Stolen: Google employees' personal data

Google has confirmed that personal data of U.S. employees hired prior to 2006 have been stolen in a recent burglary.
Records kept at Colt Express Outsourcing Services, an external company Google and other companies use to handle human resources functions, were stolen in a burglary on May 26. An undisclosed number of employees' details and those of dependents such as names, addresses, and Social Security numbers were on the stolen computers. It is understood that Colt did not employ encryption to protect the information.
It's still unclear how many more of Colt Express' clients were affected by the breach. CBS' CNET Networks, publisher of News.com, was also affected by the burglary, with about 6,500 employees' details stolen.
Although there is no evidence of misuse of the data to date, the information obtained could be used by identity thieves to create fake accounts and identities.
It's only come to light now that Google was one of the companies affected. Google itself was not burglarized, nor were any of its internal systems compromised.
Danny Thorpe, former chief scientist at Borland and engineer at Google who now works for Microsoft, was informed of the theft on July 1.
A letter from Google said personal data of Google employees hired prior to December 31, 2005, may have been stolen in the May 26 burglary of Colt Express Outsourcing Services. No credit card numbers were in the stolen data; just names, addresses, SSNs--all the information needed for a thief to open a credit card account under another's name.
According to Thorpe, Google has offered to cover the cost of a one-year subscription to a credit report and identity theft-monitoring service. Similar benefits were offered to CNET Networks employees.
ITWorld reported last week that Colt Express Outsourcing Services was in financial difficulty and could not help those affected. The company's CEO, Samuel Colt III, said in a statement "We do not have the resources, financial and otherwise, to assist you further."
"We take the security of our employees very seriously and require outside vendors to meet appropriate security standards. We review and update these standards on an ongoing basis," a Google representative said. "Google is not currently using Colt's services and had made this decision long before this incident."

Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail’s CAPTCHA broken by spammers

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1418

Microsoft SharePoint Sales To Hit $1 Billion In 2008

Microsoft Sharepoint is one of the hottest product of Microsoft.

Microsoft said it has now sold more than 100 million SharePoint licenses since launching the product in 2001. Microsoft sold 75 million through the end of 2005 and 25 million more in the last two years -- meaning the suite has enjoyed a compound growth rate in license sales of about 15% over the past two years.

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6 factors that will decide the fate of Silverlight

Microsoft's Web development technology may have tough time gaining on Flash
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9077660&intsrc=hm_list

VIDEO TRAINING: Over 20 hours WPF tutorial

To all WPF geeks, checkout this link.

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PUCIT Lectures - Free for all

Kindly visit http://lectures.pucit.edu.pk/

You can download different lecture contents about programming and other educational stuff.


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Download Visual Studio 2008

Get download Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 from Microsoft official site.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/products/aa700831.aspx

Country Manager Pakistan bring Bill Gates to Pakistan

Mr. Jawwad RehmanInterview Country Manager Microsoft Corp. Pakistan

We have been working actively to promote Pakistan internally in Microsoft in the right light. As a result of that Bill Gates was eager to meet President Musharraf and they met in last January in Switzerland. Mr. Shoukat Aziz then Finance Minister & present Prime Minister and Mr. Ishrat Hussain, Governor State Bank of Pakistan, were also present in the meeting. This meeting has brought Bill Gates and our top executives a lot closer and more aware of Pakistan’s potential. I guarantee you that Bill Gates will be here and this is something I would personally like to do as well but it requires that his trip is worthwhile and there are some great things happening in Pakistan in the IT Industry so that we can fully leverage his presence here. Bill Gates is a busy man and sometimes his schedule is full for 20 months in advance. At the same time something big and relevant enough should happen that brings Bill Gates to Pakistan, I am trying my best to make that happen here.

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Microsoft Education Plan

Here is some links of MICROSOFT WINDOWS LIVE visit it, YOu'll find all new services and Microsoft Education Plan.
http://get.live.com/edu http://student-partners.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/academia/students/student-partners/default.mspx

http://get.live.com/edu/schools http://www.imagine-wl.com/Education/en-US/

http://research.microsoft.com/aboutmsr/labs/asia/default.aspx

ABOUT THE IMAGINE CUP. What is the Imagine Cup? UNESCO Endorsement

http://imaginecup.com/ http://get.live.com/mail/ms_liveMail_demo


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Five free Web apps we can't live without

interesting list here.. :)

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9038638