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iPad Jailbroken
A day after the release of Apple's tablet computer, a hacker claims to have gained root access to the iPad. "A well-known hacker of the iPhone, who previously defeated Apple's restrictions on developers, has claimed in a video to have hacked the iPad. Just a day after release, the hacker, who goes by 'MuscleNerd' online, said that he has gained root access to the iPad..."
If you'd get a normal tablet or computer, you wouldn't need to jailbreak it. Apple is moving us towards closed computer environments. If Microsoft did this everyone would be angry about it, but now that it's Apple its all fine and classy.
MuscleNerd is a pretty active contributor on the iPhone dev team, and has assisted significantly in finding vulnerabilities to SIM-unlock and jailbreak the iPhone with. It was only a matter of time, anyway.
Jailbroken or not, the iPad is still locked into Apple. There are much better alternatives to the iPad which will allow you freedom over your own device.
.Jailbroken or not, the iPad is still locked into Apple.
If it were, what would be the point?
In fact the whole point of Jailbreaking is to be able to ALSO run stuff Apple didn't approve, from Cydia or other sources.
Or to do your own development without going through Apple (though a $99/year barrier is hardly off-putting).
You can also continue to run Apple approved apps too, but it's hardly "locked" to be given a full range of options including commercial ones sold through Apple...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
why do we care?
People who buy this device are buying into the environment created for the device by Apple. As such, someone gaining root access to the device that Apple will analyze and patch, and you *still* won't be able to use the app store for... seems like a waste.
So, I ask again... why do we care?
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"In MY impression there is a preponderance of Apple-hating commenters here on Slashdot."
I think you'll find that about 20% of posters hate Apple, 20% would defend Apple if they were killing babies, and the rest don't care. Since you're an unabashed fan of Apple, I think you've adopted a bunker-like mentality that makes you feel that unless you're very complimentary to Apple that you hate them and you need to speak up to defend the honor of poor beleaguered Apple.
It's probably good for browsing porn. I hate always having to boot a full OS for just to browse porn. It looks super portable too, so I'd be able to browse porn from just about anywhere. It has a fairly big screen, which would be good for browsing porn. And good battery life so I could browse porn for long periods of time. The touch screen is nice, so I'd be able to touch the porn I'm browsing. It has good Internets connections, so I'd be able to browse lots of porn fast. I don't think it's good for much else. I think I'm sold.
The Kindle is an e-book reader, not a tablet PC.
The iPad is an overgrown iPod Touch, not a tablet PC. For one thing, "PC" in Apple marketing language usually refers to Lenovo-compatible hardware running an operating system made by Microsoft.
Unless you buy a stand, you need to hold the device with one hand to keep it angled so you can look at it and if your other hand is busy that means you have no way to change pictures, etc.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Running software not designed for it is not the real issue here. The issue is what is a stake and how appropriate the lockdown is.
apple tends to argue for "speed bump" DRM. basically make something difficult enough or a sufficient game of cat and mouse on the one hand (the speed bump) and and offer an express lane you can pay for. So for example, itunes. you can break the audio files if you want to. they impose some speed bumps to make it not worth your effort. then they offer enhanced value for staying in the itunes eco-system: the seemless updates to the ipod, cover art access, organization of the meta data, safe store, etc... All things you could do on your own but would most people would prefer it to happen magically rather farting around with bit torrent or sending your credit card to some russian mafia website.
Now for somethings like the iphone they have taken a much more agressive lockdown. I rationalize that by thinking about what they are protecting. You don't want crazy shit happening on a cell phone. so you make it hard to install anything not vetted by the mothership. Even the android market has this vetting. It's not that you can't do it. they just make it even harder. people will get much more enraged if their cell phones crash or the cell network itself starts malfunctioning.
SO that makes sense.
the Ipad is sort of in the middle regime so it's going to be more of a test of how apple wants to go. it's really more of a general purpose computer. some units don't have cell phones in them, and even those are not there primarily for voice but for data.
so you could see them going either way on this one. My suspiscion is they will try to maintain the lockdown. that's what they did with the ipod touch (which is not a cell phone).
The new rationale will be that this is an appliance not something you are supposed to mess with. protection for content owners will be seen as paramount over make-like access to the internals. Byt treating it as a appliance that protects content owners they will be able to more freely provide content without onerous access modalities. This will keep the device behaving more like an appliance than a computer.
COntrary to cory doctrow I see this as good. why? well it's not an either or situation, it's an all of the above. If I want true access to my computer then I should buy a computer that allows this. it's called a laptop. I can put linux on it. it's mine to mod. But I should expect that I'll also run into access restrictions from content owners. I might find that less user freindly. On the other hand if I want easy access then there's this appliance I can use for that. I can't modify it. that's the trade, but it's a trade that gives me a value I want.
you could wish for both in one device and if this were easy to provide then someone will do it.
but because both devices, laptop and appliance exist, I have not lost anything.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Firefox says that Google says that this site has viruses or browser exploits in it...
Come on, Dr. Sheldon Cooper, we all know it's you behind the lame nickname !
(Great punchline to episode 18 though !)
I'm not sure if it's the same MuscleNerd or not, but the one I've seen on the 'tubes before predated The Big Bang Theory by several years. See, e.g., this thread on TiVo hacking.
For the love of God people! WTF is wrong with you guys? It is a freaking mass produced consumer product, not the elixir of youth or manna from heaven. It is also not the Dajjal (AntiChrist) either. Do you vehemently argue over the merits/evils of your washing machine or your sink's waste disposal unit? If people want to buy a severely crippled product, it is their own decision to make and money to spend. You do not lose anything if someone else buys it. Similarly, if people don't like a particular Apple/Microsoft/Boeing/Airbus/Sienar/Incom etc. product, then they are not committing heresy against the Holy name of the Immortal Omniscient God Emperor either. Get it into your heads people! There is no obligation on you to support or hate a freaking mass-production, soulless commercial entity.
Jail-break or not, the DRM alone is enough reason for me to not to even consider Apple's iPad and iPhone. I want to be able to watch porn or whatever and install any software I want on my device. Apple can disagree, fine, but I don't need to buy their DRM-crippled crap.
Actually, a linux kernel has been booted on the iPhone before, I imagine it still would, the only reason you can't run rockbox is nobody's taken the time to port it, considering you need to write drivers for the screen, audio chipset, touchscreen, etc. and that would take time that people figure is better spent elsewhere. Part of jailbreaking requires running a new unsigned kernel (it has to be patched to disable signature checks on executables among other things) so you could just as easily boot /any/ kernel, not just a modified version of the darwin kernel it comes with.
I can verify that it doesn't impact Lynx. :) I can also verify that it's a PDF, so it likely impacts Windows and Apple computers.
See this previous discussion on Slashdot. It's not the website, it's the banner ad companies allowing a Russian(?) group of script kiddies to buy ad space and immediately redirect to an infected PDF file. Happens on a LOT of websites, including the base msn.com page occasionally. DeviantArt is a particularly bad offender. I've apparently made a career out of walking ignorant Southern United States women through removing these things over the phone.
(Yes, it's my own personal hell, why do you ask?)
You seem to be under the impression that the iPad is kept closed because Steve Jobs cares whether or not you get a virus.
I can see why somebody might think that. It's due to the well-cultivated impression that Apple cares about providing safe computers to their mindless drone users. Please allow me to offer you a dollop of "cynical". . .
The iPad, along with the rest of the Apple line of ultra-popular not-really-a-computer items, (iPods and iPhones), are all about putting price tags on content. This is why they are getting billions of dollars worth of free advertising from the media. The media loves the iPad! They believe it will save their sorry asses. If everybody uses an iPad, then television networks, newspapers and magazines will be saved with the new revenue stream! (Same as happened with the music distributors, though not, it should be noted, the actual musicians. As per usual.) This is why, even though the iPad is a piece of half-baked crud, the media is hailing it as the second coming, (well, the third coming, actually. The iPod was first, and the iPhone was second.)
But all of this glory is only possible when the hardware is locked down, when content is locked down, and when users have had their brains removed with a syringe or turned to pudding by a constant barrage of Wifi microwave noise. When the mighty Apple does all of your thinking for you, you can be a dumb-fuck consumer and still move money from your pockets to those of the media providers. And the dumber you are, the better, because you'll need the media more than ever to tell you what to think, feel and say.
So basically, Fuck Apple. Jobs has chosen which side he's on, and he picked the red light saber.
What a shithead.
-FL
Uh-huh. Try reading a book on the iPad -- at the beach.
Don't get me wrong, I think the iPad will be great. But it's not an e-reader. The problem with e-ink is that it's not a mature technology. Apple is playing it smart here - stay out of the e-ink business until you can have color, or at least monochrome at a speed that is acceptable, and without that annoying "screen flash" as pixels rearrange when you turn pages. Once you can do that I think Apple will jump in and we'll see iPads with eink options (or perhaps some other kind of e-ink display appliance, maybe even a usable web browser). Why should Apple release an e-ink device that is just as annoyingly slow as all the others out there, when they can wait until all the tech is in place and jump in at the last minute with a device that gets it right, and then take credit for having practically invented the e-reader, the way they did with the mp3 player and the smartphone?
Hello? Earth to AC: The 3G version of the iPad IS NOT OUT YET. Therefore he is using "free" Wifi.
Or did you want one where you could upload any unlicensed copy you found on some "abandonware" site out there instead of the licensed games?
I want one where I can use C64 freeware or even self-developed C64 apps. I want one that doesn't freeze on purpose when it hits BASIC's REPL.
This is why, as a security professional, I have a real problem with you Apple fanbois...
Firstly, a locked down device is not immune to vulnerabilities or attacks - *any* device that has *any* connectivity to the public Internet is potentially susceptible to some form of attack, even if it's just a case of pounding it with a Denial of Service attack that means it ends up spending far more time processing the IP packets in that attack rather than doing what it should be doing.
Secondly, on a more open system (yes, I definitely mean Linux and also include Windows in that to degree), you can install updates to counteract security vulnerabilities but you can also control the services and applications running on your system to make yourself more secure - therefore, for example, if you ditch IE and Outlook on Windows and run, say, Firefox and Thunderbird instead, then you immediately close your system down to a lot of Trojan and backdoor programs that make use of the heavy integration and high permissions that both the former have in Windows. However, in the Apple iPad world, you're stuck with Safari as a browser, and the particularly poor track record that Apple has in fixing security holes in it.
Thirdly, if "special" means that I take the time to understand how a computer OS works and how I am responsible for the security of my data and information within that OS, then, yes, I'm "special", and happily so.
It could be argued that the reason why there are so many viruses and Trojans on Windows is because Microsoft did a very good marketing job at convincing inexperienced people that you don't need much in the way of computer skills to use a PC - and this is why those same people don't update their systems, don't check what's running on their systems and don't stay away from parts of the Internet where there's a high risk they can download something nasty onto their PCs.
Apple have gone a stage further and done something ten times worse now. They're more than happy for you people to buy their products on the basis that you don't like Windows, want to stand out from the crowd yet cannot be bothered to spend any time learning how a computer works. Along with Apple's "locked down to all vulnerabilities" hype, that makes you even more dangerous...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Apple has a blanket ban on third-party applications that include programming capabilities (the read-evaluate-print loop that I mentioned).