So the MP3 player you have today should still work on a next-generation PC tomorrow.
And here lies the downfall. A well informed user will always opt for the non-DRM option. Unless you can lock down the encoding stage to DRM-approved systems, DRM doesn't stand a chance. Given the number of existing mp3 encoders out there already, I'd say that would be impossible.
The file explorer application is third party and nothing to do with Microsoft. It's a time-limited demo of a commercial application, hence the registration.
There is a free explorer application that is actually better and faster. You need to unlock your phone from the Orange website.
Don't forget that you can also roll one of them very easily, at speeds as low as 45mph. Anyone who drives at above 50mph in these things is a psychopath who brings danger to themselves and others. All it takes is for one bad lane change from another driver, and you are sure to make a swerve that is followed by a roll-over. Not much fun on a busy highway.
Don't confuse the issue with p2p and all it's questionable aspects. The same spyware gets installed with many other "free" programs, most of which are 100% legal and many in common use. Tools that were properly free (beer) only a few years ago I might add. Also, if you browse the web with an unpatched browser, you'll get it installed on your PC at some point via the loop holes. I had it happen on this computer not too long ago.
don't read terms and conditions? Tough shit.
Yet another contensious issue, EULA agreements. Frankly, I think there should be laws against the deliberate obsucation of this and other surprises in EULA click-throughs. It's plain to see that most users do not read these. They also have a very questionable legal status, to my knowledge there have been no landmark cases involving terms and conditions, so it's not even certain that they are legally binding.
uninstalls it when you uninstall the program
Most of them don't do this. The removal of some of the nastier ones is very reminissant of virus removal. Morphing file names etc.
If the BBC's programmes are so fantastic, then logically huge numbers of people would pay to see them, no?
OK, I hear your argument, and I agree with you in many terms. However, there are advantages to making the fee mandatory. A lot of stuff on the BBC is special interest, most of which I'm sure both of us are completely unaware of. BBC radio will play genres of music that purely commercial stations could not touch. Due to the numbers of people in the groups, there simply isn't profit to be made.
It's a cultural thing. I do believe that the BBC adds greatly to the UK culture. Many famous people/shows have started their careers via shows that would have never been made by the likes of Sky. Commercial television caters for the "UKs greatest car crashes" market; where programmming can be enjoyed by a very wide viewing spectrum.
I'd rather live in a country where we have a massive choice of media available, made possible by the BBCs funding mechanism. Sure, it costs a little, but how much does each of us pay in other taxes towards warfare and the coffers of big business? Rowboats and waves, as you mention yourself.
The BBC also sets a high-bar for the other channels to aspire to. Ever watched TV in the USA? Ouch, the volume and frequency of advertising is obscene, UK viewers would never stand for that in contrast to the commercial free BBC.
what I can't understand about you types is that you get all defensive about not allowing spyware on your machine
My personal data is my personal data. I should have the last word in what is done with it. By allowing spyware, you are giving someone complete trusted access to your machine. That is a plain and simple security breach. What's the point in firewalls when you allow anything client-side to run, with all manner of undocumented and likely encrypted dial-home connections?
I am not willing to give this level of trust to any company I don't know, let alone one that already does underhand things to get their software onto my machine.
No, I don't block ads either
introducing new legislation that allows them to view *every packet you send and receive* in the laughable name of 'counter-terrorism', yet you do nothing to practically stop it
You don't know me. How can you make jackass statements like that? I make more people aware of these issues that you ever have. I inform people of things like SmoothWall and FreeSWAN to counter these measures all the time (not just online). I'm about as outspoken as they come on all these (and related issues).
You're preaching an irrelevant arguement to the already converted choir. Your point may have had some relevance at some time, but you lost it with the rant.
Abolish the UK TV licence fee!
On the surface yes, I want to pay X less pounds on it each year. Then when you look at the standard of the BBC verses every other network in the world, including all it's TV, radio, web, community and educational content with no advertisments on any, then you realise that we are damn lucky to have it. Nothing comes close anywhere else.
Nonsense. I run a virus scanner to keep malicious code off my machine. Spyware is malicious to anyone that regards privacy as important.
The EULA for the spyware (mentioned in the host software) buries the notice to the user under a wealth of legal jargon, in a form that people are used to ignoring and clicking-thru already. If they wanted to honestly inform the user, there would be a dialog box with "Warning: this software is funded through the installation of other software that will be installed on your machine, which is used to gather marketing data on you".
Some of the other distinctions are also not so clear. Trojan software utilises your machine to "do their bidding". There is little distinction between trojans that run DoS attacks or distributed computing (BDE), the fact is that you have secreted software onto my machine, that uses my storage space, my bandwidth and my cycles to work for someone else that I have no knowledge of. That's a lot of trust for someone you haven't met; sure!! They can run any code they like on each machine!! Remember, these bots are essentially running as root here. Would you allow a closed-source daemon from a source with dubious ethics on your *nix box? Didn't think so.
If any of the major anti-virus manufacturers were to regard spyware as "not-self", then they'd find they have at least one new customer...me.
The problem is that 3G doesn't offer anything yet. Video messaging is a nice idea, but the point (and popularity) of SMS is short snappy messages like "running late, see you at 2" or "fancy a drink".
Video messaging is the opposite of that, it's more bother for both parties than even simply calling them. You need to record your message and look like a prat, while sending an SMS is discrete. Then the reciprient has to watch the message, and I'd like to see someone hold a phone in a position that can both see and hear the message in a noisy location.
However, laptops, PDA and Smartphones combined with 3G are another thing altogether. In a few years it will be a bit more interesting but for now it's very limited with the handsets currently about.
Yes, IIRC they can see this sort of info (I'm thinking of the Smartphone OS myself). There are some apps being developed to use this for local information services, e.g. restraunt locators etc.
For consumer type stuff, you don't need a lot of accuracy though, a resolution of a few hundred metres would be more than enough. I'd love to see it integrated with a on-line mapping service.
So... then that must surely be the *only* Smartphone security problem?
Of course it's not the only security problem. Anyone who thinks that any piece of complex software is 100% secure is kidding themself.
Other next-gen phones will have issues. The Smartphone platform will have further issues. That's how it works. Until there is an OSS platform available, we will always rely on the vendor to keep up to date on the issues.
And I should not worry, because there's no other possible exploit for the security hole already found?
No, there is not need to worry, because as I said, you need to do it on a first time boot. To do that you need physical access to the device, docking the device with a PC at the exact moment. At the point of physical access, all security is moot in any system.
It's been fixed anyway. The hack involved changing an XML provisioning file before it was parsed. This was done via an ActiveSync connection, and now the service for ActiveSync isn't started until the phone is provisioned.
I've never had a problem using the device as a phone, since the first update was made available. Very clear sound, it's on a GSM network, so it uses the standard GSM codecs and is identical in function to any other phone.
Sure, the PDA functions do take a battery hit, but those extra CPU cycles demand it, as do the nice bright color TFT screens. Why carry around a laptop though when you could carry pen & paper? No battery issues there. If you like the functionality, then you live with any negatives it entails.
I wouldn't say these phones are ready for Joe Sixpack yet. They behave more like a computer, so if you have trouble using a PC, then the phone will scare you. However, if you have geekish tendancies, I'd highly recommend looking into Smartphone or Symbian phones. Essentially you are getting a pocket computer integrated with a phone.
Sure, and that very nice Sony model is not long out. I had a Smartphone over 6 months ago. Six months is a long time in gadget land.
With these new phones, everything done is in software. Feature sets don't matter, because you can always get software to do what you want. In these terms,, both phones are the same, but as Smartphone is slightly more mature, there is more software available for it.
Time will tell though. I'd like to see several phone OS's sharing the market, monopolies are bad for thoe consumer regardless of who owns them.
But it beats WAP by a mile. WAP is essentially sandboxed, you need to find special sites for it. Opera have a nice pocket browser, but due to the bork bork bork incident they refuse to release it on Smartphone.
Sure, Pocket IE may not be the best around, but it can be used to access any site (except frames and flash) unlike most phones with internet capability.
The "Security" problem enabled people to hack the provisioning of the phone, during (and only during) it's first-time boot. To take advantage of it, you must do a manual hard-reset, then manually copy a file across at the right point of the boot. It wasn't easy and usually took several attempts to get right.
When it was done, it disabled the DRM restrictions that were present at the time, allowing you to install lot's of useful unsigned programs. This is no longer required, as you can do the unlock via the telco's website yourself.
Let's put things into perspective please. It's not an "issue" that would negatively affect someone. It benefited the end user!
I have the first SmartPhone, the Orange SPV. Without a doubt, it is the best phone I've ever seen. Here's some of the key features that not many phones can even do half of.
MSN Messenger
65,000 colour display
Plays mp3, wma, divx, mpeg with full screen video (I used to have SW EP2 on it)
Ringtones and notifications are wav files. Make your own, or download millions of free ones
IMAP/POP e-mail
Syncs Contacts, Appointments, Tasks and E-mail with Active Sync. If you have a corporate Exchange system, this is fantastic
Proper internet browser, not WAP, can browse real sites
Games that are light years ahead of the Nokia java ones
Game Boy Color emulator
NES emulator
Pocket SCUMM
The UI is a dream. There is no dispute, MS know how to make an easy to use and intuative interface. It's a logical, object oriented interface, where you can easilly jump around to related tools. It's a pocket PC, not a phone.
With respect to the "security hole" found, some clarification is required. The "hole" allows someone to perform a hard reset on the phone, during which you can tweak a file to disable the application signing lock that Orange had implemented. This benefited users as the software community exploded. Less than a week later, DOOM, DivX and many games had been ported. Orange now offer over-the-air unlocking, due to the explosion of interest since the community started.
This phone platform has the largest number of free (as in speach and beer) applications available. VNC, Telnet etc have all been done (no SSH yet:-(
Sure, it was a little buggy at times. Until the update several months ago. Now, the only time you'll have problems are when you are messing around with Beta software that is still under development. Out of the box, the phone is extremely reliable.
No other phone comes close. So, it's the first product in a whole new platform. Were the first builds of DOS any good? No. The first builds of Windows. Of course not. And the first builds of Linux? Don't make me laugh.
But it's MS, so I'll probably get modded down by the zealots.
PS I admin three Linux servers myself, the OS of my personal choice. I'm not pro-MS. It's just a really good phone. Wait until the new ones come out though, it's not the best hardware design, a little top heavy.
Where have you been for the last five years? Do you work in an office with key-less ID cards for access anywhere?
If you do, you already have this sort of thing. Sure, you need to hold the card 6 inches from the panel for it to open the door, however it can register the presence of a card over a much longer distance. So, that ID badge you already carry could be doing just this sort of thing. It all depends on how the system was configured.
But, this isn't all that new anyway. Mobile phones have been able to do similar things for quite some time. Take this high profile rape case in the UK, where a couple were cleared of criminal charges using mobile phone location evidence.
Hell, while we are talking about the complete loss of privacy in todays society, I might as well throw in this link to an official European Union report into the routine monitoring of the internet and telephone networks by Echelon.
This new thing isn't anything to fear. You should be scared already.
You don't park, you get off at a station and your car disappears off somewhere. They could be stacked in a warehouse nearby. When you leave the office, press a button and the car will come to the nearest station. Which could be the curb at your office.
People have tried stacking cars in garages before, but they generally failed as normal cars are heavy and come in all shapes and sizes. A regulated system like this (perhaps 4 or 5 different car profiles) would not have these problems. As the system would be automated, you could pack a lot of cars in a lot less space.
Tell that to kids who re-enact "stunts" from Jackass.
That's the difference between real video and cartoon. Kids are much more aware that a cartoon isn't real and buying Acme cannons to catapult yourself across canyons isn't a good idea.
In Road Runner, the Coyote was clearly the bad guy who wanted to kill. Everytime he used violence, it came back and got him twice as badly. In Jackass, the morons are rewarded for hurting themselves.
Which do you think kids are more likely to copy?
Kids are just stupid these days.
Not so. Kids have been harming themselves repeating stuff on TV for a long time. Wrestling is a prime example. If anything, the parents are to blame for having less and less hands-on experiences with their kids, spending more time with a box in the corner than they are with real people.
I don't mind though. For each p2p they kill, a better and more robust one comes along. Each technique they use to make the network useless results in better networks. It's evolution in progress.
You simply cannot take on the whole world and expect to win. There are no lobbyists that you can bribe to stop people writing software.
Ah, you're Stateside. I'm in the UK, where DJ Shadow is pretty popular. Not amongst the S-Club7 lovers of course, but anyone who listens to breakbeat/hiphop/turntablism has at least one of his albums.
Check out some of the other acts on MoWax and Ninja Tune, there's some great stuff in there.
Slashdot Mirror
And here lies the downfall. A well informed user will always opt for the non-DRM option. Unless you can lock down the encoding stage to DRM-approved systems, DRM doesn't stand a chance. Given the number of existing mp3 encoders out there already, I'd say that would be impossible.
There is a free explorer application that is actually better and faster. You need to unlock your phone from the Orange website.
Don't forget that you can also roll one of them very easily, at speeds as low as 45mph. Anyone who drives at above 50mph in these things is a psychopath who brings danger to themselves and others. All it takes is for one bad lane change from another driver, and you are sure to make a swerve that is followed by a roll-over. Not much fun on a busy highway.
Don't confuse the issue with p2p and all it's questionable aspects. The same spyware gets installed with many other "free" programs, most of which are 100% legal and many in common use. Tools that were properly free (beer) only a few years ago I might add. Also, if you browse the web with an unpatched browser, you'll get it installed on your PC at some point via the loop holes. I had it happen on this computer not too long ago.
don't read terms and conditions? Tough shit.
Yet another contensious issue, EULA agreements. Frankly, I think there should be laws against the deliberate obsucation of this and other surprises in EULA click-throughs. It's plain to see that most users do not read these. They also have a very questionable legal status, to my knowledge there have been no landmark cases involving terms and conditions, so it's not even certain that they are legally binding.
uninstalls it when you uninstall the program
Most of them don't do this. The removal of some of the nastier ones is very reminissant of virus removal. Morphing file names etc.
If the BBC's programmes are so fantastic, then logically huge numbers of people would pay to see them, no?
OK, I hear your argument, and I agree with you in many terms. However, there are advantages to making the fee mandatory. A lot of stuff on the BBC is special interest, most of which I'm sure both of us are completely unaware of. BBC radio will play genres of music that purely commercial stations could not touch. Due to the numbers of people in the groups, there simply isn't profit to be made.
It's a cultural thing. I do believe that the BBC adds greatly to the UK culture. Many famous people/shows have started their careers via shows that would have never been made by the likes of Sky. Commercial television caters for the "UKs greatest car crashes" market; where programmming can be enjoyed by a very wide viewing spectrum.
I'd rather live in a country where we have a massive choice of media available, made possible by the BBCs funding mechanism. Sure, it costs a little, but how much does each of us pay in other taxes towards warfare and the coffers of big business? Rowboats and waves, as you mention yourself.
The BBC also sets a high-bar for the other channels to aspire to. Ever watched TV in the USA? Ouch, the volume and frequency of advertising is obscene, UK viewers would never stand for that in contrast to the commercial free BBC.
My personal data is my personal data. I should have the last word in what is done with it. By allowing spyware, you are giving someone complete trusted access to your machine. That is a plain and simple security breach. What's the point in firewalls when you allow anything client-side to run, with all manner of undocumented and likely encrypted dial-home connections?
I am not willing to give this level of trust to any company I don't know, let alone one that already does underhand things to get their software onto my machine.
No, I don't block ads either
introducing new legislation that allows them to view *every packet you send and receive* in the laughable name of 'counter-terrorism', yet you do nothing to practically stop it
You don't know me. How can you make jackass statements like that? I make more people aware of these issues that you ever have. I inform people of things like SmoothWall and FreeSWAN to counter these measures all the time (not just online). I'm about as outspoken as they come on all these (and related issues).
You're preaching an irrelevant arguement to the already converted choir. Your point may have had some relevance at some time, but you lost it with the rant.
Abolish the UK TV licence fee!
On the surface yes, I want to pay X less pounds on it each year. Then when you look at the standard of the BBC verses every other network in the world, including all it's TV, radio, web, community and educational content with no advertisments on any, then you realise that we are damn lucky to have it. Nothing comes close anywhere else.
In theory, yes. Async connections are the realistic spanner in those works...most down more than they up.
The EULA for the spyware (mentioned in the host software) buries the notice to the user under a wealth of legal jargon, in a form that people are used to ignoring and clicking-thru already. If they wanted to honestly inform the user, there would be a dialog box with "Warning: this software is funded through the installation of other software that will be installed on your machine, which is used to gather marketing data on you".
Some of the other distinctions are also not so clear. Trojan software utilises your machine to "do their bidding". There is little distinction between trojans that run DoS attacks or distributed computing (BDE), the fact is that you have secreted software onto my machine, that uses my storage space, my bandwidth and my cycles to work for someone else that I have no knowledge of. That's a lot of trust for someone you haven't met; sure!! They can run any code they like on each machine!! Remember, these bots are essentially running as root here. Would you allow a closed-source daemon from a source with dubious ethics on your *nix box? Didn't think so.
If any of the major anti-virus manufacturers were to regard spyware as "not-self", then they'd find they have at least one new customer...me.
Video messaging is the opposite of that, it's more bother for both parties than even simply calling them. You need to record your message and look like a prat, while sending an SMS is discrete. Then the reciprient has to watch the message, and I'd like to see someone hold a phone in a position that can both see and hear the message in a noisy location.
However, laptops, PDA and Smartphones combined with 3G are another thing altogether. In a few years it will be a bit more interesting but for now it's very limited with the handsets currently about.
TIA has got that covered already. They aim to tap into as many databases as possible, which would include store loyalty cards.
For consumer type stuff, you don't need a lot of accuracy though, a resolution of a few hundred metres would be more than enough. I'd love to see it integrated with a on-line mapping service.
Of course it's not the only security problem. Anyone who thinks that any piece of complex software is 100% secure is kidding themself.
Other next-gen phones will have issues. The Smartphone platform will have further issues. That's how it works. Until there is an OSS platform available, we will always rely on the vendor to keep up to date on the issues.
And I should not worry, because there's no other possible exploit for the security hole already found?
No, there is not need to worry, because as I said, you need to do it on a first time boot. To do that you need physical access to the device, docking the device with a PC at the exact moment. At the point of physical access, all security is moot in any system.
It's been fixed anyway. The hack involved changing an XML provisioning file before it was parsed. This was done via an ActiveSync connection, and now the service for ActiveSync isn't started until the phone is provisioned.
Sure, the PDA functions do take a battery hit, but those extra CPU cycles demand it, as do the nice bright color TFT screens. Why carry around a laptop though when you could carry pen & paper? No battery issues there. If you like the functionality, then you live with any negatives it entails.
I wouldn't say these phones are ready for Joe Sixpack yet. They behave more like a computer, so if you have trouble using a PC, then the phone will scare you. However, if you have geekish tendancies, I'd highly recommend looking into Smartphone or Symbian phones. Essentially you are getting a pocket computer integrated with a phone.
With these new phones, everything done is in software. Feature sets don't matter, because you can always get software to do what you want. In these terms,, both phones are the same, but as Smartphone is slightly more mature, there is more software available for it.
Time will tell though. I'd like to see several phone OS's sharing the market, monopolies are bad for thoe consumer regardless of who owns them.
Sure, Pocket IE may not be the best around, but it can be used to access any site (except frames and flash) unlike most phones with internet capability.
When it was done, it disabled the DRM restrictions that were present at the time, allowing you to install lot's of useful unsigned programs. This is no longer required, as you can do the unlock via the telco's website yourself.
Let's put things into perspective please. It's not an "issue" that would negatively affect someone. It benefited the end user!
I have the first SmartPhone, the Orange SPV. Without a doubt, it is the best phone I've ever seen. Here's some of the key features that not many phones can even do half of.
The UI is a dream. There is no dispute, MS know how to make an easy to use and intuative interface. It's a logical, object oriented interface, where you can easilly jump around to related tools. It's a pocket PC, not a phone.
With respect to the "security hole" found, some clarification is required. The "hole" allows someone to perform a hard reset on the phone, during which you can tweak a file to disable the application signing lock that Orange had implemented. This benefited users as the software community exploded. Less than a week later, DOOM, DivX and many games had been ported. Orange now offer over-the-air unlocking, due to the explosion of interest since the community started.
This phone platform has the largest number of free (as in speach and beer) applications available. VNC, Telnet etc have all been done (no SSH yet :-(
Sure, it was a little buggy at times. Until the update several months ago. Now, the only time you'll have problems are when you are messing around with Beta software that is still under development. Out of the box, the phone is extremely reliable.
No other phone comes close. So, it's the first product in a whole new platform. Were the first builds of DOS any good? No. The first builds of Windows. Of course not. And the first builds of Linux? Don't make me laugh.
But it's MS, so I'll probably get modded down by the zealots.
PS I admin three Linux servers myself, the OS of my personal choice. I'm not pro-MS. It's just a really good phone. Wait until the new ones come out though, it's not the best hardware design, a little top heavy.
Hmm, let me see:
Tough choice...
If you do, you already have this sort of thing. Sure, you need to hold the card 6 inches from the panel for it to open the door, however it can register the presence of a card over a much longer distance. So, that ID badge you already carry could be doing just this sort of thing. It all depends on how the system was configured.
But, this isn't all that new anyway. Mobile phones have been able to do similar things for quite some time. Take this high profile rape case in the UK, where a couple were cleared of criminal charges using mobile phone location evidence.
Hell, while we are talking about the complete loss of privacy in todays society, I might as well throw in this link to an official European Union report into the routine monitoring of the internet and telephone networks by Echelon.
This new thing isn't anything to fear. You should be scared already.
Nothing like a sucky sequel to weed out the unbelievers.
Ah, so it's a bit like the fundamentalist stance on dinosaurs --->
"Got put fossils on the Earth to test our faith"
No, but apparently it takes at least 7 sheets of ply loo roll before the crap stops seeping through onto your fingers as you wipe.
Which is why you should always wash afterwards, even if you are not in the habit of visibly shitting on your hands.
People have tried stacking cars in garages before, but they generally failed as normal cars are heavy and come in all shapes and sizes. A regulated system like this (perhaps 4 or 5 different car profiles) would not have these problems. As the system would be automated, you could pack a lot of cars in a lot less space.
That's the difference between real video and cartoon. Kids are much more aware that a cartoon isn't real and buying Acme cannons to catapult yourself across canyons isn't a good idea.
In Road Runner, the Coyote was clearly the bad guy who wanted to kill. Everytime he used violence, it came back and got him twice as badly. In Jackass, the morons are rewarded for hurting themselves.
Which do you think kids are more likely to copy?
Kids are just stupid these days.
Not so. Kids have been harming themselves repeating stuff on TV for a long time. Wrestling is a prime example. If anything, the parents are to blame for having less and less hands-on experiences with their kids, spending more time with a box in the corner than they are with real people.
You simply cannot take on the whole world and expect to win. There are no lobbyists that you can bribe to stop people writing software.
Ghost World - bad sound, bad video.avi
Then, when people search, they will see your file name.
Check out some of the other acts on MoWax and Ninja Tune, there's some great stuff in there.