Posted by Brad SmithGeneral Counsel & Executive Vice President, Legal and Corporate Affairs, Microsoft
It has been more than two months since famine was declared in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti, leaving 12.4 million people in need of emergency aid. Every day, more than 1,500 famine-stricken Somalis arrive in the world’s largest refugee camp in north-eastern Kenya. According to the United Nations, the Dadaab Refugee camp designed for 90,000 people is now home to nearly half a million people.
To put this crisis in perspective, the number of severely famine-stricken people is higher than the combined numbers affected by the South Asia tsunami and South Asia earthquakes of 2005, and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
On the Microsoft on the Issues Blog for Africa, we often focus on the many opportunities present in Africa, the amazing feats and accomplishments of the African people, and how technology positively impacts the continent. But Africa, and the world community, face a humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa, and I wanted to take a moment to talk about Microsoft’s commitment to help respond to the crisis.
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Posted by Brad Smith & Horacio GutierrezGeneral Counsel & Deputy General Counsel, Microsoft
Today, Microsoft announced a patent cross-licensing agreement with Samsung that will provide coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for Samsung’s mobile phones and tablets. The agreement also gives both companies greater patent coverage relating to each other’s technologies, and opens the door to a deeper partnership in the development of new phones for the Windows Phone platform.
In the context of all the attention intellectual property matters have received in recent months, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on the meaning and impact of these agreements. The Samsung license agreement marks the seventh agreement Microsoft has signed in the past three months with hardware manufacturers that use Android as an operating system for their smartphones and tablets. The previous six were with Acer, General Dynamics Itronix, Onkyo, Velocity Micro, ViewSonic and Wistron.
Together with the license agreement signed last year with HTC, today’s agreement with Samsung means that the top two Android handset manufacturers in the United States have now acquired licenses to Microsoft’s patent portfolio.
Posted by Akhtar BadshahSenior Director, Global Community Affairs, Microsoft
Let’s say you are a recent college graduate with a computer science degree, and you are passionate about education. Would you follow your passion by choosing a job in the classroom if you knew your starting salary would be approximately half the salary of a job in the technology industry?
Kevin Wang, a Microsoft software engineer who started out his career as a high school computer science teacher, is showing technology industry employees who are passionate about education that they need not choose between the two.
Wang is familiar with statistics that show in 2011, only 1 out of 156 Advanced Placement tests taken was in computer science (just over one-half of one percent of all AP tests taken was in computer science – only 22,000 tests overall for the year).
Posted by Matt ThomlinsonGeneral Manager, Trustworthy Computing, Microsoft
Today, I spoke at NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) during the Information Assurance Symposium 2011 on cybersecurity. I started by teeing up two important questions:
· What techniques are attackers using?
· What methods do we have at our disposal for defending against them?
The good news is that organizations can be better protected than the headlines might lead us to believe—even in the face of malicious adversaries and targeted attacks.
Posted by Anthony SalcitoVice President, Worldwide Public Sector Education, Microsoft
Yesterday, I had the privilege of combining my personal passion with my profession on stage at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting to announce that Microsoft will bring digital access to one million students from low-income families. The video of our announcement can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/cgivideos
Microsoft is extending its global Shape the Future program to the United States. Shape the Future has already provided digital access to 10 million students around the world, and is a continuation of Bill Gates’ original vision of a PC for every desktop and home. Now, through Shape the Future, Microsoft is working with public and private partners to ensure access to technology for youth from low-income households through broadband Internet access at a reduced cost and discounted hardware, software and educational training software.