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Not only that, I was just reading a story at Ars about how Jon Landau believes everything should be 3D. He calls out studios on hasty 3D conversions. I'd say the pot is calling the kettle black. His film had plenty of problems.

"Converting a movie from 2D to 3D is not a technical process. It is a creative process,"

You know what? After watching your flick at IMAX in 3D and halfway through wanting to leave with my headache, you're doing it wrong. As has been brought up before in previous Slashdot discussions, you can't get a proper 3D effect that will fool the brain with current technology. Stop trying to convert 2D films to 3D, especially for the point of being "OMG 3D" like parent mentioned.

The 3D effect worked decently well for me, better than I expected. There was one part of it that screwed with me though.

If I was looking more or less at the center of the screen, to the periphery it would appear (fairly convincingly) that certain objects were jutting out, past the boundary of the screen. Then I would sometimes attempt to follow those objects with my eyes and the illusion would continue ... until my eyes reached the actual boundary of the screen. Then the entire image would suddenly collapse back into a 2D picture until I again was looking more directly at the screen.

The 3D was far better than I was expecting, which wasn't much. It's still nothing like a true hologram where you could walk all the way around it and see it from many different angles. I couldn't even remain in my seat and move my eyes very far around it without dispelling the illusion. The headaches are something I did not experience but have heard often. I think that could be remedied by becoming conscious of whether you are straining your eyes in order to force a certain perception, as a setup like that might tempt you to do.

Not only that, I was just reading a story at Ars about how Jon Landau believes everything should be 3D. He calls out studios on hasty 3D conversions. I'd say the pot is calling the kettle black. His film had plenty of problems.

"Converting a movie from 2D to 3D is not a technical process. It is a creative process,"

You know what? After watching your flick at IMAX in 3D and halfway through wanting to leave with my headache, you're doing it wrong. As has been brought up before in previous Slashdot discussions, you can't get a proper 3D effect that will fool the brain with current technology. Stop trying to convert 2D films to 3D, especially for the point of being "OMG 3D" like parent mentioned.

Probably 'cos everyone (!) remembers the P2P version of the BBC's iPlayer http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/08/isps-to-bbc-we-throttle-iplayer-unless-you-pay-up.ars and the wonderful effect it had on many an ISP in the UK.

Using P2P distribtuions for very large traffic usages is still a bad idea for the same reasons as it was three years ago.

If you want to read about what is actually going on, please see this article. The article linked in the summary is riddled with factual inaccuracies.

I find two faults with your observations. The first (isn't really yours as it's so common) is equating the 5% of energy use as foreign oil with "only". Seems to me that combining the energy used to generate electricity and that used to transportation (and industrial/other "energy uses") is flawed in that it's too general of a statement. Pulling that 17% of our fuel out of our transportation infrastructure would be a plenty big problem without stockpiles/rapidly increased production.

And at the same time (still the first fault), you even downplay nuclear's contribution, since it's purely for electricity currently (ignoring a few cases where the heat does get used in other ways). Nuclear is 19-20% of the total electricity we use in the US.

Additionally, you seem to maybe be a bit behind on the nuclear news front (but I approve of your sources... so maybe we just interpret stuff we've both seen differently). Recent polls of Americans have shown increases in favorable views of nuclear power (especially the last 5 years), and that rating's over half* **. Additionally we're kind of on track to build new reactors. There are at least a dozen currently in the approval process (expensive and tedious in the US, alas), with construction starting sometime in the next 5 years (probably sooner, but NRC is slooowww).

*(my source is a non-free nuclear industry mag "Nuclear News", alas)
**Fears are more evident when discussing the more general "radioactive stuff" subject, e.g. more negative poll responses..

Recently a lawyer in the UK was also targeted by the 4chan group.

What's notable is that he was in the same business as the law firm in this article - sending out compliance letters for alleged copyright infringement. As this article notes, lately the UK lawyer had only been getting business from porn movie producers; all his mainstream clients had stopped hiring him because they no longer saw a net benefit in suing their fans.

This might explain why the law firm was threatening people over a c-movie: the 'real' movie studios in the US might no longer want to work with people like them.

The law firm he ended up with was ACS Law, run by middle-aged lawyer Andrew Crossley. ACS Law had, after a process of attrition, become one of the only UK firms to engage in such work. Unfortunately for Crossley, mainstream film studios had decided that suing file-sharers brought little apart from negative publicity, and so Crossley was left defending a heap of pornography, some video games, and a few musical tracks.

So where is the (completely legal under US law) software that the Library of Congress can use to back up Blu-Rays that have been released recently?

It's called the analog hole, and the MPAA has endorsed it.

Motorola makes other devices besides phones that use Windows. Why is Microsoft suing one of their own partners? Do they want Motorola to drop Windows all together? Dell, Acer, Symbol, Samsung etc. will all pay attention to this. Microsoft to partners: "In the future, as a Microsoft partner, we will dictate to you the OS your product uses or else we will sue you! We don't care if your hardware requirements cost more using our software."

Why not sue Google directly. Apple didn't, Oracle did. It doesn't matter if Android is open source or not, if Google violated your patents then sue Google. I'm not suing the DOT if my automobile has a flaw. I'm suing the source.

This reeks of extortion. Why isn't Microsoft targeting other Android phones? Oh, the manufacturer also supplies Windows based phones. I think the DOJ needs to re-open the Monopoly case again, specifically the section that details how Microsoft once used office/windows pricing to abuse the hardware manufacturers. Hey IBM, you owe Microsoft $500 million for Windows licenses because you also provide OS/2. Dell only owes us a $100 million for the same amount of licenses.

Those patents listed are weak at best except for the FAT one. Hey Microsoft, users have been synchronizing network data since before 300 baud modems. Rsync pre-dates ActiveSync, and I have scheduled a meeting using a (Yes a) Motorola beeper back in 1995

Motorola owns a shit-load of patents too. Is Microsoft doing the right thing? My inner Yoda says: The patent wars they have begun.

The technology group at Microsoft and the legal/marketing group at Microsoft are not on the same corporate page: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/10/strange-bedfellows-eff-apache-back-microsoft-in-patent-dispute.ars

Microsoft isn't interested in cloud computing. Instead of offering services to Android users (Office, Silverlight, .net etc), they are more interested in protecting the Windows hegemony. This means they have no plan for providing internet services to non-Microsoft clients wanting to use/subscribe to Microsoft cloud applications

Lets discuss..

Enjoy,

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/sec-releases-final-flash-crash-report-waddell-and-reed-blamed-selling-catalyst
has a good easy to understand news on this.
then news like this http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/first-nyclondon-cable-in-a-decade-promises-sub-60ms-latency.ars
hints at "just to give its high-frequency trading customers a few milliseconds of advantage over the competition."

Well this method worked pretty well for i4i, but I can't wrap my head around this news with that news.

Has the Open Group certified Windows as being Unix(tm)?

Microsoft's POSIX subsystem has been previously certified, yes. Then later a company called Interix evolved the subsystem later and implemented the later POSIX specifications on top of it along with a full userland, Microsoft ate them and they became "Windows Services for UNIX" which holds a UNIX certification from opengroup (it's not on the first page of Google when looking for 'Windows Services for UNIX certification' and I honestly cannot be assed to go further). The POSIX subsystem it self is shipped with Windows without the Windows Services for UNIX userland which uses it. Although there are the UNIX based applications still shipped with windows like FTP, Telnet etc. just like OS X.

Well you don't get to decide what is and is not Unix(tm).

I'm not making a decision here, it's obvious, it is not UNIX and it's no more based on UNIX than Windows is, they both hold certifications and they both contain UNIX code, which doesn't happen to be even close to the majority of code in either.

And to go further into the matter, while there is certification saying OS X is compliant with UNIX standards, their test case applications obviously did not take into account everything into the POSIX specification which is why OS X can fail at porting basic UNIX applications that are fully compliant with the specification (such as in my forking example where you refused to even address the point), you can't claim it's compliant to the specification when I just pointed an area where it is. Now, I could go and bitch at opengroup for not making enough test cases to enforce their specifications, but to be frank, it's hard enough trying to push bugs to get fixed from other developers without having to deal with these groups.

I wouldn't be opposed to saying there are pieces of OS X based on UNIX, but I am opposed to the implication that it is majority based on UNIX. There is very little of UNIX code, philosophy, structures even used in the entire operating system by comparison, that's not to say there aren't adaptations, but it isn't what people appear to be claiming in earlier threads.

But, the problem with the previous posts, is that they even go further and claim that because there is UNIX code in there, it's magically more secure. It's like saying that because I included a random .c file from UNIX in my application, it's been turned magically secure. Then to go again, even further and claim that a platform that had a history of many viruses has had few viruses is just ludicrous and obviously looking like a lot of this is marketing hype. You can write some of the worst most insecure services/daemon code in the world, the fact it runs on UNIX or Windows generally wouldn't make that much of a difference, the application will get penetrated either way.

But, I digress...

In your original reply, you said that "The Open Group, you know the people who certify a system as Unix, disagrees with you....." about "X is Not Unix" (you can see the definition on Apple's own website).

So, I looked at the URL given and don't see any protest about the acronym for the XNU kernel, which means "X is Not Unix" on the page. Perhaps you could point it out more clearly for me? I can't even find the word 'XNU' or 'acronym', or is Firefox find just not working for me because I'm not at a computer that "just works" at this moment?

With that said, the app is freaking amazing and i don't even like much sports. The fact you can watch scores, hedge on who will win and i'm sititng in my living room watching HD games on demand or live is pretty awesome.

I too have an XBox and also have XBox Live. Were these new features released last night or something? Because as of right now it's only in testing ... so if you're experiencing this right now while "sititng" in your living room, I would like to know how this is possible.

Otherwise you sound like little more than a dumbshit fanboi trying to sell this to everyone.

The fact you can watch scores, hedge on who will win

So it's like ESPN3.com with avatars? "Hedge on who will win" that's funny.

X is Not Unix.

The Open Group, you know the people who certify a system as Unix, disagrees with you.....

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2007/08/mac-os-x-leopard-receives-unix-03-certification.ars

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X: "Mac OS X (pronounced /mæk o s tn/ mak oh es ten)[6] is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces...."

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2007/08/mac-os-x-leopard-receives-unix-03-certification.ars: Mac OS X Leopard receives UNIX 03 certification

Oh, and mustn't forget:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_virus: "As of 2006, there are relatively few security exploits targeting Mac OS X (with a Unix-based file system and kernel)."

Well, you're right about something, one of us should have done his research before commenting.

Page 2, last paragraph under the heading "You mean to say that IPv6 is actually different from IPv4???" states in part.... " all IPv6 systems support stateless autoconfig; Windows Vista and 7 support DHCPv6, but Windows XP and Mac OS X don't;". Therefore if all IPv6 systems support stateless autoconfig, and since the quote just above and the re-quoted paragraph below says that Ma OS X does not have it, and that other OSes do not, than the article is stating that only Vista and 7 support this *integral* and necessary feature of IPv6. So now that you had yourself directed right to what part of the article I read, perhaps next time you will re-read the article instead of assuming just because you didn't see it the first time, then it was not there. Complete paragraph from the article reads ... "The end result is a bit of a mess: all IPv6 systems support stateless autoconfig; Windows Vista and 7 support DHCPv6, but Windows XP and Mac OS X don't; on open source OSes a, DHCPv6 client can usually be installed if one doesn't come with the distribution; and Vista and 7 also use the temporary, random number-derived addresses by default, whereas other OSes don't." Url to the page .... http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars/2

The most outrageous aspect of this is that AT&T is the same company that had no problem giving up the privacy of its customers to the NSA.

And isn't it the same company that's always fixing to hand over its users' Internet logs to the MAFIAA?

For them to turn around and sue for the high and mighty principle of privacy is the height of hypocrisy.

Can't the principle of unclean hands come into play here? Or are legal doctrines only for the purpose of increasing lawyers' billing on both sides?

Whenever people study people using infringing copies of software on PC platforms, they report something like 90% of copies are infringing. Thus, with "an overall piracy rate of over 67%," we can conclude that Android copyright infringement is remarkably well controlled, and app publishers should be grateful. (Admittedly, it's worse than iOS apps, which might see a 50% infringement rate, but another way of putting it is: Apple put up far more aggressive barriers to copyright infringement costing the, in the process made iOS less useful to customers and more hostile to development, and still only lowered the rate from 67% to 50%.

And, of course, the old rule applies: Those infringing your copyright aren't your customers. If you've made good software, are selling it as a reasonable price, and it's conveniently available, it's unlikely that anything you can do will improve your profits. Sure, you might reduce the number of infringing copies in use, but you'll have spent money accomplishing that for minimal to no additional sales. Worry about your customers, not those violating your copyright.

Whenever people study people using infringing copies of software on PC platforms, they report something like 90% of copies are infringing. Thus, with "an overall piracy rate of over 67%," we can conclude that Android copyright infringement is remarkably well controlled, and app publishers should be grateful. (Admittedly, it's worse than iOS apps, which might see a 50% infringement rate, but another way of putting it is: Apple put up far more aggressive barriers to copyright infringement costing the, in the process made iOS less useful to customers and more hostile to development, and still only lowered the rate from 67% to 50%.

And, of course, the old rule applies: Those infringing your copyright aren't your customers. If you've made good software, are selling it as a reasonable price, and it's conveniently available, it's unlikely that anything you can do will improve your profits. Sure, you might reduce the number of infringing copies in use, but you'll have spent money accomplishing that for minimal to no additional sales. Worry about your customers, not those violating your copyright.

More embarrassingly that disclosed information also detailed ASC:Law main business tactic. File copyright claims againts people for P2P porn ie. blackmail them into paying off rather than be publicly disclosed for sharing same rather nasty porn basically a 500 pounds a go.

More coverage here http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/amounts-to-blackmail-inside-a-p2p-settlement-letter-factory.ars/.

Apparently the normal route of extorting poor people to pay off rather than fight of the civil suits as done in the US doesn't really work in the UK as such the have gone down the blackmail route. It will be interesting to see what happens in France now that the right wing government has allowed open slather on basically baseless "WeSaySo" copyright claims (http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/WESAYSO dinosaur claims from a dinosaur industry).

TFA is sourced from this article at Ars which should (in theory) stay up so I recommend reading it there.

Well, it can certainly stand improvement. You can get many papers from arXiv, though it's a pain to hunt them down. You can also link to the professor or research group's home page (which is also a good way of giving them credit for whatever). But there are still other problems. The bare fact is that most of us aren't qualified to judge research. At best, we can say that it will be published in Science or Nature or some other prestigious journal, but frankly, you don't see many comments that deal with the substance of the research. You usually get some snarky reply where someone doesn't believe it because it conflicts with their politics or whatever and they come up with a 'rebuttal' that took half a second of thought (and which was answered in the paper... that nobody read).

There's also a more human problem. I've done my best to submit more than a few stories on hard science, quoting straight from the papers and leaving out any fluff or opinion, but ... nobody read any of them. Without something to excite people, they site in the firehose, unread and ignored. In short, people are complaining about this bad journalism because it's the only thing most people read. For the record, Ars Technica and Science News have the best science coverage I can find.

"'Video Pod', huh? Must be a new video-based iPod from Apple, right? I'll buy that, because I know that Apple is a good manufacturer!"

/quote>

Sure, must be. Video iPod.

How did this media surcharge come about? Because Mr. Henderson's own organization, the CRIA, successfully lobbied for it! That's right. They insisted that Canadians must pay a surcharge in order to legally record music...

Not quite all the truth. Those fuckers lobbied for surcharges on media that I use to back up my OWN PERSONAL DATA. That's right, I have to pay fucktards like him and shitty "Canadian" artists (that can't make a hit) to use media that has absolutely no copyright material on it, just my family photos. Fuck them all to death.

"Why would you spend a lot of money trying to build a service in Canada when Canadians take so much without paying for it?" said Graham Henderson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, which represents major record labels.

Somebody please tell Mr. Henderson to take his head out of his ass. The fact, as he well knows, is that Canadians already pay hefty fees. We already pay for recorded music at a rate far in excess of the cost of distribution. Radio stations already pay royalty fees. And everyone already pays a surcharge on recording media and players so that we can be legally entitled to generate copies for personal use.

How did this media surcharge come about? Because Mr. Henderson's own organization, the CRIA, successfully lobbied for it! That's right. They insisted that Canadians must pay a surcharge in order to legally record music. And so we have been doing, ever since the late 1990s.

Mr. Henderson finds this convenient to forget, but the rest of us have not forgotten. Even those of us who do no music copying at all have already paid in full for entitlement to copy.

Seriously, you must be new here. Flash is a proprietary closed-source hunk of binary that we're stuck with. This is the reason most people on Slashdot hate it. We can't fix it, and it has regular unfixable problems on every platform I've used it on. It's so bad that most browsers have had to re-engineer their plug-in system to prevent Flash from taking down the browser. Not to mention the regular and horrible security holes, the fact that it bypasses browser cookie policy with it's LSOs (newsflash: not in HTML5.)

Yes, HTML5 might eventually become an advertisers dream but that's what AdBlock is for. At least it will be free, open and standards based. The day that the Flash plug-in is not needed will be a great day. I can't imagine why anyone would champion it. All it is is one less Adobe product you have to buy as a developer.

Fact: you don't know that the iOS hole hasn't been exploited by others.

This story is about a local root hole. Apple has them, Linux has them, Windows has them, OpenBSD has them. To use it, you need to make the computer run the code, you need an infection vector. Linux is more or less exclusively exploited as a server OS, as it has services running and accepting connections from the outside 24/7. OS X is no different. Not at all. Etc, etc. As a desktop or phone OS, I've never heard of Linux being targeted, but at least I'm not saying it's never happened.

Why is desktop Linux and OS X targeted so rarely? Think about the infection vector: either getting people to install a trojan, or planting malicious code e.g. on a web server, and then hoping that a bunch of random users should stumble across the site, hopefully running the correct versions of the right browsers -- it just wouldn't be very effective. So you don't get widespread infections, and they aren't reported. If such an exploit were to be worthwhile, you'd expect it to be targeted to a specific user or organisation with a known software stack, using your ordinary social engineering skills to lure people into clicking a link, for instance. This shouldn't be too hard, and it would more often go undetected. Perfect for spying. The same goes for iOS, of course, although it's a lot simpler, for obvious reasons.

The FCC can't do shit - you should read-up sometime.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/court-throws-out-fccs-smackdown-of-comcast-p2p-blocking.ars

Check out Ars' run down too: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2010/09/macos-x-beta.ars

Stewart can be serious too.
 
Check these out:
  Stewart on Crossfire
  Jon Stewart wins, CNN cancels Crossfire

What about the Cell Phone Empowerment Act of 2007? Did that ever pass?? And what about States like California, Arizona, Rhodes Island, and Illinois? Don't they have some pretty strong recent cell phone consumer protection laws?

In this case I dont think it's that nefarious. I think it's easily many layers of middle managers trying to do a bit better than the last guy tossing on one more layer of tracking until you get a hairball of cookies, HTML5 DBs, Flash LSOs, etc. Most do not seem particularly intrusive alone, but added together the big picture is kinda creepy.

Still the WSJ article makes it sound like 50 mom and pop web sites using Google Analytics. They don't seem to differentiate that two cookies does not equal twice the tracking. One cookie is all you need to track many metrics.

The stuff I find really unnerving is the social network mining and analysis. The economist had a great story on it: http://www.economist.com/node/16910031?story_id=16910031

Now this isn't just cookies on facebook, but actually recoding how long people talk on the phone to identify them as "influencers".

Between things like Radian6, Experian/Equifax/TansUnion, and RingLeaderDigital, there is some very shady tracking going on. And some of the companies are most definitely trying to tie in personally identifiable information. Certainly, the credit unions are committed to keeping just about every fact they can about you. They mine publicly available court records, work with your credit card companies, and they would love to know your browsing history. Their whole purpose it to create as complete a profile of you as possible. They say they delete the info in 10 years but I think some have been caught being less than diligent.

Anyways, for SOME of the more reputable* ad companies you can opt-out here: http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.

*Relative term

Considering that a judge said they have no enforcement power, how you got modded insightful is hillarious.

Fucking amazing actually.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/court-throws-out-fccs-smackdown-of-comcast-p2p-blocking.ars

Since when is the market bearing a cost a justification for over pricing? No business has a right to massive profits, especially when it's the result of maintaining a oligopoly over the particular market.

What massive profits are you talking about? If you had even remotely bothered to type in a few search keywords, you would know that Sprint is losing money $250M every month. The claim that they are charging above-market prices or maintaining an oligopoly is absolutely inconsistent with the facts.

If anything, a company that's consistently (five straight quarters) posting losses should be raising prices or cutting costs since obviously they cannot burn through money forever. What's more, Sprint spent billions deploying WiMax, so it's sort of silly to accuse them of failing to keep up infrastructure. If anything, they are desperately trying to capitalize on their first-to-market status on 4G.

[ Market pricing or not, they should fix the Epic's upload problem. I was responding to the narrow and entirely incorrect (and trivially verifiable!) claim that Sprint is making massive profits, when in fact they have posted a loss in the last 5 quarters. On a personal note to the OP, please verify your claims -- at least where it's trivial to do so. ]

and it appears Microsoft is dead serious about making this work.

yup. they've already started trying just that in their own, inimitable style

When asked whether open source models created problems for vendors with licensed software, the software giant went on the offensive. "It does infringe on a bunch of patents, and there's a cost associated with that," Tivanka Ellawala, Microsoft financial officer told MarketWatch. "So there's a... cost associated with Android that doesn't make it free."

I suppose they have to, seeing as they're licensing WinPhone the same way as Windows mobile (ie for $$ for unit)

Windows Tax ?

I've always suspected it's pretty close to $0 or maybe even a subsidy?

All that preinstalled crapware is there by money paid to the manufacturers.
Numbers paid for Windows range from $29 back in Win95 days to estimates of $80 or more now. Heck.. MS may even refund you $105rather than tell you how much the manufacturer paid.

So even if Windows ends up adding $15 to the cost you get media licenses and can include it in a resale. Get the rebate and you come out ahead!

... and now, Firefox wins in their test! (which has yet to be disassembled to reveal how they dodge Opera and Chrome from winning, when they use to in all others, including independent tests like Peacekeeper)

I'm guessing from the number of crypto and imaging components that this is related to their recent JS math optimizations.

The only decent benchmark I've ever seen for browsers is something someone made which simply loaded local copies of sites like facebook to show how fast the browser really is at true "realistic workloads".

It handles multiple tabs about as poorly as you can expect it to. http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/09/inside-internet-explorer-9-redmond-gets-back-in-the-game.ars/2 (scroll about 1/2 way down)

Basically it just crowds out until the tabs are rendered useless then if helpfully puts scroll arrows after you can't read what's inside the tab anymore.

The same topic covered at arstechnica and the article explicitly states that improvement was ONLY in speed. I think I trust ars more on this one...

Of which a University has been repeatedly shown to be public space in numerous free speech and other court battles in nearly every jurisdiction.

Also the FCC is clearly very interested in cell phone jamming, while this article does not say anything about fines to the business owners, only the jamming sellers, I think if a bunch of feds show up in your classroom and going through your receipts you might have other worries.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/texas-beauty-schools-cell-phone-jammer-leads-to-25k-fine.ars

Is there a catch to Walmart's offerings? You bet. The available data plans are blindingly expensive, locking out much of the lucrative and quickly growing smartphone market. A single gigabyte of prepaid data through Walmart costs $40, which is quite steep compared to AT&T's 2GB for $25 per month, or T-Mobile's $30 per month for unlimited data.

So says Ars Technica, anyway. I don't know much about the market for mobile Internet, but $40 per gigabyte sounds unbelievable. I'm just passing on what I've read.

I think you will be happy to read this: Standardized mobile phone charger coming to EU—iPhone, too. Granted, this is only in the EU, but one can only expect that everyone else will follow.

No. The parts it fails relate only to exotic standards. Read this and stop the FUD.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/09/rldguid-tracking-cookies-in-safari-database-form.ars
I wonder how many will soon be tracked via Flash-based cookies and deep stored history options.
The Safari database seems to be an open and safe way to track a user via a normal 'ad' after a site visit.
Stop giving state task forces and feds signals intelligence via a next generation of toys in your pocket.
Go simple and swap any used device out asap.
Try a collection of dumb devices with no networking or life long databases.
Recall the Malcolm X script... "Don't never write nothing down ....
Cause if they can't find no [iphone] they ain't got no proof..."
The serial numbers, hidden databases, location services ect, almost makes you think someone really put thought into tracking.
Any ex CIA director's investment banks seed money linked to funding this stuff?

It doesn't specifically call out the iPhone model so it may not apply to the newer ones with hardware encryption unless the book's been updated since 2008.

If the key is stored on the same device as the encrypted data, the encryption is a particularly funny instance of security through obscurity.

The only other options are to have the user memorise a key, which will practically inevitably be far too short, use around some kind of separate authentication device, or having the user memorise a password that is used to retrieve the key from some kind of authentication server (which could make a shorter password safer by limiting attempts). However, my money is on the key being stored on the device.

/me googles it

Heh.

(This reminds me of this photo, which I found on Bruce Shneier's blog).

Well Starcraft 2 certainly seems to be doing better. And yes it can be pirated.

Just googling seems to show there was quite some bad feeling about MW2 in the PC gamer community:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/11/pc-modern-warfare-2-its-much-worse-than-you-thought.ars
http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/4069/mw2b.jpg

FWIW I've played none of the mentioned games.

I just wish media companies would stop with this region-locked and country-based contracts nonsense and go with worldwide releases already. They don't need local distribution networks anymore.

What makes you think the problem is strictly corporate?

"The Washington Post reports that last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the US is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s.

Debatable about the innovation (read some of the comments)

not just that, but Google TV is based on... Android. I guess all TVs will have to come with cameras and GPS too :)

Ars Technica has a article about it, they say that Google gives out varying answers depending who you talk to.

One one hand, we have a radically new set-top form factor that will supposedly run Android applications, and on the other hand, we have a Google product director saying that Android isn't a good fit for non-smartphone devices and that those devices may pose insurmountable application compatibility challenges in some cases.

I reckon this will quickly be a non-story in the end. Someone from Google will provide the necessary foot to the bum of the marketing department and all will be well.

you may find this recent article enlightening. From the article:

The impact of export controls on the high-tech industry have caused problems for everyone from browser makers—who once ran up against restrictions on their encryption software, despite its wide availability outside the US—to hardware makers; Apple once advertised that its G4 processor fell under export control due to outdated definitions of what constituted a supercomputer. But they also affect more mundane items. In the announcement that outlines the reform efforts, the White House notes that the brake pads for the army's M1A1 tank are essentially identical to those used in fire trucks, but only the former ends up under export controls; "Under our current system, we devote the same resources to protecting the brake pad as we do to protecting the M1A1 tank itself."

The only way to really protect yourself is to learn how tracking systems work, and implement your own safety. In this case, it's pretty easy, just turn off cookies...lol.

Yes, just turn them off, breaking legit functionality of many sites you frequent.

It's okay though, because your healthy, no-cookie diet still won't make you thin because there is the cake that is being secretly injected right into your stomach .