Taliban accidentally CCs everybody on its mailing list -

Taliban accidentally CCs everybody on its mailing list - 



Living in fear of "replying all" to your company-wide emails? Hey, it could be worse. ABC News reports:

In a Dilbert-esque faux pax, a Taliban spokesperson sent out a routine email last week with one notable difference. He publicly CC'd the names of everyone on his mailing list.

The names were disclosed in an email by Qari Yousuf Ahmedi, an official Taliban spokesperson, on Saturday. The email was a press release he received from the account of Zabihullah Mujahid, another Taliban spokesperson. Ahmedi then forwarded Mujahid's email to the full Taliban mailing list, but rather than using the BCC function, or blind carbon copy which keeps email addresses private, Ahmedi made the addresses public.

"Taliban have included all 4 of my email addresses on the leaked distribution list," tweeted journalist Mustafa Kazemi, a prolific Kabul-based tweeter with more than 9,500 followers. "Quite reassuring to my safety."

The list, made up of more than 400 recipients, consists mostly of journalists, but also includes an address appearing to belong to a provincial governor, an Afghan legislator, several academics and activists, an ... Afghan consultative committee, and a representative of Gulbuddein Hekmatar, an Afghan warlord whose outlawed group Hezb-i-Islami is believed to be behind several attacks against coalition troops.

Where's AOL's old "unsend" button when you need it? On the other hand, perhaps this is an opportunity to establish a listserv for Afghan peace talks?

Read more - 
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/11/16/taliban_accidentally_ccs_everybody_on_its_mailing_list

Call of Duty videogame pulls in $500 million in first DAY sales -

Call of Duty videogame pulls in $500 million in first DAY sales - 



The latest Call of Duty videogame had sales of more than $500 million in the first 24 hours of its release, a new record, game publisher Activision Blizzard Inc said on Friday.

By comparison, Microsoft Corp’s sci-fi action-shooter Halo 4, launched a week earlier, had sales of $220 million in its first day on the market.

In 2011, Activision reported first-day sales of about $400 million for its latest game at the time, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and sales of $1 billion after 16 days.

Activision, the world’s largest videogame publisher, raised its earnings outlook last week on expectations for strong holiday sales of its new Call of Duty: Black Ops II, saying it hoped it would beat previous Call of Duty records.

However, the company said on Friday that it remains cautious about the rest of 2012 and 2013.

As more gamers migrate from console gaming to mobile offerings on tablets and smartphones, the video game industry has seen revenues decline. The performance of high-profile titles like Call of Duty is being watched closely as a gauge of future demand for the sector.

Activision said it believes the new Call of Duty represents “the biggest entertainment launch of the year for the fourth year in a row.” It said millions of fans attended more than 16,000 midnight openings at retail stores worldwide on November 13.

Its first-day sales estimate was based on Chart-Track, retail customer sell-through information and internal company estimates.

Read more - 
http://www.thestar.com/living/technology/article/1288814--call-of-duty-pulls-in-500-million-in-first-day-sales

Ikea ‘regrets’ use of forced prison labour by suppliers in East Germany -

Ikea ‘regrets’ use of forced prison labour by suppliers in East Germany - 



Swedish furniture giant Ikea expressed regret Friday that it benefited from the use of forced prison labour by some of its suppliers in communist East Germany more than two decades ago.

The company released an independent report showing that East German prisoners, among them many political dissidents, were involved in the manufacture of goods that were supplied to Ikea 25 to 30 years ago. The report concluded that Ikea managers were aware of the possibility that prisoners would be used in the manufacture of its products but failed to do so.

“We deeply regret that this could happen,” said Jeanette Skjelmose, an Ikea manager. “The use of political prisoners for manufacturing was at no point accepted by IKEA.”

But she added that “at the time we didn’t have the well-developed control system that we have today and we clearly did too little to prevent such production methods.”

Ikea commissioned auditors Ernst & Young to look into allegations aired by a Swedish television documentary in June, but first raised by a human rights group in 1982.

Rainer Wagner, chairman of the victims’ group UOKG, said Ikea was just one of many companies that benefited from the use of forced prison labour in East Germany from the 1960s to 1980s.

“Ikea is only the tip of the iceberg,” he told The Associated Press in an interview earlier this week.

Wagner said he hoped that Ikea and others would consider compensating former prisoners, many of whom carry psychological and physical scars from arduous labour they were forced to do.

“Ikea has taken the lead on this, for which we are very grateful,” he told a news conference in Berlin, where the report was presented.

Peter Betzel, the head of Ikea Germany, said the company would continue to support efforts to investigate the use of prisoners in East Germany in future.

Read more - 
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1288837--ikea-regrets-use-of-forced-prison-labour-by-suppliers-in-east-germany