Microsoft’s er, ‘generosity’ spurned by Namibia
Register story.

“The African nation of Namibia is large in area and small in population with considerable distances between communities. Imagine the challenges of getting its schools wired to the Net. SchoolNet Namibia, a chiefly volunteer organization, struggles to do precisely that with a free ISP and numerous other initiatives to get the nation’s schools, many of which lack any library resources at all, on-line.

Imagine the pleasure with which SchoolNet would initially have confronted a charitable overture from Microsoft involving free software. Now imagine the disappointment of learning that accepting the ‘gift’ would entail outlays of money in the range of fifteen times the value of the M$ Trojan horse….”

The weakest link in computer security — as ever
Economist piece.

No — it’s not your Microsoft operating system (though of course that also figures in the calculation). It’s humans. In one survey, carried out by PentaSafe Security, two-thirds of commuters at London’s Victoria Station were happy to reveal their computer password in return for a ballpoint pen.