That would be cool. I imagine the screen will cover the entire front face of the iPod (a la PSP) which would actually make me want to watch video on it.
The release of Microsoft's code is like a virus and I'm pretty sure its on purpose. They let developer's see their IP and forever after all works from that developer could be subject to an IP lawsuit. The poor bastard is infected with it. The GPL is the anti-virus in this case. Seeing the code does not require you to keep your mouth shut and people are encouraged to build on it, but derivative work is also free. Imagine being a developer that sees the source of Media Player. you'd never be able to work on a media app ever again that was not directly linked to MS Meadia Player. In fact anyone you worked with subsequently might be brought into question. This is serious problem! Nobody should look at that code!
AT&T Chairman Edward E. Whitacre Jr. complained that Internet content providers were getting a free ride: "They don't have any fiber out there. They don't have any wires. . . . They use my lines for free -- and that's bull," he said. "For a Google or a Yahoo or a Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes for free is nuts!''
Comments like the one above give insight to the arrogance of executives at monopolist corporations. It seems as though he assumes that the 100 million subscribers are a given quantity that his company should have and at present the world is using their pipes for free. What a fucking jackass this guy is. I can't imagine a situation where Google will pay these fees, barring legislation forcing them too. I hope Yahoo, AOL, Amazon and eBay stay strong too. When it comes to internet business, they are the 600 lb gorrillas. Sadly, it seems that the stonger lobby (whoever it might be) will win the day.
We should make pennies out of nickel and iron. All copper pennies should be returned to banks for redistribution.
Hell, maybe we should get rid of pennies anyway when paying in cash. Electronic transactions should be denominated using pennies (single cents) but cash has to round to the nearest nickel.
Of course the second generation of Intel Macs are going to bet better than this generation. The third generation will be better than the second. Maybe you should wait for them instead...
How big is BellSouth? I mean, do they think they can take on Apple, Google and Yahoo? In the end the BellSouth subscribers are on the internet for the content. If The big content provider refuse to pay it how long could Bellsouth last?
This signals the death knell for 'old style' communications companies. BellSouth (and many others) simply refuse to accept that the economics of communication are changing They feel entitled to their monopolies and plan to fight any threats to them. This ploy may work for a little while but I am confident that the market will allign itself. In the meantime, anyone on BellSouth should switch (if possible). I abandoned Bell about two years ago and life is great! Come and join me!
Market share. Security pros are forever dissecting Windows in a search for this stuff. It may be that this is deliberate. It has some very serious points that seem to indicate that it may be.
- It have a specific key (length == 1)
- It is in a rather obscure file type (who uses WMFs anyway?)
- It spawns its own thread
- The payload executable is colocated with the key (no guessing at memory pointers or no-op sleds)
You could argue that buffer overrun exploits do the same thing, but the idea of the buffer overflow is to specifically overwrite the function-return pointer to *make* it point at your code. In this case, the exploit doesn't have to specify the location of the code to execute, Windows does that for you. Too convenient.
Even in a buffer attack you need a No-op sled since the exact memory location is unknown. In this case, as you say, the key and payload are hand-in-hand. Sinister!
Normally I'd agree with you. But in this case I think he may have found something very important. This WMF flap stinks to high heaven. The fact that there seems to be a specific and deliberate key (length == 1) is very disturbing. Gibson is a wacko and doomsayer, but today he may have found something valid.
Love him or hate him, Steve Jobs has cultivated a media persona that is the envy of many CEOs. He is the master of manipulating the media for his companies benefit. He is effectively the head saleman at Apple. He sets the tone for all the marketing that is done. Neither Gates nor Dell has the charisma to pull that off.
The Apple brand, while always considered hip and cool, has exploded in over all popularity due to the iPod. That is why this years Macworld has dominated the headlines. Jobs has been very careful to maintain that hip and cool vibe with respect to Apple. It has served them well in the past, and is paying off nicely now.
Where is the harm? Probably no specific and direct harm will come of this. Nobody is going to suffer, however many fear that these sorts of programs have positioned consumers on the top of a slippery slope. We all have a right to privacy, that is, our business is ours and we choose whom we share it with. As of late, many companies have chosen to monitor and track and statistically analyse our behaviour often without consent. Where this will lead, is very worrisome to many people. Optimists hail it as the renaissance of marketing. Pessimists decry it as the end of personal privacy. (I personnaly am somewhere in the middle). In this case, with iTunes, the harm is negligible but it is important to remind companies that we are watching and wary about what they are doing.
We know that the data is sent to servers at iTMS. This much is assured. What we don't know is what happens to it there. Apple has announced that the data is used to create a recommendation and then it is discarded. This can not be verified. If it is discarded, are metrics being collected about which recommendations are the more common? In other words are the results of the discarded data being collected? I expect so, but it is speculation. The data collected is such a fashoion would likely be anonymous but some privacy issues are justifiably raised.
Disclaimer: I submitted the story yesterday that began the discussion on/.
From the article: The good news is, Apple tells us that the information is not actually being collected. The data sent is used to update the MiniStore and then discarded. If you think about it, this makes sense--imagine the size of the data files they would accumulate with millions of users and what must be hundreds of millions of songs played each day. But Apple should tell us as much, so that we can all relax a bit about sharing our listening habits with Apple.
That sounds like the amount of data the Google collects daily and has done for months. That sort of information would be a treasure trove to record companies and marketing execs. Apple has said that they are not keeping the data, and I choose to give them the benefit of the doubt here. However, when a weak (or fallacious) argument like the one above is used it gives me pause.
The concern lies in the fact that the disclosure of this info was done secretly. Users should have been prompted as to whether they wanted to have such info transmitted.
Re:Big Brother and the iTunes Company
on
iTunes is Malware?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The song you are listening to may NOT have been purchased through iTMS. They are monitoring your library of songs that have been obtained in other manners and keeping record of them too. That is spyware.
Slashdot Mirror
That would be cool. I imagine the screen will cover the entire front face of the iPod (a la PSP) which would actually make me want to watch video on it.
Telegram Services STOP.
This is a very small step from full-blown racketeering.
"If youse pay us maybe nothing bad happens to yer business, huh?"
The release of Microsoft's code is like a virus and I'm pretty sure its on purpose. They let developer's see their IP and forever after all works from that developer could be subject to an IP lawsuit. The poor bastard is infected with it. The GPL is the anti-virus in this case. Seeing the code does not require you to keep your mouth shut and people are encouraged to build on it, but derivative work is also free. Imagine being a developer that sees the source of Media Player. you'd never be able to work on a media app ever again that was not directly linked to MS Meadia Player. In fact anyone you worked with subsequently might be brought into question. This is serious problem! Nobody should look at that code!
But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix.
Instead of a War on Drugs, we have a War, on drugs.
AT&T Chairman Edward E. Whitacre Jr. complained that Internet content providers were getting a free ride: "They don't have any fiber out there. They don't have any wires. . . . They use my lines for free -- and that's bull," he said. "For a Google or a Yahoo or a Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes for free is nuts!''
Comments like the one above give insight to the arrogance of executives at monopolist corporations. It seems as though he assumes that the 100 million subscribers are a given quantity that his company should have and at present the world is using their pipes for free. What a fucking jackass this guy is. I can't imagine a situation where Google will pay these fees, barring legislation forcing them too. I hope Yahoo, AOL, Amazon and eBay stay strong too. When it comes to internet business, they are the 600 lb gorrillas. Sadly, it seems that the stonger lobby (whoever it might be) will win the day.
Mark Russinovich has some very comprehensive skills with respect to computer security.
Dude, must get LAID!
Just joking, his post is lucid and well argued. Although, the conspiratorial cynic in me wants to believe he's wrong.
We should make pennies out of nickel and iron. All copper pennies should be returned to banks for redistribution.
Hell, maybe we should get rid of pennies anyway when paying in cash. Electronic transactions should be denominated using pennies (single cents) but cash has to round to the nearest nickel.
"One lady walked up to the kiosk, and I told her to enter her floor number, and she said, 'That's ridiculous,'
Apparently my mother-in-law was in Seattle this week.
Of course the second generation of Intel Macs are going to bet better than this generation. The third generation will be better than the second. Maybe you should wait for them instead...
I'm still waiting for the most important benchmark: frames per second in molten core combat.
Does anyone relly have any info on this? Even anecdotal evidence would be appreciated.
How big is BellSouth? I mean, do they think they can take on Apple, Google and Yahoo? In the end the BellSouth subscribers are on the internet for the content. If The big content provider refuse to pay it how long could Bellsouth last?
This signals the death knell for 'old style' communications companies. BellSouth (and many others) simply refuse to accept that the economics of communication are changing They feel entitled to their monopolies and plan to fight any threats to them. This ploy may work for a little while but I am confident that the market will allign itself. In the meantime, anyone on BellSouth should switch (if possible). I abandoned Bell about two years ago and life is great! Come and join me!
Market share. Security pros are forever dissecting Windows in a search for this stuff. It may be that this is deliberate. It has some very serious points that seem to indicate that it may be.
- It have a specific key (length == 1)
- It is in a rather obscure file type (who uses WMFs anyway?)
- It spawns its own thread
- The payload executable is colocated with the key (no guessing at memory pointers or no-op sleds)
You could argue that buffer overrun exploits do the same thing, but the idea of the buffer overflow is to specifically overwrite the function-return pointer to *make* it point at your code. In this case, the exploit doesn't have to specify the location of the code to execute, Windows does that for you. Too convenient.
Even in a buffer attack you need a No-op sled since the exact memory location is unknown. In this case, as you say, the key and payload are hand-in-hand. Sinister!
Normally I'd agree with you. But in this case I think he may have found something very important. This WMF flap stinks to high heaven. The fact that there seems to be a specific and deliberate key (length == 1) is very disturbing. Gibson is a wacko and doomsayer, but today he may have found something valid.
Love him or hate him, Steve Jobs has cultivated a media persona that is the envy of many CEOs. He is the master of manipulating the media for his companies benefit. He is effectively the head saleman at Apple. He sets the tone for all the marketing that is done. Neither Gates nor Dell has the charisma to pull that off.
The Apple brand, while always considered hip and cool, has exploded in over all popularity due to the iPod. That is why this years Macworld has dominated the headlines. Jobs has been very careful to maintain that hip and cool vibe with respect to Apple. It has served them well in the past, and is paying off nicely now.
Where is the harm? Probably no specific and direct harm will come of this. Nobody is going to suffer, however many fear that these sorts of programs have positioned consumers on the top of a slippery slope. We all have a right to privacy, that is, our business is ours and we choose whom we share it with. As of late, many companies have chosen to monitor and track and statistically analyse our behaviour often without consent. Where this will lead, is very worrisome to many people. Optimists hail it as the renaissance of marketing. Pessimists decry it as the end of personal privacy. (I personnaly am somewhere in the middle). In this case, with iTunes, the harm is negligible but it is important to remind companies that we are watching and wary about what they are doing.
As the Original Poster, you haven't made your case very well here I must say.
Submitting a story to slashdot hardly requires someone to pick a side. It is merely a solicitation for discussion.
We know that the data is sent to servers at iTMS. This much is assured. What we don't know is what happens to it there. Apple has announced that the data is used to create a recommendation and then it is discarded. This can not be verified. If it is discarded, are metrics being collected about which recommendations are the more common? In other words are the results of the discarded data being collected? I expect so, but it is speculation. The data collected is such a fashoion would likely be anonymous but some privacy issues are justifiably raised.
/.
Disclaimer: I submitted the story yesterday that began the discussion on
From the article: The good news is, Apple tells us that the information is not actually being collected. The data sent is used to update the MiniStore and then discarded. If you think about it, this makes sense--imagine the size of the data files they would accumulate with millions of users and what must be hundreds of millions of songs played each day. But Apple should tell us as much, so that we can all relax a bit about sharing our listening habits with Apple.
That sounds like the amount of data the Google collects daily and has done for months. That sort of information would be a treasure trove to record companies and marketing execs. Apple has said that they are not keeping the data, and I choose to give them the benefit of the doubt here. However, when a weak (or fallacious) argument like the one above is used it gives me pause.
I think the best part of Macworld so far, for me, we hearing that Apple's stock closed at $80.86 on the day they unveiled Intel Macs.
According to the definition you linked to, spyware is a subset of malware.
The concern lies in the fact that the disclosure of this info was done secretly. Users should have been prompted as to whether they wanted to have such info transmitted.
The song you are listening to may NOT have been purchased through iTMS. They are monitoring your library of songs that have been obtained in other manners and keeping record of them too. That is spyware.