It depends on the applications you use. They could certainly jailbreak a device and then write some custom code that returns your UDID for the device UDID. Then they could spy on your communications through certain applications that use UDID to identify an account. Not many applications do that, especially since the UDID is deprecated in iOS5, but some do. Otherwise, I can't think of anything else that this allows the FBI (or a criminal) to do.
I am getting ready to write a letter to my state and federal representatives over the current state of publishing in the US. This is clearly the same crap that game publishers are doing to inhibit the second hand game market. The most disgusting thing of all is what I am going to relate to you now about how the digital world is screwing over libraries:
I just found out from a friend that you can check out eBooks from the county library. I was insanely excited. I hadn't gotten my library card renewed after it had last expired so I filled out an application and was excited to go to the library the next day. Well in my excitement I decided to look at all the interesting eBooks I was looking forward to checking out. Their entire collection consists of 30 books. All of them books I had never heard of, and had no interest in. I was disappointed.
After a moment's consideration, I decided I would go to the library and offer to donate one of the following A) eBooks for them to lend out B) A few hundred dollars for them to buy new books. I talked to librarian about the donation. She wasn't sure that I could donate specifically for eBooks, so she grabbed the county employee responsible for eBook lending. I talked to her for about an hour and I am thoroughly disgusted with the publishing industry. Even more so than I was as a college student. Here is what I learned:
eBooks cost the library $800 per book.
Only 2 out of the 6 major publishers will sell libraries eBooks.
One of those two publishers only allows the library to check out an eBook 26 times before they must purchase the book again.
Every time a patron checks out an eBook, the library pays the publisher $5.
I understand the importance of copyright, but this is ridiculous. The people who get their eBooks from libraries do so because they can't afford the books, or they want to try before they buy. If they want to limit the number of times an eBook can be loaned out, then they should charge a reasonable rate for the books. Forbes even had an article a few months ago about this: What Is Going On With Library E-Book Lending? and again just a few weeks ago. It just makes me so angry that corporations are able to pull this kind of nonsense. I was born in the wrong generation, I think. I miss the days of customer service, and fostering loyalty amongst your consumers.
I don't know where you are from, but in the US, welfare is not a loan. You do not have to pay it back. Same with unemployment. So yes, they are getting money that they do not need to repay, and therefore should be doing something to give back to their community, or to improve their career skills.
Absolutely, I agree 100% that they need extra help sometimes. And I am willing to bet that in most communities there are unemployed people who are able to offer some of the skills they need. For the other skills, the unemployment agencies can hire or contract the support they need. In the short term it would probably cost quite a bit more than our current welfare program, but in the long run I'd be willing to bet it would save the entire country a lot of money. I am a very conservative person (don't get me wrong, I dislike both Rupublicants and Democraps equally), but there is no benefit to the economy to let people die or suffer from poverty. It doesn't help business, and it doesn't help the government either. It just leads to crime and other social problems.
The problem isn't your "WorkFare" program itself, but how it is implemented. In my opinion, everyone on welfare SHOULD have to do something. They can't sit around all day playing world of warcraft or watching soaps on the telly. I would force them to attend mock interview sessions, resume writing seminars, do community service, and things of that nature. Do you have kids and can't afford childcare? Fine. The "Workfare" program should provide for child care. But I'm sure most people would rather work hard to find a real job instead of cleaning up trash on the side of the freeway. Having them do work for the rich or corporations is just plain non-sense. If they need people do to work, they should hire people. If they don't want to hire someone, too bad for them!
Just you? My Lexmark Ink-jet has very cheap black ink, prints plenty, and I have never had a smudge or a jam until I tried to scan in a 100 page document with the ADF and it backed-up.
Mine was a hardware hack as well. I basically had to crack the unit open and do some soldering to override the motion lock. It wasn't that hard. The most stressful part of the job was trying not to damage the trim on the car. With good carbon fiber trim removal tools, that wasn't hard at all.
I'm sure you can disable that if you want. They always leave a way to do so, it seems like. They know that some people would not pay for a factory system that cripples them when they could buy an aftermarket system that has no such limitations. The handsfree in my car is tied to the GPS system, and once I cracked that thing, I was able to do whatever I want with the phone while driving. Though my car doesn't have the voice commands. I really liked the SYNC system I played around with.
This post removes moderation effort in this thread.
You can issue a very simple document saying that the person waives their right to sue in the event of injury. Cave owners do it all of the time when cavers wish to enter their property.
I'd be willing to bet that your contract there isn't even enforceable in a lot of areas. People can sue you for damages that occur to them while they are breaking into your property, stealing your stuff, or otherwise causing mischief and mayhem to the person they are suing. And they'll win, too, if it can be shown that you should have resolved the problem that they are suing you over. You can sign those contracts all day long, but still sue the caving company under the right circumstances. Same with the home owner. You'd have to be an idiot to do this with people you do not know, and have no way of trusting.
At least your foreign PH.D Students are unlikely to know their way around the local legal system, and are likely to be responsible and caring people. For all you know that hacker that is moving in with you just got kicked out of a homeless shelter for assaulting another inhabitant.
After hurricane Katrina, a brother of mine let some refugees stay in his house in Texas. These people stole things from him, damaged his property (the physical structure), and ruined furniture and bedding. I'd trust these Kansas City hackers less than a refugee.
The GPS built into my car has this capability already. What was the first thing I did when I got the car home? I took the damn thing apart and disabled the system that prevents you from using the GPS while driving. Why? Because I like to have passengers in my car. Its perfectly safe for a passenger to use the GPS all they want while I am driving. Hell they can even watch a DVD in the surround sound system in the car while I drive. I don't care. I'm not distracted by it, so what does it matter? (Though I will say in most jurisdictions just being able to see the movie is grounds for a moving violation, so be careful.)
Anyway, this software is likely to think that a passenger who is texting while talking to other people in the car are distracted drivers as well. Why don't we just give up on using technology to babysit people in these areas and start teaching people responsibility? If there is a way to disable texting while driving, someone can re enable it by rooting/jailbreaking their phone and modifying the software. What is the point in entering this arms race? People need to learn to make intelligent decisions, and not have intelligent decisions forced upon them.
Could that file then be played without requiring an apple product?
Yes. The only exception I have found to this is the aax format used by Audible. Nothing but Apple products seems to handle that format natively. But you can convert it to the same format iTunes uses for its music, and then play it where ever you'd like.
If you can't (by design) then that is digital rights management. Simple. DRM isn't copyright protection, it is any number of enforced restrictions on what you can do with something you have paid for - not enforced retrospectively by law (e.g. If you chose to illegally redistribute the song), but enforced pro-actively by software/hardware restrictions.
All new purchases on iTunes are DRM free. Same with Amazon's music service.
Burning to a cd as an audio cd is a workaround - and it is a workaround because there are far far simpler solutions (copying the file, or exporting to mp3 or exporting to wav) that are AFAIK, disallowed for itunes purchased material.
Apple has not required you to burn your music to CD for many years. If you have older songs you may need to do that to remove the DRM, but only older purchases. There is also software that will remove the DRM without burning to a CD, but those cost money. I paid $20 for the software that converts my audiobooks into DRM free formats that maintain the chapter and other info. But again, that is Audible and not iTunes.
I may be no mathematician, but even I know they they didn't sell to 5-7% of the entire world's population. Hell, higher than that, since they want you to buy their games for Xbox, PS3, and PC all for a single user!
But I really do work from home and only drive on average about 20 miles a week. You're right, I do need to contact my insurance company. Damn why didn't I do this 6 months ago?
Maybe to prevent an incident where the UK prevents the Ecuadorian team from entering the country? Not likely to happen, but perhaps a concern. Or a concern with the Ecuadorian team not being able to pass over US airspace if there was some sort of political fallout? Again not likely to happen, but I am sure they just wanted to make sure there was no political issue during the games. I think it makes sense to wait. I don't really believe that Julian Assange required assylum, but whatever. If they want to let him live there, I hope he enjoys it. South America is a very beautiful continent.
Well there are apps that use the encryption system on the device to encrypt files individually. These files do not get encrypted without a passcode enabled, even if you think that they might. I'm referring to those apps that claim to provide you with a secure place to store your naughty texts, pictures, files, contacts, etc. Unless they use their own encryption, they aren't secure once the device is unlocked, or backed up, or if the device was never locked.
Except that the flag is only available in iOS 5.0 and later. If your app is supposed to support anything prior to 5.0 you can't set this flag. And iExplorer still lets you pull stuff off an unlocked device without it being in a backup. Sure, this may prevent someone who is unauthorized from pulling files if the device is locked, but I do not believe your files are as secure as you think they are.
No, you have to remember that it is possible for applications to break out of their sandbox. Apps have been removed from the AppStore for doing exactly that. The point that I was trying to make is that the security really sucks. You can, in your app, manually encrypt a file thru the iOS SDK. Just asking to open the file unencrypts it, even if an App outside of the sandbox finds the file and asks for it. Backing up your iPad/iPhone even decrypts that file. Unless you use your own encryption on the device, there is nothing that is really secure. That is my point. There are apps that supposedly provide you a secure place to do all of your naughty things. Those apps and their databases are NOT secure in a backup. Nothing is, unless you manually enable encryption on that backup, or in software use your own encryption library.
Read the security info in the iOS SDK and it will tell you right there that it will not encrypt anything without a passcode. It uses the passcode to generate the key that they use to encrypt your files.
Yes you can on windows as well. But most people would not even think to do so. Computer people might, but I can tell you right now my parents don't know anything about that, and neither do any of the girls I've dated.
That was because of the computational power of the device, and has nothing to do with encryption. YOu can't buy a PS3, Xbox360, or anything like that in Iran either. At least theoretically you can't. You can use them to build clusters of supercomputers.
It is true. You can even have the artificial security of manually encrypting a file. However, the file is stored completely unencrypted in backups. And furthermore, you have no iOS encryption AT ALL, unless you put in a security code on the device.
Unfortunately, your backup isn't encrypted, unless you manually turn it on. You just have to have access to the backup and you can read all the files on the device, including the ones encrypted individually by the security settings enabled in iOS 4.0. Its only on the device that the files are secure w/ that hardware. Of course you can encrypt your backup, like I said. But that isn't automatic.
I can tell you right now that your backup, unless you encrypt it, has all I want to see in plain view. They do not encrypt the data that it pulled off via backup, even if you manually enable the setting that encrypts the file unless opened by your app. Trust me. I am having that exact problem with a sensitive DB on an app I am developing now.
Slashdot Mirror
It depends on the applications you use. They could certainly jailbreak a device and then write some custom code that returns your UDID for the device UDID. Then they could spy on your communications through certain applications that use UDID to identify an account. Not many applications do that, especially since the UDID is deprecated in iOS5, but some do. Otherwise, I can't think of anything else that this allows the FBI (or a criminal) to do.
I am getting ready to write a letter to my state and federal representatives over the current state of publishing in the US. This is clearly the same crap that game publishers are doing to inhibit the second hand game market. The most disgusting thing of all is what I am going to relate to you now about how the digital world is screwing over libraries:
I just found out from a friend that you can check out eBooks from the county library. I was insanely excited. I hadn't gotten my library card renewed after it had last expired so I filled out an application and was excited to go to the library the next day. Well in my excitement I decided to look at all the interesting eBooks I was looking forward to checking out. Their entire collection consists of 30 books. All of them books I had never heard of, and had no interest in. I was disappointed.
After a moment's consideration, I decided I would go to the library and offer to donate one of the following A) eBooks for them to lend out B) A few hundred dollars for them to buy new books. I talked to librarian about the donation. She wasn't sure that I could donate specifically for eBooks, so she grabbed the county employee responsible for eBook lending. I talked to her for about an hour and I am thoroughly disgusted with the publishing industry. Even more so than I was as a college student. Here is what I learned:
I understand the importance of copyright, but this is ridiculous. The people who get their eBooks from libraries do so because they can't afford the books, or they want to try before they buy. If they want to limit the number of times an eBook can be loaned out, then they should charge a reasonable rate for the books. Forbes even had an article a few months ago about this: What Is Going On With Library E-Book Lending? and again just a few weeks ago. It just makes me so angry that corporations are able to pull this kind of nonsense. I was born in the wrong generation, I think. I miss the days of customer service, and fostering loyalty amongst your consumers.
Actually the STrategic Maple Syrup reserve IS Canada's oil reserve. They were going to turn it all into biodiesel...
I don't know where you are from, but in the US, welfare is not a loan. You do not have to pay it back. Same with unemployment. So yes, they are getting money that they do not need to repay, and therefore should be doing something to give back to their community, or to improve their career skills.
Absolutely, I agree 100% that they need extra help sometimes. And I am willing to bet that in most communities there are unemployed people who are able to offer some of the skills they need. For the other skills, the unemployment agencies can hire or contract the support they need. In the short term it would probably cost quite a bit more than our current welfare program, but in the long run I'd be willing to bet it would save the entire country a lot of money. I am a very conservative person (don't get me wrong, I dislike both Rupublicants and Democraps equally), but there is no benefit to the economy to let people die or suffer from poverty. It doesn't help business, and it doesn't help the government either. It just leads to crime and other social problems.
The problem isn't your "WorkFare" program itself, but how it is implemented. In my opinion, everyone on welfare SHOULD have to do something. They can't sit around all day playing world of warcraft or watching soaps on the telly. I would force them to attend mock interview sessions, resume writing seminars, do community service, and things of that nature. Do you have kids and can't afford childcare? Fine. The "Workfare" program should provide for child care. But I'm sure most people would rather work hard to find a real job instead of cleaning up trash on the side of the freeway. Having them do work for the rich or corporations is just plain non-sense. If they need people do to work, they should hire people. If they don't want to hire someone, too bad for them!
Just you? My Lexmark Ink-jet has very cheap black ink, prints plenty, and I have never had a smudge or a jam until I tried to scan in a 100 page document with the ADF and it backed-up.
Mine was a hardware hack as well. I basically had to crack the unit open and do some soldering to override the motion lock. It wasn't that hard. The most stressful part of the job was trying not to damage the trim on the car. With good carbon fiber trim removal tools, that wasn't hard at all.
I'm sure you can disable that if you want. They always leave a way to do so, it seems like. They know that some people would not pay for a factory system that cripples them when they could buy an aftermarket system that has no such limitations. The handsfree in my car is tied to the GPS system, and once I cracked that thing, I was able to do whatever I want with the phone while driving. Though my car doesn't have the voice commands. I really liked the SYNC system I played around with.
This post removes moderation effort in this thread.
You can issue a very simple document saying that the person waives their right to sue in the event of injury. Cave owners do it all of the time when cavers wish to enter their property.
I'd be willing to bet that your contract there isn't even enforceable in a lot of areas. People can sue you for damages that occur to them while they are breaking into your property, stealing your stuff, or otherwise causing mischief and mayhem to the person they are suing. And they'll win, too, if it can be shown that you should have resolved the problem that they are suing you over. You can sign those contracts all day long, but still sue the caving company under the right circumstances. Same with the home owner. You'd have to be an idiot to do this with people you do not know, and have no way of trusting.
At least your foreign PH.D Students are unlikely to know their way around the local legal system, and are likely to be responsible and caring people. For all you know that hacker that is moving in with you just got kicked out of a homeless shelter for assaulting another inhabitant.
After hurricane Katrina, a brother of mine let some refugees stay in his house in Texas. These people stole things from him, damaged his property (the physical structure), and ruined furniture and bedding. I'd trust these Kansas City hackers less than a refugee.
The GPS built into my car has this capability already. What was the first thing I did when I got the car home? I took the damn thing apart and disabled the system that prevents you from using the GPS while driving. Why? Because I like to have passengers in my car. Its perfectly safe for a passenger to use the GPS all they want while I am driving. Hell they can even watch a DVD in the surround sound system in the car while I drive. I don't care. I'm not distracted by it, so what does it matter? (Though I will say in most jurisdictions just being able to see the movie is grounds for a moving violation, so be careful.)
Anyway, this software is likely to think that a passenger who is texting while talking to other people in the car are distracted drivers as well. Why don't we just give up on using technology to babysit people in these areas and start teaching people responsibility? If there is a way to disable texting while driving, someone can re enable it by rooting/jailbreaking their phone and modifying the software. What is the point in entering this arms race? People need to learn to make intelligent decisions, and not have intelligent decisions forced upon them.
Can you copy the file to a usb stick?
Yes.
Could that file then be played without requiring an apple product?
Yes. The only exception I have found to this is the aax format used by Audible. Nothing but Apple products seems to handle that format natively. But you can convert it to the same format iTunes uses for its music, and then play it where ever you'd like.
If you can't (by design) then that is digital rights management. Simple. DRM isn't copyright protection, it is any number of enforced restrictions on what you can do with something you have paid for - not enforced retrospectively by law (e.g. If you chose to illegally redistribute the song), but enforced pro-actively by software/hardware restrictions.
All new purchases on iTunes are DRM free. Same with Amazon's music service.
Burning to a cd as an audio cd is a workaround - and it is a workaround because there are far far simpler solutions (copying the file, or exporting to mp3 or exporting to wav) that are AFAIK, disallowed for itunes purchased material.
Apple has not required you to burn your music to CD for many years. If you have older songs you may need to do that to remove the DRM, but only older purchases. There is also software that will remove the DRM without burning to a CD, but those cost money. I paid $20 for the software that converts my audiobooks into DRM free formats that maintain the chapter and other info. But again, that is Audible and not iTunes.
I may be no mathematician, but even I know they they didn't sell to 5-7% of the entire world's population. Hell, higher than that, since they want you to buy their games for Xbox, PS3, and PC all for a single user!
But I really do work from home and only drive on average about 20 miles a week. You're right, I do need to contact my insurance company. Damn why didn't I do this 6 months ago?
Maybe to prevent an incident where the UK prevents the Ecuadorian team from entering the country? Not likely to happen, but perhaps a concern. Or a concern with the Ecuadorian team not being able to pass over US airspace if there was some sort of political fallout? Again not likely to happen, but I am sure they just wanted to make sure there was no political issue during the games. I think it makes sense to wait. I don't really believe that Julian Assange required assylum, but whatever. If they want to let him live there, I hope he enjoys it. South America is a very beautiful continent.
Well there are apps that use the encryption system on the device to encrypt files individually. These files do not get encrypted without a passcode enabled, even if you think that they might. I'm referring to those apps that claim to provide you with a secure place to store your naughty texts, pictures, files, contacts, etc. Unless they use their own encryption, they aren't secure once the device is unlocked, or backed up, or if the device was never locked.
Excuse me, 5.0.1 supports the "DO Not Backup" flag. So if your user has 5.0, they may even be backing up your file to iCloud.
Except that the flag is only available in iOS 5.0 and later. If your app is supposed to support anything prior to 5.0 you can't set this flag. And iExplorer still lets you pull stuff off an unlocked device without it being in a backup. Sure, this may prevent someone who is unauthorized from pulling files if the device is locked, but I do not believe your files are as secure as you think they are.
No, you have to remember that it is possible for applications to break out of their sandbox. Apps have been removed from the AppStore for doing exactly that. The point that I was trying to make is that the security really sucks. You can, in your app, manually encrypt a file thru the iOS SDK. Just asking to open the file unencrypts it, even if an App outside of the sandbox finds the file and asks for it. Backing up your iPad/iPhone even decrypts that file. Unless you use your own encryption on the device, there is nothing that is really secure. That is my point. There are apps that supposedly provide you a secure place to do all of your naughty things. Those apps and their databases are NOT secure in a backup. Nothing is, unless you manually enable encryption on that backup, or in software use your own encryption library.
Read the security info in the iOS SDK and it will tell you right there that it will not encrypt anything without a passcode. It uses the passcode to generate the key that they use to encrypt your files.
Yes you can on windows as well. But most people would not even think to do so. Computer people might, but I can tell you right now my parents don't know anything about that, and neither do any of the girls I've dated.
That was because of the computational power of the device, and has nothing to do with encryption. YOu can't buy a PS3, Xbox360, or anything like that in Iran either. At least theoretically you can't. You can use them to build clusters of supercomputers.
It is true. You can even have the artificial security of manually encrypting a file. However, the file is stored completely unencrypted in backups. And furthermore, you have no iOS encryption AT ALL, unless you put in a security code on the device.
Unfortunately, your backup isn't encrypted, unless you manually turn it on. You just have to have access to the backup and you can read all the files on the device, including the ones encrypted individually by the security settings enabled in iOS 4.0. Its only on the device that the files are secure w/ that hardware. Of course you can encrypt your backup, like I said. But that isn't automatic.
I can tell you right now that your backup, unless you encrypt it, has all I want to see in plain view. They do not encrypt the data that it pulled off via backup, even if you manually enable the setting that encrypts the file unless opened by your app. Trust me. I am having that exact problem with a sensitive DB on an app I am developing now.