I have the 3G version of the iPad, only because I wanted the GPS chipset in it. I've never connected it to a 3G network at all. Hell, I haven't even bought a SIM card for it. Just wanted the GPS.
Completely anecdotal, but my iPhone gets very warm when the WiFi hotspot (WiFi tethering) is on, but doesn't noticeably heat up when tethered to the same tablet/laptop via BT.
Having said that I still tend to use the WiFi tethering more often as it allows multiple devices, and is quicker to set up (plus my laptop's bluetooth driver software is irritating and buggy).
Well ok the way you phrased this question makes it almost impossible to answer in the affirmative, since you full well know that no place would give weather reports in Kelvin. Celsius is still a metric unit, even if it's not strictly SI.
But if we ignore the K/degrees C issue, there are plenty of countries that are fully metric (or very, very close to being fully metric)
Australia, New Zealand, most of (continental) Europe, China, Japan (if you ignore the tatami-mat area measurement used only for building floor areas), Korea, etc.
30 is hot; and 20 is nice 10 is cool; and 0 is ice
(And obviously significantly above 30 is very hot, and significantly below 0 is very cold, but for a quick rhyme that covers a typical temperate climate, it works well)
Though in song lyrics people obviously still use 'miles'. Even the youngins that don't actually know what a mile is, still use the turn of phrase "it's miles away" or "I could see for miles". It's become a figure of speech rather than something actually meant literally though.
Yes some of those rules of thumb break, but you end up with different and new rules of thumb instead. For instance, 100km/h is a pretty standard speed on many roads (don't be daft, they wouldn't convert 60 mph to 96 km/h... they'd make it 100). So the distance to your destination in 100s of km is the number of hours until you get there (e.g. 300km = ~3 hours, 425 km = ~4 hr, 15 min). I personally use that rule of thumb all the time when driving.
Also wouldn't approximately 1 foot be approximately 30 cm (why convert exactly to 30.5 if you're only talking 'approximately' in the first place?) 30 cm divides cleanly by 15, 10, 6, 5, 3 and 2. Kinda nice actually.
Australia fully converted in a relatively short space of time in the early 70s. Different areas of life were changed at different times, but they were changed very quickly (e.g. a particular date was set for road signs to be taken down and replaced across the country, a different date for weights and measures in supermarkets, etc). The younger generations don't even understand imperial measurements now (it's not like the half-converted situation that the UK finds itself in).
Australia is almost exactly the same size as the lower 48 US States. So I don't think it's necessarily hard for big countries to do it. Having said that, there are some obviously differences between Australia and the US such as the smaller and generally more urban population, so it's not a perfect example. Still there's lessons there to be learnt, I think: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Australia
To be fair, in casual speech, people in metric countries say "k" for kilometres. As in "it's about 5 kay down the road". Similarly for millimetres they tend to say 'mil' (this could also be millilitre, depending on context).
Heh... even though I live in a country that uses only SI (only really understand metric myself) and personally think that the US should definitely make the switch (for any of the many clear, oft-repeated reasons that any Slashdotter has heard a hundred times before), I'm not touching this thread with a 40-foot (huh huh see what I did thar?) pole.
It's one of the most flame-ridden topics you see on this site, and it gets brought up any time someone gives imperial measurements in a summary or post. So I expect nothing new to be discussed here.
True, but even if it was being sent to Apple, I don't think it's particularly useful to them. Remember - it's logging the location of the cell towers you hit, not YOUR actual location. Given that there's only one cell tower every couple of kilometres in most areas, this is not particularly 'high resolution' data.
I've used the tool linked in TFA to examine the data on my own iPhone and you couldn't really figure precisely out where I lived or worked from the data. Only the 'general area' (e.g. 'oh the northwestern suburbs of city X'). Your phone company logs this data too as a natural consequence of providing you with service, and frankly I don't trust my phone company any more or less than Apple.
Agreed that Apple should probably address this issue (explain what the file exists for, and perhaps patch it so that you can turn it off/expire the data after X days etc.) It's mildly concerning but not enough to worry me too much. If it were logging exact GPS-derived location on the other hand, rather than cell towers, that would be bad.
(PS. the data is only connected 'per user' insomuch as you can restore an iPhone backup taken from one phone, onto another phone, if you so desire. It's not specifically being linked to you or your Apple account... it's just that you are restoring an image taken of one phone onto your next phone, which happens to include this file. The 'new phone' becomes the 'old phone'. You may actually be a completely different user... though that's unlikely in practice, since who's gonna use someone else's backup to restore their phone?)
Sorry, I'm not much of an expert on encryption. Are you saying the iPhone backups can be decrypted without knowledge of the password that the user has to set in order to enable encryption? I use a 12-digit password with a mix of uppercase, lowercase and numbers, and no dictionary words, so I would have thought that was fairly decent security. I thought it needed both the key (stored on the machine) AND the password to decrypt. Am I mistaken?
Devices that haven't had the Find my iPhone service enabled do not appear to have the file. I'd say it's a pretty reasonable proposition that the log is therefore used by the Find my iPhone service to report the device's 'last known' position and time in cases where the phone's ~current~ location can't be found (e.g. location services turned off, outside cellular coverage area with no view of the sky/no GPS, etc.)
Still a bit dodgy that there appears to be no 'expiry' time for the data though. They should change it so it deletes locations older than 7 days or something. But still, I don't think it's anything to get too worried about given that the log file is never actually sent to Apple or a third party.
I agree that that is the most likely reason this file exists.
The question you might then ask is: why doesn't the iPhone simply report its current position when 'asked' by Find my iPhone, rather than reporting the 'most recent position in the log'. My guess is that if a thief grabs the phone, they may try turning off Location Services (which may also disable the 'live' position-finding by Find my iPhone). But by logging the location, it allows the phone to report 'I don't know where I am now, but my last known location was HERE, x minutes ago' (before the thief turned off Location Services)...
Also the fact that if the device is completely off, Find my iPhone will fail to find the device, adds evidence to the proposition that this file is never actually sent anyway. It's purely logged locally on the phone.
The WiFi-only iPad has neither GPS nor cellular capabilities. Given that TFA states that what is being logged is the cell towers you connect to (not actually your exact location), then naturally the WiFi-only iPad does not log this data.
Nor would my 3G iPad for that matter, as it has never actually had a SIM in it and has never connected to a cellular network (I got the 3G one because it has an actual GPS chip in it... but still I only use it via WiFi).
Not only that, it's logging the locations of the CELL TOWERS you are hitting, not your exact GPS-derived location. Given that this would still allow someone to find the general areas you travel or live in, but hardly useful for pinpointing you.
Well it certainly sounds bad if you just read the headline, but let's think though this. It seems that the phone tracks the location of the cell towers it's been connected to in a file on the device. The data is not sent anywhere, it's just living in a file. That file then gets copied to your machine every time you do a sync (since a full backup of the phone is also made at the same time).
So the question comes down to: what's the purpose of the file? Does it exist for a legitimate reason? Or something more sinister? Since the file is never sent anywhere, it's hard to see how Apple directly benefit here. Perhaps it's actually just a location services cache file or something (designed to be consumed by any application that then relies on the location service), that doesn't ever get cleared for one reason or another.
Actually come to think of it, it's the CARRIERS that benefit from this data, not Apple. It's not storing your GPS location... just the location of the cell towers you've hit. So it's giving, essentially, a map of network load caused by your phone. Aggregated with other phones, this would be pretty interesting information to a carrier, you'd think. Perhaps carriers wanted Apple to do this kind of logging? But again, since the data isn't sent to anyone, it's still hard to see how this could be useful for anything other than a legitimate reason related to the phone itself (e.g. caching your previous locations so that it can more quickly use AGPS to pinpoint you again).
Agreed, though I think.GOV,.MIL,.INT have also done their job pretty well too (i.e. remained true to the original intentions of the domain). Most of the newer ones too, like.mobi,.aero etc. (though they are barely used, the few users that do exist do satisfy the registration criteria).
The ccTLDs are a mixed bag. Some countries enforce proper restrictions on these (in-country use only, to registered companies/people/organisations. For instance, you won't see any 'abuses' of.jp,.uk,.au,.nz etc. Others have chosen not to enforce many/any restrictions on ccTLD use (all those random ones like.tv or used for various domain hacks... bit.ly, goo.gl, blo.gs, etc).
I've heard someone mention that ".com" is now thought of as being the COMmon domain (i.e. everything else that doesn't fit into the other TLDs, goes into COM), rather than COMmercial. Retrospectively changing naming/history, of course, but it wouldn't be the first time (.ARPA is another example... got back-renamed to Address and Routing Parameter Area).
The two really 'polluted' TLDs seem to be the two you mention:.net and.org. I'm not too fussed about.org (since technically 'organisation' could cover almost anything), but I would like to see.net properly reserved only for ISPs, backhaul providers, transit/peering networks, network infrastructure etc. Would make it easier when tracing routes to see where it leaves a 'network providers' area of responsibility and enters a private entity's network.
111 to 11 sounds to me like ~all~ the parties had some people voting for it;) Unless it was a vote along party lines and the 111 represents the major parties, and the 11 are independants/minor parties. Either way, voting for the 11 next time around ain't likely to change much.
FWIW I live in an APNIC country (and my ISP) is already 100% migrated to dual stack. If your router supports it, home lusers will get a native IPv6 connection out of the box right now. Mine doesn't but I'm replacing it next week with one that does (I'm upgrading for reasons other than IPv6, it's just a nice bonus).
So it seems to me that cause the addresses are running out quicker in APNIC land than elsewhere that the ISPs here are more on the ball when it comes to IPv6 migration. Not all of them, but the good ones at least.
Ditto here. Vodafone Australia and my phone has a real publicly addressable IP. Wonder how much longer that can last though, considering Australia = APNIC, and they have just run out of addresses as per this article...
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Good point.
I have the 3G version of the iPad, only because I wanted the GPS chipset in it. I've never connected it to a 3G network at all. Hell, I haven't even bought a SIM card for it. Just wanted the GPS.
Completely anecdotal, but my iPhone gets very warm when the WiFi hotspot (WiFi tethering) is on, but doesn't noticeably heat up when tethered to the same tablet/laptop via BT.
Having said that I still tend to use the WiFi tethering more often as it allows multiple devices, and is quicker to set up (plus my laptop's bluetooth driver software is irritating and buggy).
Well ok the way you phrased this question makes it almost impossible to answer in the affirmative, since you full well know that no place would give weather reports in Kelvin. Celsius is still a metric unit, even if it's not strictly SI.
But if we ignore the K/degrees C issue, there are plenty of countries that are fully metric (or very, very close to being fully metric)
Australia, New Zealand, most of (continental) Europe, China, Japan (if you ignore the tatami-mat area measurement used only for building floor areas), Korea, etc.
30 is hot; and 20 is nice
10 is cool; and 0 is ice
(And obviously significantly above 30 is very hot, and significantly below 0 is very cold, but for a quick rhyme that covers a typical temperate climate, it works well)
People just say 'kay' (for km).
Though in song lyrics people obviously still use 'miles'. Even the youngins that don't actually know what a mile is, still use the turn of phrase "it's miles away" or "I could see for miles". It's become a figure of speech rather than something actually meant literally though.
Yes some of those rules of thumb break, but you end up with different and new rules of thumb instead. For instance, 100km/h is a pretty standard speed on many roads (don't be daft, they wouldn't convert 60 mph to 96 km/h ... they'd make it 100). So the distance to your destination in 100s of km is the number of hours until you get there (e.g. 300km = ~3 hours, 425 km = ~4 hr, 15 min). I personally use that rule of thumb all the time when driving.
Also wouldn't approximately 1 foot be approximately 30 cm (why convert exactly to 30.5 if you're only talking 'approximately' in the first place?) 30 cm divides cleanly by 15, 10, 6, 5, 3 and 2. Kinda nice actually.
Australia fully converted in a relatively short space of time in the early 70s. Different areas of life were changed at different times, but they were changed very quickly (e.g. a particular date was set for road signs to be taken down and replaced across the country, a different date for weights and measures in supermarkets, etc). The younger generations don't even understand imperial measurements now (it's not like the half-converted situation that the UK finds itself in).
Australia is almost exactly the same size as the lower 48 US States. So I don't think it's necessarily hard for big countries to do it. Having said that, there are some obviously differences between Australia and the US such as the smaller and generally more urban population, so it's not a perfect example. Still there's lessons there to be learnt, I think: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Australia
To be fair, in casual speech, people in metric countries say "k" for kilometres. As in "it's about 5 kay down the road". Similarly for millimetres they tend to say 'mil' (this could also be millilitre, depending on context).
No short-form of cm as far as I'm aware though.
Heh ... even though I live in a country that uses only SI (only really understand metric myself) and personally think that the US should definitely make the switch (for any of the many clear, oft-repeated reasons that any Slashdotter has heard a hundred times before), I'm not touching this thread with a 40-foot (huh huh see what I did thar?) pole.
It's one of the most flame-ridden topics you see on this site, and it gets brought up any time someone gives imperial measurements in a summary or post. So I expect nothing new to be discussed here.
True, but even if it was being sent to Apple, I don't think it's particularly useful to them. Remember - it's logging the location of the cell towers you hit, not YOUR actual location. Given that there's only one cell tower every couple of kilometres in most areas, this is not particularly 'high resolution' data.
I've used the tool linked in TFA to examine the data on my own iPhone and you couldn't really figure precisely out where I lived or worked from the data. Only the 'general area' (e.g. 'oh the northwestern suburbs of city X'). Your phone company logs this data too as a natural consequence of providing you with service, and frankly I don't trust my phone company any more or less than Apple.
Agreed that Apple should probably address this issue (explain what the file exists for, and perhaps patch it so that you can turn it off/expire the data after X days etc.) It's mildly concerning but not enough to worry me too much. If it were logging exact GPS-derived location on the other hand, rather than cell towers, that would be bad.
(PS. the data is only connected 'per user' insomuch as you can restore an iPhone backup taken from one phone, onto another phone, if you so desire. It's not specifically being linked to you or your Apple account ... it's just that you are restoring an image taken of one phone onto your next phone, which happens to include this file. The 'new phone' becomes the 'old phone'. You may actually be a completely different user ... though that's unlikely in practice, since who's gonna use someone else's backup to restore their phone?)
Sorry, I'm not much of an expert on encryption. Are you saying the iPhone backups can be decrypted without knowledge of the password that the user has to set in order to enable encryption? I use a 12-digit password with a mix of uppercase, lowercase and numbers, and no dictionary words, so I would have thought that was fairly decent security. I thought it needed both the key (stored on the machine) AND the password to decrypt. Am I mistaken?
Mine has. It allocates you both a single public IPv4 address and a /56 IPv6 block upon connecting (if your modem is IPv6 compatible).
But it's in the vast minority, as most here will know.
Carrier-grade NAT. Yep it exists and yep some places are using it to get around the IPv4 address shortage already, particularly in certain countries.
Devices that haven't had the Find my iPhone service enabled do not appear to have the file. I'd say it's a pretty reasonable proposition that the log is therefore used by the Find my iPhone service to report the device's 'last known' position and time in cases where the phone's ~current~ location can't be found (e.g. location services turned off, outside cellular coverage area with no view of the sky/no GPS, etc.)
Still a bit dodgy that there appears to be no 'expiry' time for the data though. They should change it so it deletes locations older than 7 days or something. But still, I don't think it's anything to get too worried about given that the log file is never actually sent to Apple or a third party.
Yes, it's logging the location of the towers you hit, not your actual location, and certainly not via GPS. TFA says so.
I agree that that is the most likely reason this file exists.
The question you might then ask is: why doesn't the iPhone simply report its current position when 'asked' by Find my iPhone, rather than reporting the 'most recent position in the log'. My guess is that if a thief grabs the phone, they may try turning off Location Services (which may also disable the 'live' position-finding by Find my iPhone). But by logging the location, it allows the phone to report 'I don't know where I am now, but my last known location was HERE, x minutes ago' (before the thief turned off Location Services)...
Also the fact that if the device is completely off, Find my iPhone will fail to find the device, adds evidence to the proposition that this file is never actually sent anyway. It's purely logged locally on the phone.
The WiFi-only iPad has neither GPS nor cellular capabilities. Given that TFA states that what is being logged is the cell towers you connect to (not actually your exact location), then naturally the WiFi-only iPad does not log this data.
Nor would my 3G iPad for that matter, as it has never actually had a SIM in it and has never connected to a cellular network (I got the 3G one because it has an actual GPS chip in it ... but still I only use it via WiFi).
Not only that, it's logging the locations of the CELL TOWERS you are hitting, not your exact GPS-derived location. Given that this would still allow someone to find the general areas you travel or live in, but hardly useful for pinpointing you.
iPhone backups are (optionally) encrypted by iTunes when they are made.
The files on the phone though, yeah, just need a jailbreak there.
Well it certainly sounds bad if you just read the headline, but let's think though this. It seems that the phone tracks the location of the cell towers it's been connected to in a file on the device. The data is not sent anywhere, it's just living in a file. That file then gets copied to your machine every time you do a sync (since a full backup of the phone is also made at the same time).
So the question comes down to: what's the purpose of the file? Does it exist for a legitimate reason? Or something more sinister? Since the file is never sent anywhere, it's hard to see how Apple directly benefit here. Perhaps it's actually just a location services cache file or something (designed to be consumed by any application that then relies on the location service), that doesn't ever get cleared for one reason or another.
Actually come to think of it, it's the CARRIERS that benefit from this data, not Apple. It's not storing your GPS location ... just the location of the cell towers you've hit. So it's giving, essentially, a map of network load caused by your phone. Aggregated with other phones, this would be pretty interesting information to a carrier, you'd think. Perhaps carriers wanted Apple to do this kind of logging? But again, since the data isn't sent to anyone, it's still hard to see how this could be useful for anything other than a legitimate reason related to the phone itself (e.g. caching your previous locations so that it can more quickly use AGPS to pinpoint you again).
iPad WiFi only models don't have a GPS chip. The iPad 3G models do.
Agreed, though I think .GOV, .MIL, .INT have also done their job pretty well too (i.e. remained true to the original intentions of the domain). Most of the newer ones too, like .mobi, .aero etc. (though they are barely used, the few users that do exist do satisfy the registration criteria).
The ccTLDs are a mixed bag. Some countries enforce proper restrictions on these (in-country use only, to registered companies/people/organisations. For instance, you won't see any 'abuses' of .jp, .uk, .au, .nz etc. Others have chosen not to enforce many/any restrictions on ccTLD use (all those random ones like .tv or used for various domain hacks ... bit.ly, goo.gl, blo.gs, etc).
I've heard someone mention that ".com" is now thought of as being the COMmon domain (i.e. everything else that doesn't fit into the other TLDs, goes into COM), rather than COMmercial. Retrospectively changing naming/history, of course, but it wouldn't be the first time (.ARPA is another example ... got back-renamed to Address and Routing Parameter Area).
The two really 'polluted' TLDs seem to be the two you mention: .net and .org. I'm not too fussed about .org (since technically 'organisation' could cover almost anything), but I would like to see .net properly reserved only for ISPs, backhaul providers, transit/peering networks, network infrastructure etc. Would make it easier when tracing routes to see where it leaves a 'network providers' area of responsibility and enters a private entity's network.
111 to 11 sounds to me like ~all~ the parties had some people voting for it ;) Unless it was a vote along party lines and the 111 represents the major parties, and the 11 are independants/minor parties. Either way, voting for the 11 next time around ain't likely to change much.
FWIW I live in an APNIC country (and my ISP) is already 100% migrated to dual stack. If your router supports it, home lusers will get a native IPv6 connection out of the box right now. Mine doesn't but I'm replacing it next week with one that does (I'm upgrading for reasons other than IPv6, it's just a nice bonus).
So it seems to me that cause the addresses are running out quicker in APNIC land than elsewhere that the ISPs here are more on the ball when it comes to IPv6 migration. Not all of them, but the good ones at least.
Ditto here. Vodafone Australia and my phone has a real publicly addressable IP. Wonder how much longer that can last though, considering Australia = APNIC, and they have just run out of addresses as per this article...