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“The World’s Most Notorious Illegal Spammer” Goes to Jail
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UPDATE: November 24, 2009 - 12:30 p.m. Pacific
Posted by Tim Cranton
Associate General Counsel
The Justice Department’s prosecution of Alan Ralsky, the self-proclaimed “Godfather of Spam,” was brought to a successful conclusion yesterday when U.S. District Judge Marianne O. Battani sentenced Ralsky to 51 months in prison for conspiring to commit wire fraud, mail fraud and to violate the CAN-SPAM Act.
Judge Battani also sentenced three of Ralsky’s co-conspirators to prison terms ranging from 32 months to 51 months in federal court in Detroit.
The full details are contained in a press release issued yesterday by the Department of Justice.
As we blogged in June (see below), Microsoft’s Internet Safety Enforcement Team became aware of Ralsky’s network in 2004 and documented evidence of spam e-mails and botnets used to advance “pump and dump” stock manipulation schemes. Microsoft turned the evidence over to the Department of Justice and supported the government’s three-year investigation, which was led by the FBI with assistance from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division.
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New Framework for Technology Collaboration
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Posted by David Rudin
Senior Attorney
Here’s good news for everyone who appreciates technologies that play well with others: The independent Open Web Foundation has announced a new legal framework agreement that communities of Web developers can use in collaborating on new technology specifications.
This agreement was hammered out with support from Microsoft, Yahoo!, Facebook, Google and others. It will help communities lay the legal foundation needed for specifications to be successful and widely adopted as standards. Individuals and organization also can release their specifications under the agreement.
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Partnering with the White House on “Educate to Innovate”
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Posted by Pamela Passman
Corporate Vice President, Global Corporate Affairs
Pamela Passman, Corporate Vice President, Global Corporate Affairs
Today, President Obama is announcing “Educate to Innovate,” a national initiative aimed at inspiring students to develop the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills that will help them become the problem solvers of tomorrow. The future of our nation’s economic competitiveness is directly related to the ability of our young people to use such skills to innovate across a range of fields, including IT, manufacturing, energy and health care.
Now more than ever, all students need specialized knowledge to succeed in our complex, technologically advanced and globally competitive world. The vast majority of family-wage jobs in the 21st century will require employees with technical skills and an aptitude for life-long learning.
Across the U.S., student performance on international math and science benchmarks lags behind that of their peers from other nations such as England, China and Japan. The disparities are even greater for low-income and minority students. To maintain America’s competitiveness in rapidly growing, technology-dependent industries, we must work especially hard to encourage young women and minority students that their contributions are needed and valued in science and technology fields. Expanding the base of students interested in STEM throughout our society is not only a matter of ensuring that all young people have access to economic opportunities, but also a business imperative if the U.S. economy is to grow and prosper.
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North Carolina Becomes 8th State to join Elevate America
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By David Bowermaster
Administrator, Microsoft on the Issues
North Carolina Governor Bev Purdue announced yesterday that North Carolina will partner with Microsoft to implement Elevate America, an initiative designed to help get people back to work by giving state and local governments the tools and resources they need to provide no-cost or low-cost technology skills training to job seekers.
North Carolina joins seven other states that have launched Elevate America since the program began in February, including Illinois, Iowa, Virginia, Washington, Maryland, Mississippi and Missouri.
As Microsoft Corporate Vice President Pamela Passman previously blogged, more than 50 percent of today’s jobs require technology skills, with experts predicting that percentage will rise to 77 percent in the next decade. In today’s market, jobs in almost every industry and at every level require at least basic proficiency with computers and other digital technologies.
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Microsoft Shareholders Vote on “Say-on-Pay,” Other Measures
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Posted by John Seethoff
Vice President and Deputy General Counsel
Over the last few months Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and I have blogged about our Board of Directors’ consideration of “Say-on-Pay” proposals that enable shareholders to weigh-in on our executive compensation practices.
As we shared in September, our Board approved a policy that enables Microsoft shareholders to cast a non-binding, advisory vote every three years on the compensation programs for our senior executive officers. The first vote took place at our annual shareholders’ meeting today in Bellevue, Washington. Nearly 99 percent of the ballots received supported Microsoft’s compensation practices.
Earlier this week, Brad and Edward J. Durkin, director of the corporate affairs department of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, co-authored an op-ed in Roll Call that explains why Microsoft chose a three-year voting cycle, rather than annual “Say-on-Pay” votes as some have advocated. The three-year cycle was actually drawn from a proposal Microsoft received from the UBC. If you’re interested in this issue, please take a look at the op-ed and leave us a comment to let us know what you think.
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Partnering to Enable European Citizens to Monitor Climate Change
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Posted by John Vassallo
Vice President, EU Affairs
Earlier this week Microsoft joined with the European Environment Agency to launch a compelling example of how Microsoft’s cloud computing technology can be a real ‘change maker’ in the fight against climate change.
As part of our on-going partnership with the EEA to combine cutting-edge technology and environmental data,
we have expanded the EEA’s Eye on Earth portal by adding AirWatch, a new service which will provide air quality information to more than 500 million people across Europe.
This project is an extension of the first phase of Eye on Earth, which launched in May 2008 with WaterWatch, an extremely useful service that allows Europeans to look up a particular beach or lake, check the water quality from official monitoring stations and rate the water quality themselves.
The goal of Eye On Earth is simple: To engage Europe’s governments and citizens in the use of real-time environmental information and to boost interest in the environment. I believe this site is a great practical application of data-driven decision making: Direct collection of data through local sensors that allow citizens to comment and pass judgement on their environment on the spot. Give it a try! Make your voice heard.
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Helping to Secure Family-Wage Jobs for Our Returning Military Heroes
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Posted by Lutz Ziob
General Manager, Microsoft Learning
Lutz Ziob, General Manager, Microsoft Learning
Given the current state of our economy, securing and retaining family-wage jobs is of upmost importance to most Americans. Today, I was fortunate to represent Microsoft at a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing that focused on the critically important issue of the employment needs of our returning veterans.
As the General Manager of Microsoft Learning, I know firsthand the importance of providing access to the kinds of learning tools that all workers will need to compete and prosper in our fast-changing information economy. In the 21st century, occupations and employment are evolving faster than ever before, largely driven by the rapid pace of technology, innovation and change. Information technology has become so pervasive in the world of work in the U.S. that almost every job requires some level of IT understanding and skills.
And of course, this group of Americans, our nation’s returning military heroes, is especially deserving of our help in finding new civilian careers. In my testimony I talked about the need for a new partnership approach, with government, education and industry working closely together to ensure that our veterans and their families receive access to the skills training and educational resources they need to transition smoothly and successfully into sustainable, family-wage civilian work.
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Forum Highlights Innovations in Education
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Posted by L. Michael Golden
Corporate Vice President, Education
Michael Golden (left) and Michel Levy, general manager, Microsoft Brazil (right), present Bahia Governor Jaques Wagner with a copy of Windows 7 at the fifth annual WIEF.
The TV hero MacGyver could learn a thing or two from the real heroes I met earlier this month in Salvador, Brazil. Sure, MacGyver could build a working airplane engine out of a rubber band and a toothpick, but the educators who gathered in Salvador for Microsoft’s Worldwide Innovative Education Forum are doing some truly amazing things.
Some teach in schools that lack clean water, reliable electricity or other basic resources, yet as they explained at the Forum, they’ve found ingenious ways to engage students and equip them with 21st-century skills, often by using technology.
For example, Nubia Solano from the rural town of Sahagun in Cordoba, Colombia, raised money for school computers by working with parents to make and sell pencil holders. Now, as her students gain computer skills, they’re developing them further, and developing communication skills, by teaching their other teachers about computers.
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White House CIO Vivek Kundra Helps Showcase Windows Azure
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Posted by Teresa Carlson
Vice President, Microsoft Federal
When it comes to cloud computing, federal customers have a lot to consider and new business options to explore nearly every day. And while “the cloud” is still in its infancy, today, I’m excited to extend our cloud announcements coming out of Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference (PDC09) in L.A., to the federal community. One of our own fearless leaders in the federal government, CIO Vivek Kundra, today joined Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie as Ray unveiled Microsoft’s cloud-based platforms Windows Azure and SQL Azure. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage power to host, scale and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft data centers. Think of Windows Azure as a sort of operating system in the cloud, extending the Windows platform to allow for the creation of new, transformative cloud experiences that federal enterprises can take advantage of.
With help from Vivek, we showcased a community technology preview (CTP) of a subset of Windows Azure - codename “Dallas. ” Powered by Windows Azure and SQL Azure, this “data as a service” provides an open catalogue and marketplace for data – both public and commercial. Vivek demonstrated an app we helped to build for his iPhone - to find, query, and make meaningful use of Department of Labor teaching information and data that stored and catalogued in Windows Azure’s “Dallas.” Not only could he find out where teachers were most needed, but he could even get to the level of jobs for special education teachers.
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Partnering With Customers – and Competitors - on Green IT
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Posted by Steve Lippman
Director, Environmental Engagement Strategy
As part of our capacity-building efforts with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and non-profits, Microsoft recently partnered with TechSoup Global to present a set of webinars with green technology guidance specifically tailored to small and large NGOs. These webinars are one small part of a larger proactive campaign to help all our customers—large and small businesses, government agencies and others—optimize the energy efficiency and environmental sustainability of their information technology.
Advances in both hardware and software have dramatically increased the energy efficiency of computing. The leading energy-efficient laptops now entering the market use less energy than a single compact fluorescent light bulb. However, with more than 1 billion computers on the planet and 250 million new laptops, desktops and servers deployed each year, the IT industry must continue improving the energy efficiency of its products.
We have improved the efficiency of the Windows operating system with increasingly sophisticated energy-saving features and are building new energy efficiency requirements into our design process for future operating systems.
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