was mainly sustained by liberal groups like the Free Press, but the declaration was also supported by a couple political figures, who encouraged Republicans to vote against SOPA and similar bills.

In the meantime, not everyone is happy with this move – for instance, a coalition of right-of-center outfits delivered their own version with various sets of principles, which included “humility” and “the rule of law” – the list includes TechFreedom, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the National Taxpayers Union. They argued that the original document contained an “ambiguity which could pave the way for more government intervention”.

However, if you take a closer look on both versions of the document, you would notice that they both highlight the importance of free expression, privacy and innovation. The question is how to apply those ideas. In fact, the real issue is the ambiguity of the documents, a feature which may prove fatal to the outfits’ plans. In addition, the Congress doesn’t seem to be going to vote against free speech or creativity, but it is less likely to support vague principles.

So, to make a change the initiators must have a good plan focused on the political sector. You can recall Demand Progress’ campaign, which emphasized that the MegaUpload case had set a precedent, and pointed out that now such portals like Gmail and Flickr might be in danger as well.

Demand Progress also filed an amicus brief (with more than 50,000 signatures) with a Virginia judge who managed the MegaUpload case. The matter is that solving the cyberlocker’s problem (and other troubles that may appear soon) would demand the legislation be modified, especially the 2008’s PRO-IP Act, because it enables federal government to seize domains, servers, and everything else they may need in a copyright violation case.