Asiajin reports that anti-virus software vendor, Trend Micro’s website was hacked recently, and the hackers were then serving various viruses for 3 (!!!) days, March 9-12th) from the Trend Micro website. There’s a statement on the Japanese website but no statement on any of the English or other language news sites.
If a security services/software firm can’t keep their own web servers secured, and left their own hacked website up for 3 days, there’s no logical reason to expect that their own security services are any better.
HEY TREND MICRO! DISCLOSE THE BREACH IN ENGLISH ASAP! TRYING TO HIDE THIS WON’T WORK!
The probable reason Trend Micro’s website was hacked? They’re running Windows 2000 (is Microsoft even supporting Windows 2000 Server anymore?)
Richard Katz of The Oriental Economist has a very good op-ed in the WSJ, Japan’s Stress Test, on the topic of the challenges facing Japanese economic reform. Katz summarizes his points in a recent post to NBR.
To quickly summarize my views, I see two obstacles to growth, one on the supply side and one on the demand side.
1) Supply side obstacles. Growth is the sum of how many additional people are working plus how much more each person can produce. With the working age population falling and more people working only part-time, the sole source of GDP growth has been productivity growth. Reforms that exposes firms to fiercer Darwinian competition will bring Japan’s myriad backward sectors up to world benchmarks, and improve overall potential growth. This can certainly be combined with social safety net features and other measures so that, while some current firms and jobs will disappear, individuals are protected, true security is enhanced and income equality is restored.
2) Demand side obstacles. In my view, anemic consumption is not the result of culture, but of lack of money. Real wages per worker have fallen 2.7% since 2002 and so people have lowered their savings rate drastically to maintain consumption. This problem is simply the exacerbation of a longterm structural problem stemming as far back as the mid-1970s. The household share of disposable income–e.g. wages, interest, dividends, rent, income of self-employed–has been too low a share of national income relative to support consumer-led growth. Give them money and they will spend.
Wretch.cc now #1 site (by traffic) in Taiwan. If the reported purchase price is true, it was a very good purchase.
Wretch.cc was ranked the top Web site in Taiwan in a top-100 list tabulated by Business Next, a local magazine, and Taiwan’s Access Rating Online (ARO).
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But despite Yahoo’s best attempts to keep up with new features such as blogs, Wretch.cc continued to grow and gain popularity. It proved such a difficult battle that Yahoo Taiwan finally used cash to end the battle, buying Wretch.cc for an undisclosed sum. Local newspaper reports valued the deal at NT$700 million (US$22.7 million).
Yahoo Taiwan came in second in the ranking overall, but it remained number one against other Internet portals.
Rounding out the top five overall Web sites in Taiwan, PChome Online came in third, Yam.com ranked fourth, and Gamer.com took fifth place in the Business Next/ARO list.
The U.S. version of Google ranked first among search engines, and 14th overall, while Google Taiwan came in second, China’s Baidu ranked third and video search engine Flurl came in fourth.
Awesome!
Mark Pesce (Wikipedia) has moved to Australia and is running a consultancy called Future Street Consulting. Pesce has a great blog post on his site, That Business Conversation, talking about stuff we know and use every day, Craig’s List, Trip Advisor, and all of the social network software and services we use. I think this essay is a great read for people who are not on the Internet all day (like some of us) and gives a good overview of how the Internet has impacted communication between people. It’s obvious to most of us who work on the Internet but for those who don’t, it’s not obvious.