Slashdot Mirror

Well, Apps I can't live without on my iPhone, there is the American Express app, that I think is not available for Android, I'd have to put up with their mobile web site.

I can't live without my dear Netflix.

There is Air Video, an app that allows me to stream video over the internet from my computer. There may be similar alternatives for the Android. I know for one there is ZumoCast, not out yet but it was just purchased by Motorola and likely will go either Android only or at least make it into the Android market. Then again, it may become a Motorola only app.

There are a lot of games, too many to count.

PBS, ABC Player, ABC News, TED Mobile, CNN app and the NPR app are some I may live without but really rather not. Not sure if any of these are available for the Android.

Not essential but I love my 8mm Vintage Camera, would dislike departing with it.

That's without going into actual OS features, although at first I thought the new Apple TV was a stupid gimmick (other than being useful as a Netflix player, but I had an XBox for that,) I am now in love with it due to Air Play. Now, yea, that's just an OS feature, but now any app that uses video of any type will be able to stream the video to the TV completely wirelessly. That's something I wont be able to do with any app in the Android [right now.] To be fair, though, 3rd party apps wont be doing it ether for the iPhone until 4.3 is out (but it's not too far off.)

Wired also has a wiki titled "Communicate if Your Government Shuts Off Your Internet." It has some interesting thoughts on things like ad-hoc networking, satelite, and even packet radio.

People tend to forget something: short distance (same city and nearby cities) communication is NOT a problem. People have legs, bicycles, cars, camels etc. It might be risky to travel during a situation like the one in Egypt, but it's doable. Keep in mind that history is full of riots and revolutions, and for a big chunk of the history people didn't have computers and computer networks to communicate and organize.

Their (Egyptians) biggest problem is long distance communication. They want and need to make their situation known to the world, so they can get more support from outside (ie. political pressure) on one hand, and on the other hand they might need to communicate with far away cities, which could benefit from "faster than car" (TM) technology.

Whoever keeps talking about wireless adhoc networks probably thinks a revolution can happen over IRC, with people in front of their computers. No, revolutions happen with people in the streets.

As a side note, satellite and radio (packet or not), can be useful for long distance communication.

Wired also has a wiki titled "Communicate if Your Government Shuts Off Your Internet." It has some interesting thoughts on things like ad-hoc networking, satelite, and even packet radio.

This bit I found interesting: "Apple computers tend to have very accessible Ad-Hoc functionality built in, including a pre-installed chat client (iChat) that will automatically set up an Ad-Hoc "Rendezvous" chatroom between anybody on the network, without the need for an external service like AIM or Skype. Ad-hoc network hosting functionality is built in to the Wifi menu." On Windows PCs, it's almost as easy, but it requires software which is not installed by default.

TITLE III--FEDERAL INFORMATION SECURITY MANAGEMENT

SEC. 301. COORDINATION OF FEDERAL INFORMATION POLICY.
(a) Findings- Congress finds that--
(1) since 2002 the Federal Government has experienced multiple high-profile incidents that resulted in the theft of sensitive information amounting to more than the entire print collection contained in the Library of Congress, including personally identifiable information, advanced scientific research, and prenegotiated United States diplomatic positions; ...

Sweet! They used 1 Library of Congress as a unit! So anyway, "Sec. 3552. Authority and functions of the National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications" gets to the meat of TITLE III: this new agency has to have some teeth with the guys doing real work in the government.

TITLE IV--RECRUITMENT AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Gives this bill more teeth. Basically adds to the workload of government agencies, making them follow these guidelines. Don't get me wrong -- training about cybersecurity is good. But not this kind of jack-booted cybersecurity.
TITLE V--OTHER PROVISIONS
SEC. 239 NATIONAL CYBERSECURITY ADVISORY COUNCIL - creation of another federally-funded "think thank."
Also gives these new agencies more teeth (Sec. 503).
Gives them special spending privileges (Sec. 504).

The bill seems to be missing some major parts at the end, specifically the parts about what happens in an "emergency," changes to CERT, and requirements for supply chain management (to avoid purchasing bugged hardware).

Subtitle E--Cybersecurity

`Sec. 241. Definitions.

`Sec. 242. National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications.

`Sec. 243. Physical and cyber infrastructure collaboration.

`Sec. 244. United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team.

`Sec. 245. Additional authorities of the Director of the National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications.

`Sec. 246. Information sharing.

`Sec. 247. Private sector assistance.

`Sec. 248. Cyber vulnerabilities to covered critical infrastructure.

`Sec. 249. National cyber emergencies..

`Sec. 250. Enforcement.

`Sec. 251. Protection of information.

`Sec. 252. Sector-specific agencies.

`Sec. 253. Strategy for Federal cybersecurity supply chain management.'.

I've always heard that they've had technology (or something similar) in Japanese phones for years. The Wired story about the iPhone in Japan from two years ago mentioned that traditional Japanese phones had TV tuners as well. A lot of tech that Apple or Android have shown off has been done before, but it was generally a miserable usability experience. Now and Apple and Google are doing it, you can be sure that the user experience is going to be a lot more polished and it's likely that this will finally take off worldwide.

Maybe they've figured out how to use quantum entanglement to send information FTL? Apparently, you can send data instantaneously across time - works for space too, not sure about both at the same time. TFA

These conditions persist at this one location for hours on end, every single day. How many hash challenges do you suppose there are in just this one photo?

My estimate is that there are 250 vehicles in the photo, generating 31250 hash challenges in a single moment of time at a single location.

Hundreds of billions of hash challenges per hour would be a severe low-ball on this planet, especially if we use your 10 mile radius figure. I am not full of shit as these conditions happen in hundreds of thousands of places around the world all the time

You need to check some of your assumptions.

Beardo, here's the short of it.

1. President signs HSPD-12 which mandates issuing a new, more secure, id card to all federal employees. HSPD-12 is all about "secure and reliable" id. It has nothing to do with background checks. Full text: http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/laws/gc_1217616624097.shtm

2. OMB is tasked with carrying out HSPD-12.

3. OMB arbitrarily adds background checks and "employee suitability". HSPD-12 does not authorize this. This bears repeating. HSPD-12 does not mandate background checks. The background check is a fantasy invented by OMB.

4. Presumably because there are too many background checks to be done, the background checks are being partially outsourced. For example, ChoicePoint handled JSC. Here's a nice article about ChoicePoint: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2005/02/66685. An old article now, but was relevant 3 years ago.

5. SF85 is the form that landed on my desk with instructions to "sign or else resign". The "carte blanche" part is the first paragraph on the last page. It basically says, "authorize any investigator ... obtain any information ... is not limited". Full text is here: http://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/sf85.pdf

I would be happy to undergo an actual real background check and receive an S or TS clearance. Such a check has real value and would open up work opportunities to me. I an not willing to let some random dude investigate me and store that information in some unknown location to be stolen or shared with arbitrary entities.

I have to say, it's depressing that at this point we can't even get a solar sail to come out of a can in orbit reliably.

I have to think that our ability to engineer unmanned system has to grow by many orders of magnitude more than our propulsions technology has to, for us to really think about this kind of project.

Filesharing is terrorism!

Huh? Well, we needed a new strawman. The old one has been reduced to a source for caricature and ridicule.

until no one else could replicate the results. ... but otherwise no one seriously (or rather, no serious scientist) chases that particular dream anymore.

This is simply not true. There are many scientists who were able to get similar results -- Navy researchers got a paper published in Naturwissenschaften in 2007, and reported further significant results in 2009 .

As a matter of fact, the American Chemical Society hosted a 2-day conference on the subject at their 239th meeting last year in San Francisco.

"Years ago, many scientists were afraid to speak about 'cold fusion' to a mainstream audience," said Jan Marwan, Ph.D., the internationally known expert who organized the symposium. Marwan heads the research firm, Dr. Marwan Chemie in Berlin, Germany. Entitled "New Energy Technology," the symposium will include nearly 50 presentations describing the latest discoveries on the topic. ...

"The field is now experiencing a rebirth in research efforts and interest, with evidence suggesting that cold fusion may be a reality." Marwan said. He noted, for instance, that the number of presentations on the topic at ACS National Meetings has quadrupled since 2007.

What happened is that to avoid the seemingly near-religious 'skepticism' displayed yourself and others, the actual scientists working on the subject had to refer to their results as "anomalous heat" and refer to the field as "Low Energy Nuclear Reactions" (LENR) to avoid controversy.

So while you are busy deciding if anyone is replicating the results or if the field is worth looking into, a great deal of serious scientific effort has gone into the field for the last 20 years.

I have heard a lot of people say that Assange has a big ego, is a narcissist etc. But when I actually listen to him speak he strikes me as a level headed guy.

Why do so many people think he has a big ego?

From the picture that emerges in the media, Assange is generally good before a camera (not always), and can charm people. However, people who know him, even his friends, generally recognize that he can be dismissive, abrasive, and is encumbered with an ego at least equal to his substantial programming talents. He tends to berate, insult, and drive people away. If he was better with his people skills and treated people with consideration (after he gets what he wants from them), he probably wouldn't have two sets of sexual assault charges lodged against him by women who apparently threw themselves at him for a fling, not a long term relationship.

Unpublished Iraq War Logs Trigger Internal WikiLeaks Revolt

Domscheit-Berg announced his resignation in an interview with Der Spiegel. By then, a key WikiLeaks programmer had resigned as well, sources say. The coder was responsible for building the software tool WikiLeaks’ volunteers were using to perform a painstaking, line-by-line harm-minimization review of the Iraq logs.

Then Snorrason, the Icelandic university student, resigned after he challenged Assange on his decision to suspend Domscheit-Berg and was bluntly rebuked.

“I am the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organizer, financier and all the rest,” Assange wrote Snorrason. “If you have a problem with me, piss off.”

“I believe that Julian has in fact pushed the capable people away,” Snorrason said in an interview with Wired.com. “His behavior is not of the sort that will keep independent-minded people interested.”

Narcissism?

Assange: 'I'm the only victim' in rape scandal

"The only victim here is me," stressed the 39-year-old Australian spokesman of the whistleblower website notorious for having recently published nearly 77,000 classified US military documents about Afghanistan.

BTW, I think that these super [quantum] computers could certainly explore the number of permutations that we're talking about in a reasonable amount of time: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/quantum-computer-hydrogen-simulation/

As I said, it's only a 'matter of time' (i.e., until we have built substantial quantum computers) before evolution is debunked.

David Byrne on the future of entertainment production and distribution: http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne?currentPage=all

One of the fun things about the Patriot Act. The National Security Letter tends to come with a gag order. Those gag orders can last for years.

Granted - I might be reading too much in to the statement. But if Google were being served NSLs, I wouldn't be surprised if they're restricted from stating that they are. The numbers are around 50k NSLs a year. I would expect that Google has seen more than a hand-full.

In a discussion about privacy, I would think this sort of thing would be salient to the point.

Ahh, reading the Wired article after all. It also refers to This article in The Straight Dope. The GM connection is there, but backwards.

Phillips applied for his own patents in 1934 and '36. After years of rejection, he got the American Screw Company to spend $500,000 ($5.7 million in today's money) to develop a manufacturing process. Then they convinced General Motors to try the new-fangled fasteners on the 1936 Cadillac.

Oddly enough, the completely-unrelated Phillips Screw Company was never involved in the Phillips screw (though they do make them now, I think.)

Do you think Duke Nukem Forever will require more than 640KB of conventional memory? I'm concerned that my computer isn't modern enough to run DOS/4G. Bill Gates has also refuted the myth that "640K should be enough for anybody" so it's not looking good for DNF on my computer.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/google-mocked/

"If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

What's more interesting is the next piece:

But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And [...] we're all subject, in the US, to the Patriot Act, and it is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities.

Schmidt is telling us that Google is being served PATRIOT Act notices without breaking the law and telling us that they're being served. It's a pity everyone is hung up on the nothing-to-hide idiocy. Of course, it's little wonder we're missing the important pieces when served up ham-fisted attacks by the likes of Consumer Watchdog.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/google-mocked/

"If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

"I think that over time, on the internet, there will be less anonymity. And I actually think that's good"

Here we go again.

Wikipedia is problematic beyond problematic. Want to know why? Here's a transcript of a Jason Scott presentation that goes over a lot of it.

The short version is: Wikipedia as it exists today is an insular, closed circle-jerk operation. Even good contributions and spelling corrections are apt to be "reverted" by a legion of people who are using semi-automated tools to up their "edit count", because the prime metric for becoming an "admin" is a stupid-high edit count that an actual writer could never reach in 10 years, and they don't give a crap how you got there.

Once you get to be an "admin", basically anything goes. That's when you start entertaining offers to be the protecting force for groups of people who create politics, that's when you start being verbally obtuse if not outright abusive towards any new editors, and that's where the whole system falls apart. Want to try to repair an article, add links? Ok, but now you have to speak 18 categories of acronyms, you have to be online 24/7 to instantly respond to "questions" that can be posed in a dozen or more possible places ranging from your talk page, other editors talk pages, article talkpage, "related" article talkpages, various "admin" forums, two or three email forums, and on and on. You have to master an entire subset of "how to write a citation" code rather than sticking a link at the end of the line, because otherwise some ass-hat will revert you and claim you're spamming.

It's a mess. It's a mess because Wikipedia is not, and never will be, an accurate encyclopedia. Wikipedia is just the latest in the MUD/MMORPG line of games where a bunch of assholes grind time, gain "XP" (aka "edit count"), and once they get powerful enough and get the "admin" hat, spend most of their day griefing incoming players and claiming it's "thinning the herd", "fun", or "protecting the encyclopedia."

The AGW community ... refuse to look at green technologies like nuclear because they’re ignorant. ... [ShakaUVM]

Already discussed, but note that nuclear plants do generate small amounts of CO2 due to current enrichment and mining methods, as well as the curing of concrete containment domes. Averaged over the projected life of the reactors, this CO2 is only a few percent of the emissions from an equivalently powerful coal plant. Pebble bed reactors might be capable of safe operation without containment domes, but that unfortunate incident in Germany makes it unlikely that they'll be built that way for a while. Nuclear power is our best hope of maintaining a prosperous civilization. Please don't oversell it by making claims it can't live up to yet.

... It is possible to reduce our CO2 by 50%, maily because we can attack the problem in a centralized way at the power plant level. 0 CO2 emission is simply not on the table, but the fact that climatologists think it is doable is yet another bit of evidence for the fact that being good at science doesn’t make you good at policy. [ShakaUVM]

Dr. Knutti's emissions graph makes it clear that he's examining a scenario in which CO2 emissions only drop to half of 2010 values by ~2030, and a quarter of 2010 values by ~2070. That doesn't seem too different from the Lieberman-McCain "Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007" which seemed doable.

Because much of the CO2 emitted by nuclear plants is emitted in a pulse as the concrete dome cures, any nuclear plants built in the next few decades won't be emitting CO2 past ~2070 (unless we still haven't perfected mining and enrichment in the next ~60 years.) As you say, centralized power plants are easiest to upgrade, but we've got ~60 years to perfect electric cars in order to hit Knutti's target. They certainly can't universally replace gasoline vehicles in time (especially in developing countries) but biofuels can be produced carbon-neutrally (albeit inefficiently at present) in a centralized fashion. Distributing biofuels just like gasoline will avoid the need to make and sell billions of electric cars by 2100. Even if that fails, I'd be astonished if ~60 years isn't enough time for humanity to devise and implement a carbon sequestration program capable of making up the difference.

In fact, the only way the human race could possibly fail to tackle climate change would be if there were legions of crackpots arguing that climate "scientists" are actually just deceitful, shady, laughably dishonest, perverting, badly reeking, dogmatic, anti-scientific, idiotic, disingenuous, scurrilous, nefarious, damned, indefensibly guilty, laughably wrong, fundamentally rotten, self-discrediting, fraudulent, bullshitting partisan hacks with something to hide who do bad things, don't fucking know

If you outlaw exploits, only outlaws will have exploits.

Seriously folks, It's illegal for me to craft a website that exploits the "attack toolkit" to disable the attack.
I'm forbidden from fighting back...

If someone breaks into my house and threatens me with a shotgun, it's perfectly legal for me to use my pistol on them; The same is not true for software. If my machine is infected by a botnet it's illegal for me to exploit the botnet to disable the threat.

Take heed folks:
Without the right to bear arms we have no means to protect ourselves.
Without the right to bear technology we have no means to protect ourselves.

These attack toolkits will continue to work effectively for only as long as it's illegal for folks like me to exploit and disable botnets & attack toolkits.

Also note: If you outlaw strong encryption, only outlaws will have strong encryption.

If we're going to classify strong encryption as a munitions and have government funded "Cyber Warfare" and "Cyber Defense" then I demand a right to Cyber Defend our Cyber Selfs.

Here's another link http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/digiscent_pr.html I remember the DigiScent hype at the time. Unlike vision where you can use combinations of RGB light to fool the eye into seeing almost any color, there are no basis vectors for scent. The scent cartridge becomes unwieldy.

That is a very small chance. But there are other things that might happen with worse results. Other, more likely results are things like the Moon does have liquid core. What happens if you hit a magma vein in the Moon? Possibly something like Saturns moon Enceladus which spews out what appears to be something like water. But in the our Moons case your looking more at a volcano that could spew magma and that is unknown when it will stop since there is such low gravity. This could cause things like ash to blow over the Earth, possibly enter the atmosphere or other negative side effects (like lava rocks hitting satellites). As well as the fact the a volcano on the Moon might cause it to shift orbit due to the gravity (like a jet engine, depending on the pressure and size of the volcano), if the Moon shifts orbit this can cause many major issues here on Earth. Another fact is that the Moon appears to possess light elements like sulphur and oxygen, which are both flammable. Hit a pocket of the two under the surface and your looking at issues similar to a gas pocket when oil drilling except without gravity the typical solutions might not work causing unknown effects.

"Buying an [i]Phone"

There, fixed that for you! :-)

Its silly to fight over who has the better phone, when its obvious, *I* do! JK

What do you mean about "Apple" owning my phone? If you're meaning in regards to some kind of App killswitch...thats also in Android you know...

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/06/google-flips-remote-kill-switch-on-android-apps/

If you really want to be a nut job about Open Source, Nokia seem to be the only ("mainstream") way to go.

I dont think you can compare an original Droid to an iPhone 4. Droid X to iPhone 4 would be somewhat more realistic.

And it was simply no fun.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/digiscent.html

We had this at a "cyber cafe" that I worked in toward the end of the '90s. There was a VR headset that allowed you to fly through different landscapes (i remember a musty smelling cave). This machine sat in the corner and collected dust.

Maybe when we get to the point where virtual worlds make us feel like we are actually standing somewhere different (and not just staring at the screen or wearing a headset), then we will need to tackle things like smell and touch. This will help our virtual world transcend that "uncanny valley".

For now, it's just not needed. It's a gimmick, and probably an expensive one. I'm not insisted it will never be needed, but just not now.

When we do finally need to need to tackle the "smelling" aspect of VR, my guess is that our immersion into the world will be so advanced compared to what we have now that it's being done by fooling our neurons, and not our eyes / ears / nose themselves. At that point, these devices will be moot, because we'll just be sending signals to the brain.

Didn't this concept already win top vaporware /worst concept awards for a few years?

DigiScents iSmell

Try http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/marshall.html
http://www.uky.edu/PR/News/Archives/2002/July2002/AndyMarshall.htm

Actually, Netflix accounts for 20% of bandwidth used in the US during prime time hours.

First sentence of this article from wired: "...an internal audit found that FBI agents abused a Patriot Act power more than 1,000 times...".

I guess you said "much serious abuse of the law" which is full of qualifiers, making it hard to tell what kind of abuse would be excessive for you.

What's sad yet amusing is that the ACLU's report on the abuses talks about many instances of the FBI going beyond what the patriot act allows. At least the ACLU got them to slacken their use of gag orders though.

Kinda reminds me of the kier/cha0 story which you can read here - Quite scary stuff. There are other events like this out there as well involving organised criminals kidnapping people who started investigating their links with malware and botnets.

More importantly, take more precautions if you work with slaughtered pigs and cows in a meat packing facility/slaughterhouse.

Indeed, just below TFA was this little blurb pointing out exactly that - workers on a pig brain processing line came down with a serious autoimmune disorder linked to heavy exposure to pig brain pieces. Not prion linked apparently, but certainly a potential occupational hazard to all you Zombies out there.

"One of the best things about Chrome is that updates take place silently and promptly without any user intervention"

You like having a rogue process running as root on your machine? I consider it the worst thing about Chrome. The first thing I dig out and kill after I install Chrome is Google Software Update.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/02/why-googles-sof/

A.

Well... that's the idea. Whether or not you agree with his actions, what Manning did was a crime, and a very serious one, and if he's convicted then he's likely to face a sentence that reflects that and serves as a strong deterrent. You may not agree with the conduct of the government or with the laws, but if you're someone whose end goal includes a society that's governed by the rule of law, then you have to be willing to pay the price when your attempts to change society violate the law.

Personally, I sympathize with the guy, which I didn't expect. Based on a few quotes in the media I had assumed he was some kind of arrogant, boastful jerk, but when I read the transcripts of his chats with Lamo ( http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/wikileaks-chat/ ) what emerges is someone who is deeply unhappy with the war in Iraq and his government, and perhaps himself. He makes fun of the government, but he's also self-deprecating. And in one rather telling moment he says, "...and god knows what happens now. Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms. If not... than we're doomed. As a species. I will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens." I don't agree with his actions but I can sympathize with his motives. That may help him, if his lawyers can show that he was motivated by his conscience... but somehow, I doubt it.

Wow, several months late in their less than timely follow through. Wikileaks has gone on the record as saying they were going to donate $50,000 to Manning's defense. Does it surprise anyone that when it came time to follow through they fell through? All told they've raised at least $150,000 just from the heavily edited helicopter video alone. Of which they can only be bothered to spend $15,000 on his behalf. Take the $150,000 from the video and $50,000 pledge and you get a $185,000 profit for Wikileaks on those two items alone, not counting everything they raised from the cables.

Look, I know that fifteen thousand and fifty thousand both start with 'fift', but that doesn't mean they are anywhere near the same amount. I don't know about in Europe, but in America raising money for a cause and refusing to use it for a cause is considered a pretty serious felony fraud. This of it this way, less than 1 dollar in 3 that was pointedly raised for his defense was actually donated. Consider all the other money wikileaks has gotten from the rest of Manning's contributions and you'll see just how badly Wikileaks hung Manning out to dry. On a personal level, considering his treasonous actions could result in anywhere from 52 years in prison up to the death penalty, it's nice too see wikileaks living up to it's potential and hanging him out to dry.

Trending toward fitting quite well, actually:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/09/android-market-share/

And just for giggles:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/windows-mobile-android/

Trending toward fitting quite well, actually:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/09/android-market-share/

And just for giggles:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/windows-mobile-android/

There is nothing covert about it. The requests to companies (like Twitter) did not include any kind of gag order.

Why bother with the facts when you can just make up your own reality, eh?

"Often blocked already because the iPhone does not support Flash. No configuration required." - by SuperKendall (25149) on Tuesday January 11, @12:51PM (#34837644)

See subject-line above, & Remember: Not only is there FLASH adbanners, but other types of adbanners also (that use std. HTML + Javascript etc.).

They can "do bad things to you" too, as these evidences show:

---

HACKERS USE ADBANNERS ON MAJOR SITES TO HIJACK YOUR SYSTEM: -> http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/11/doubleclick

THE NEXT AD YOU CLICK MAY BE A VIRUS: -> http://it.slashdot.org/story/09/06/15/2056219/The-Next-Ad-You-Click-May-Be-a-Virus

NY TIMES INFECTED WITH MALWARE ADBANNER: -> http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/09/13/2346229

MICROSOFT HIT BY MALWARES IN ADBANNERS: -> http://apcmag.com/microsoft_apologises_for_serving_malware.htm

2 MAJOR AD NETWORKS FOUND SERVING MALWARE: -> http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/12/13/0128249/Two-Major-Ad-Networks-Found-Serving-Malware

ISP's INJECTING ADS AND ERRORS INTO THE WEB: -> http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/04/19/2148215.shtml

ADOBE FLASH ADS INJECTING MALWARE INTO THE NET: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/20/0029220&from=rss

---

APK

P.S.=> However: MOST OF ALL, ADBANNERS EAT UP BANDWIDTH and SLOW YOU DOWN:

---

ADBANNERS SLOW DOWN THE WEB: -> http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/11/30/166218

---

apk

Umm, we're not talking about iOS here, we're talking about Mac OS, which doesn't require you to buy apps from the Apple store.

Are you blind? RTFA: "Apple Pulls VLC Media Player from AppStore". That's the iOS AppStore.

Even if we were talking about iOS, you are still free to install whatever you like on your own hardware.

Apple takes active measures preventing me from installing software on my hardware; they designed their hardware and software that way. The fact that they are too dumb to get it right doesn't change the fact that that's their intention.

As for legal measures, what are you referring to? I don't recall any legal action from Apple against people jailbreaking their devices.

Apple made official DMCA arguments against jailbreaking. Fortunately, the feds put a stop to that:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/feds-ok-iphone-jailbreaking/

However, Apple is not required to assist you in doing so

That remains to be seen. As part of fair business practice and antitrust efforts, we can require Apple (and other vendors) to allow and support the installation of third party software. And we probably should do that.

Well here is a report from 2007 stating that Diebold machines are not secure (with some of the study being published in 2006). And here is a report in 2008 (a year later) showing of not only warnings not to use the Diebold machines, but lists 2 different incidents (both in 2008) where Diebold machines caused problems with votes.

I've seen that too. Technology helps drivers, but can't replace them, (as of now). Since I live in Texas, I see the "I have 4WD/AWD, I can do anything". An ice storm comes up, and the 4x4 vehicles are right beside the Toyota Camries in the ditches by the side of the road.

I'm not a fan of OnStar just due to the security implications. GM has to have a VERY secure system, because if a blackhat can get access, they can cause all sorts of havoc. What could happen would be similar to what took place in Austin when an ex-employee of a used car dealership (that used a "bill not paid, no start engine" black box on all cars sold and were being paid on) logged in through an employee account and shut down every single customer's car bought through that place [1]. Picture the chaos of that, scaled up a few orders of magnitude. I can see a real blackhat selling an Onstar 0-day to a group who would wait until hurricane was about to hit, people starting to evacuate, then disabling every GM car just to cause chaos.

[1]: One source on this -- http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/hacker-bricks-cars/

the issue is not the state, its not big brother, its simply THE MARCH OF TECHNOLOGY that you are fighting against, and its a fight you can't win

It is the deployment and use of technology NOT technology itself at question. Just because the capability to do something (such as obliterating all life on earth) exists does not mean it automatically should or will be done. Technology is nothing more than a tool. How it is used is subject to the whims of those who yield it.

Phones have cameras to the point where it is impossible to buy one without a camera not because of technology. Rather it was cell companies who demand it from manufacturers to upsell data services and make bigger profits.

I'm thinking a high speed laser scanner can target optics and CCDs without much trouble. If there is a will there is a way. You can WIN if you care enough by using technology AND your brain. Some people are rich enough to make the "impossible" come true.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/russian-billionaire-installs-anti-photo-shield-on-giant-yacht/

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/15-12/mf_morris

I can give you story after story about major executives who all said digital media will fail, and how consumers don't want digital media, or how it is impossible to do right.

I can give you story after story about executives who insisted consumers will never legally pay for digital media.

I can show you stories of executives saying Hulu was doomed for failure, and NBC only allowed the project to end the debate that putting full episodes of TV on the web was a valid business model.

Hollywood, video game executives and the music industry demand DRM beacause they don't know better. Even worse, they spend money on DRM. It costs them money to "protect their investment", which in turn costs them that much more in tech support and customer nightmares.

If they knew better, they wouldn't do it.

Bickering is easy on the internet and continued communication does allow for resolutions - your comment makes me remember (and I say this simply to add to the conversation not add an emotional layer to it) the '06 survey on tone reception in written communication -- http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/02/70179

According to Wired, back in 2008 Wikileaks had a plan to sell exclusivity to certain documents to the highest bidder. These documents were embargoed, which meant eventually they'd be fully released, but until then the lucky winner would be able to report on them without competition.

Which does make me wonder about the "financial interest" angle mentioned in the Vanity Fair piece... are any of these media outlets paying for access to the current set of leaked documents?

Observe the observer... interesting.

Though, I'd say do both.
Set up audio/visual/EM monitoring along with the brain-scan stuff.

Although, you may just find that your family are a bunch of dead salmon.

The story is organic fertilizer. If anything, the problem isn't hackers... the market is now an autonomous exercise in artificial intelligence, and for the most part, beyond human understanding. Don't get me wrong, we can understand parts, and even how some of those parts interact, we simply have no way of comprehending the aggregate and its immense degree of complexity. We have systems milking the tiniest fluctuations in the system sifting out whispers of profit in a hurricane of transactional data. These systems interact with the existing trade ecology and the data dance just keeps growing new harmonics of feedback. Something as ham-fisted as screwing with signal timing would show up like setting off a nuke in nunnery.>/p>

In fact, the only effective way to hack the system would be to black box the entire system (good luck building that model on anything smaller than a big box at Lawrence Livermore), and messing with a tiny group of nodes in a financially interesting place. You'd need the same kinds of computers network resources as the one's doing the trading, and the model analysis would take tens of thousands of person hours and many millions of dollars. Unless you had some certainty of snatching many billions of dollars (before the existing environment simply networked around you and picked your financial carcass clean in the instant of time it takes the neurotransmitters to cross the synapses in your brain), your time would be better spent selling your IP to Wallstreet and cashing at a significantly lower levels of risk.

Of course there are adrenaline junkies who might do it for the risk, or the street cred among hackers... good luck on that, and you might want to purchase that chastity belt now so your stay at Club Fed doesn't include unwanted fraternizing. If you're at all interested in the current state of the networks that carry money check out this months WIRED article on AI, its truly enlightening. Oh, and for those who think they could walk away from hacking the financial network, just remember the people you're playing with... you'd be lucky not to end up an inventory of parts at a Mumbai transplant hospital.

In this months Wired there is an article called 'Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness' that references the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that is currently undergoing revision to version 5. The definition of autism has changed through the first 4 versions to create a broader definition of autism hence the higher rates of diagnosis. The article is at http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_dsmv/all/1

Apologies for replying to myself, but it'd be useful if someone could post the USD prices for comparison - see if they're trying to implement regional price differences (over and above the necessary exchange rate + taxes) or not.

Take a look at this article:

Mac App Store Launches with 1,000 Apps, Big Discounts

Apple's flagship photo-editing software, Aperture, is in the store for just $80. You can still buy it from the conventional Apple Store, but it'll cost the usual $200.

The three iWork apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote, cost $20 apiece, a saving on the usual $80 bundle price.