N8 will be running Symbian 3 right? A lot of models of middle end devices will be running Symbian 3 too. And by a "lot", I mean some unheard numbers in industry. It is not just Nokia either, as Symbian can be implemented by _anyone_, a lot of stuff will come from Asia too.
So, you are some Asian manufacturer stuck with J2ME and some weird OS. You use Symbian 3, have ultra modern UI, multi tasking, applications and also World's most customisable (ask any operator) operating system.
The problem here, as usual is "The Register" which was/is British but hasn't got a slightest clue about British based/invented Symbian which has roots in Psion. They became some kind of "reverse iFanboys" too. They only watch iPhone scene, just to bitch about it.
I don't want to feed the trolls but, it is Symbian who will have the majority, not MeeGo.
As Symbian handsets have amazing low power usage, stableness and performance so they can even work with single CPU, I really want to learn what part of them is "dinosour" besides the famous C: D: drive issue (which dates back to Psion).
UI was problematic and they purchased Qt for it and implementing it in a way that, people will code _single UI_ for both Symbian/Linux which has nothing to do with eachother.
I still think we overrate "mobile developers" and their constant whining but, it is another issue. I mean, Opera/Nimbuzz/Fring can somehow code their best featured stuff for Symbian... I don't hear a word from them.
This is not someone's pet project, it is Nokia and its flagship multimedia phone platform (E(nterprise) series stays on Symbian).
I am sure they will put stability and power usage to first place. After all, this is the company who takes huge beating because they insisted and still insist on "code with discipline" on mobile platform. Most of the parts of Symbian which developers hate is actually a specific way to code for mobile platform to use less power and stay stable. They expect(ed) some company who manages to do "talk" and "smart" on single CPU without problems to let them code like they code for desktop. It doesn't happen of course.
N series on the other hand, is flexible and they can say "lets put 2 CPUs", "lets put 512MB RAM" as they are multimedia/high end phones with high price flexibility. I guess that and massive multimedia support already existing on Linux along with developers is the major reason for this decision.
Don't let their liberal "no app store" fool you. If your app doesn't act fine on Symbian, it is gone. It won't slow down or anything. Flooding memory? "Memory full, please close some applications" and guess what? It closes it before it alerts. I am sure they won't let things like that happen on Linux too.
So, it is not something like desktop linux fitting on phone. Just like iOS isn't some NeXT/BSD compiled for ARM either.
It isn't very widely known but, clamav doesn't detect "spyware" by default. If you pass '--detect-pua' (potentially unwanted apps) to its arguments, it will detect them too.
Of course, in this situation, if he "fixes" the computer via removing spyware and idiot customer jumps up and down saying "his mp3 downloader is broken", it will cause some issues. That is why most antiviruses stay away from detecting spyware by default.
and of course, same donation to clamav(.net), the "real thing" should be made.
People may think such famous projects are swimming in donations money but it is generally not the reality. There is no license confusion there either, it is free but donations accepted, whatever money you feel like. In TV business, I sometimes see ffmpeg being used in million dollar projects without a cent of donation, it really pisses me off. I bet little shops are way more ethical.
Unless something serious hit them to stop this spoiled no competition attitude, like an investigation (not rumor, real one) or some "killer app" released on Flash (like The Register predicts) that will be "facebook size".
Apple trusts their customers who buys the device and actually queue for it in this Summer heat, people doesn't let your post to higher level etc.
Think like dealing with a cult. Will a cult member believe there is really nothing on dark side of the moon even if you spend 300 billion dollars to actually send him there?
So, join us and give up hopes for those users. Enjoy whatever open device/os you like and ignore them.
We, Symbian users can watch embedded Youtube videos for a long long time, thanks to Flash Lite installed.
We (S60 V3, not V5) don't even have "touch screen", Youtube somehow sends the right file in right form, you can even "full screen" via phone's menu system.
I don't know we should blame BBC either, it is one of the unknown giants on web, that thing is _huge_. Perhaps they will do a similar content trick soon and I hope they add a truly multi codec html5 video in the process.
What they should never do is, getting totally rid of Flash option. They made the same mistake with Real player/Wmedia. Everyone doesn't really "subscribe" to $600 hardware to keep up with whatever latest trend is. I lost my ability to watch BBC World videos in full FPS after they removed the perfectly working Real Player embedded option and moved to Flash alltogether.
If that thing mercifully allowed to iPhone is actually Opera, what are we using as Symbian/Windows Mobile/Android users?
That is NOT Opera for iPhone, it is actually Opera "mini" for iPhone. Seeing the real Opera on iPhone requires you to have some real high level of access to Opera secure servers. That is a theory only of course, nobody knows if Opera actually coded the real Opera for iPhone and keeping it until app store fascism ends.
I use Opera all the time and I can't thank them enough for supporting Symbian S60 with a decent browser.
The issue with Opera, Safari (it is way more than Webkit shell), IE is: Who knows how many of such issues exist on them? It is more frightening if some gray/black hat found a similar issue on them and put it on black market.
Recently Opera released a security update to 10.53 (10.54) and declined to tell the "major" "critical" issues they fixed. I can't blame them, it is how they work. On the other hand, with Firefox, we _know_ about the exploit, AV vendors too (they can add to heuristics), system admins can take measures against it.
Don't get me wrong, the emphasis to security on Opera browser is amazing, that is one of the reasons why it doesn't have "too powerful" extensions and Widgets will never have the same power as Extensions. It is just, nothing can beat Firefox on "openness" and community. Just because Webkit/Chrome etc. are open source, it doesn't make them same as Mozilla Firefox.
Now, here is a very unknown and interesting thing. Turkey is also 16th country with largest online population. I also heard it is 5th largest user of Facebook.
ICQ was the de-facto messaging standard here and AOL genius management/admins, instead of fixing their systems with basic bayesian filtering/speed triggers/spam reporting, blocked the ENTIRE country IP block from accessing the servers. For couple of months, people played around with proxies, open proxies resulting in a way bigger issue as some of those open proxies are actually nice honeypots for passwords operated by bad guys acting like stupid.
Soon, people stared to their desktop and they have seen they actually have another instant messenger pre-installed by MS (windows messenger) which they previously joked as it is like stone age compared to features ICQ offers. All launched it regardless of how backwards it is and let me tell you what happened now: 35 million Microsoft messenger/live _active_ users in Turkey. That number is so high that, MS had to double check their statistics system. Today, you can even get Live messenger IDs of small grocery shops in villages to order stuff "online".
I still run ICQ on my handheld etc. and guess what? Weeks after Russian acquisition, ICQ spam problem is down from daily/hourly to weekly. So, it could be fixed...
It is not like AIM had any existence in Turkey so, "conspiracy to kill ICQ" is not valid. Unfortunate thing is, MS "Live", that backwards thing became the king because of them.
That is from 1998. Of course, AOL is also the company who effectively destroyed last remains of Netscape brand via rushing Netscape 6.x out of the door while ANY Mozilla user/developer could tell them that it is way too early.
MS says they made 3D possible over net with the latest Windows Server with a good GPU. Of course, we are speaking about a lot of money here with a good server and very fast connection (gigabit).
"Called RemoteFX, the update to Remote Desktop Services enables hardware-accelerated graphics and the use of local USB devices for a remote user connected to a virtual machine (VM). RemoteFX is based on desktop virtualization software acquired when Microsoft took over Calista Technologies in early 2008."
Nice thing is, if you can really find a good "thin client" for home with HDMI output, the possibilities are very interesting.
I used Netscape 4.x and IE 4 (or 5?) on a PowerBook Duo 270c, which has a 68030 with 24 MB of RAM running MacOS 7.6. You know what? It worked fine, except (unsurprisingly) Flash animations.
As I know the power and culture of Amiga, which runs 32bit for ages to begin with, I can't see a reason why such a modern code like Firefox should suck on it, especially in days with PowerPC processors running Amiga.
If you mean A1200/A4000 Amigas by official, I really wonder about it too. For example if one could port 68060 running Amiga 4000 and how would it perform?
If we are talking about "didn't deserve but..." thing, Apple PowerPC, including G5 (which is 64bit) has been obsoleted by Apple right after 10.6 release.
It gets security updates, Safari update but at the end, core OS (including open source parts and most importantly, drivers) doesn't get updated. That is not some eccentric platform either, it is 64bit to begin with.
Amiga OS users say they got last OS update a year ago. What is obsolete? Amiga or PowerPC Mac, from $250 billion Apple Inc?
Really, a lot of people jumping to PC ship always wondered how come Amiga could work without memory protection.
Why? Basically, we had some real mean Amigas (A3000, A4000) which were in use at production, sometimes in live TV (titling etc, still used) and I never remember any of them crash. 3d titling animations like stuff sometimes required days to render and at the end, you always had the result, not some "guru meditation". Such machines were never turned off, rebooted, always used in hot environments, heavily multitasked and full of unsupported CPU upgrades.
For an advertiser, the real value of mobile advertising resides on "location", less sense of privacy, convenience like "click here to call", a common standard hardware with very identical OS and predictable behavior.
I am not saying these are good things, it bugs the hell out of me and I never, ever use advertising supported software on any handheld. I am just saying that, if Apple can do it, every credible (note: credible) company should do it, informing the user first of course.
Apple's excuse is, they want to protect their customers privacy. In fact they treat them like 6 year olds but it isn't the issue, it is their excuse.
Google, still thinking entire planet thinks they are "good guys" has major problems with their corporate culture and actions based on that. From "updater" to "Google Chrome" with default settings, Google is always blamed (rightfully) for not respecting users privacy. Some already calls them private data leeching vampires.
Steve Jobs saw this coming and used "privacy" as excuse to lock down the "real" advertising (location/analytics) to their own network. Now Google pops up and complains, people will say to them "look to mirror".
Some panel of advertisers or some people from analytics community should be speaking, not them. Anyway, too late now.
I couldn't imagine why would a telco need user's mail address and how on earth trusts to the user entered mail address.
I also wonder if the infrastructure was using http or httpS for that communication, you know while collecting user mail addresses for some (??) reason.
You know what? It should be Apple to protest this massive leak at first place. Didn't they declare monopoly on location based advertising "to protect user privacy"? Eh, mail address in some organization named itself "goatse", anything worse could happen?
OS X has a HFS flag (bit I guess) that will display the content of the removable storage if it is set. Toast Titanium has that function and Apple -of course- uses it for OS X Install DVD, iLife tools install DVD. Note it DIPLAYS, doesn't do anything else. So you see a nice "Install xxxxxx" to double click on it, by _your_ decision.
Once upon a time, we users had a convinient feature, that we can install input managers to our home directory (e.g. 1password, grammarian) without needing to install them as Admin. The day couple of morons exploited this feature for their trivial "OS X can get viruses" demos, Apple depreciated it and totally removed it from 10.5+. Now, an input manager has to have very strict permissions and owner (root) and has to be installed to/Library/Input Managers. Input managers in home directory are ignored. That required a lot of software to be changed and in fact, unfortunately, some software to be totally dead for average user.
There are several decisions like that on Apple land which generates a lot of Developer flame sometimes. MS should take "good aspects" of Apple OS X just like Apple does sometimes. There would be no loss if some explorer window pops up instead of automatically running something.
"There is no "TURBO" feature on any of their commercial products, but nice FUD you've got there."
Dear AC or WD something
Here is the directory from that drive: $ls WD_Windows_Tools autorun.inf
(remaining file, since it is virus cleaned) $WD_Windows_Tools: ls restart.exe
Please tell me a logical reason why an hard disk, portable one runs "autorun" and why it even needs a restart? Let me tell why. Those incompetent friends of yours also installs a windows driver, in old fashioned way. My friend is very glad that she works at DTP sector where "everything happens", someone could even claim that she was installing trojans to their private network thanks to WD.
It is full of kernel extensions. At least it is OS X where such junk is easily hunted thanks to directory structure. On Windows with 3000 file system32 and 100MB registry? Good luck.
BTW, the drive which that image resides is a WD hard disk too and I am perfectly happy about it, my first drive that actually hit SATA1 bandwidth speed limit.
Well, Redhat Linux, back when the time they were shipping a Desktop Linux (5 I guess) had that neat idea of autorunning software from CD. Quake 3 from Loki did it.
Of course, as Redhat (and other vendors) have normal logic, they saw what is coming and it became a thing of past very quickly.
The problem with MS is, they even "extend" the functionality let alone getting rid of it. There is a huge risk of endless BSOD/system freeze in case of corrupt media since they made sure Windows Vista+ will check the contents of drive, reading whatever it can to show that nag window about what to do. Of course, if there is a flaw in their TIFF/JPEG etc. handling... Something way worse may happen like the Autorun/JPEG virus.
Recently I helped a friend who had 1TB disk formatted in FAT32 to convert it to HFS+ Journaled. As I image the disk, I notice some really strange things, like.exe files in Pictures folder, the _hard disk_ itself having autorun.exe. It is not some Taiwanese invention either, it is the Western Digital.I believe it is one of the most expensive ones.
It turns out, WD _idiots_ had this great idea of installing their USB drivers named something TURBO (no kidding!) who are supposed to speed up the drive transfer. I bet it does some cache hacks etc. It also does some very unwelcome things like adding itself to startup, not removing itself automatically (of course!), does trivial and dangerous hack of adding some "WD" logo to OS X icon of the drive. OS X, of course doesn't have autorun functionality, I believe on Windows, that drive is the ultimate driver hell machine which will _also_ install couple of viruses!
That is one of the most prestigious Hard Disk manufacturers. Just imagine what those no name freaks do.
The rest of files? Some really bad worms who _all_ uses autorun functionality. If I was responsible for security of Windows, I would really say "please, get a life" to those autorun loving companies and disable it the next day. Just output of ClamAV scan for that disk should make anyone who did anything about security alerted.
MS spent billions for security and fixing their image and yet, they just can't give up the absolutely stupid idea of automatically running an executable.
It has nothing to do with where it is made. It is just, Olympus who isn't a no name company doesn't buy 3 of best antiviruses and setup a system where every single byte which goes out of company (digitally or physically) is checked. "All files regardless of content and header" in Kaspersky fashion.
As a Video guy, once I had to ship a CD with Video players (back in days when you need to install a mpeg player) and I clearly remember buying 3 antiviruses from leading companies of that time (didn't change a lot) and scanning the file in master ISO before giving it out. A single video guy does that at home. It doesn't cost much anyway.
I heard IBM made a similar mistake recently, it is plain sad, once the undisputed king of AV/Security suites, the big blue...
Slashdot Mirror
N8 will be running Symbian 3 right? A lot of models of middle end devices will be running Symbian 3 too. And by a "lot", I mean some unheard numbers in industry. It is not just Nokia either, as Symbian can be implemented by _anyone_, a lot of stuff will come from Asia too.
So, you are some Asian manufacturer stuck with J2ME and some weird OS. You use Symbian 3, have ultra modern UI, multi tasking, applications and also World's most customisable (ask any operator) operating system.
The problem here, as usual is "The Register" which was/is British but hasn't got a slightest clue about British based/invented Symbian which has roots in Psion. They became some kind of "reverse iFanboys" too. They only watch iPhone scene, just to bitch about it.
I don't want to feed the trolls but, it is Symbian who will have the majority, not MeeGo.
As Symbian handsets have amazing low power usage, stableness and performance so they can even work with single CPU, I really want to learn what part of them is "dinosour" besides the famous C: D: drive issue (which dates back to Psion).
UI was problematic and they purchased Qt for it and implementing it in a way that, people will code _single UI_ for both Symbian/Linux which has nothing to do with eachother.
I still think we overrate "mobile developers" and their constant whining but, it is another issue. I mean, Opera/Nimbuzz/Fring can somehow code their best featured stuff for Symbian... I don't hear a word from them.
This is not someone's pet project, it is Nokia and its flagship multimedia phone platform (E(nterprise) series stays on Symbian).
I am sure they will put stability and power usage to first place. After all, this is the company who takes huge beating because they insisted and still insist on "code with discipline" on mobile platform. Most of the parts of Symbian which developers hate is actually a specific way to code for mobile platform to use less power and stay stable. They expect(ed) some company who manages to do "talk" and "smart" on single CPU without problems to let them code like they code for desktop. It doesn't happen of course.
N series on the other hand, is flexible and they can say "lets put 2 CPUs", "lets put 512MB RAM" as they are multimedia/high end phones with high price flexibility. I guess that and massive multimedia support already existing on Linux along with developers is the major reason for this decision.
Don't let their liberal "no app store" fool you. If your app doesn't act fine on Symbian, it is gone. It won't slow down or anything. Flooding memory? "Memory full, please close some applications" and guess what? It closes it before it alerts. I am sure they won't let things like that happen on Linux too.
So, it is not something like desktop linux fitting on phone. Just like iOS isn't some NeXT/BSD compiled for ARM either.
It isn't very widely known but, clamav doesn't detect "spyware" by default. If you pass '--detect-pua' (potentially unwanted apps) to its arguments, it will detect them too.
Of course, in this situation, if he "fixes" the computer via removing spyware and idiot customer jumps up and down saying "his mp3 downloader is broken", it will cause some issues. That is why most antiviruses stay away from detecting spyware by default.
I really think with such usage and money is being made
http://www.clamwin.com/content/view/180/105/ (donation)
and of course, same donation to clamav(.net), the "real thing" should be made.
People may think such famous projects are swimming in donations money but it is generally not the reality. There is no license confusion there either, it is free but donations accepted, whatever money you feel like. In TV business, I sometimes see ffmpeg being used in million dollar projects without a cent of donation, it really pisses me off. I bet little shops are way more ethical.
Unless something serious hit them to stop this spoiled no competition attitude, like an investigation (not rumor, real one) or some "killer app" released on Flash (like The Register predicts) that will be "facebook size".
Apple trusts their customers who buys the device and actually queue for it in this Summer heat, people doesn't let your post to higher level etc.
Think like dealing with a cult. Will a cult member believe there is really nothing on dark side of the moon even if you spend 300 billion dollars to actually send him there?
So, join us and give up hopes for those users. Enjoy whatever open device/os you like and ignore them.
We, Symbian users can watch embedded Youtube videos for a long long time, thanks to Flash Lite installed.
We (S60 V3, not V5) don't even have "touch screen", Youtube somehow sends the right file in right form, you can even "full screen" via phone's menu system.
I don't know we should blame BBC either, it is one of the unknown giants on web, that thing is _huge_. Perhaps they will do a similar content trick soon and I hope they add a truly multi codec html5 video in the process.
What they should never do is, getting totally rid of Flash option. They made the same mistake with Real player/Wmedia. Everyone doesn't really "subscribe" to $600 hardware to keep up with whatever latest trend is. I lost my ability to watch BBC World videos in full FPS after they removed the perfectly working Real Player embedded option and moved to Flash alltogether.
If that thing mercifully allowed to iPhone is actually Opera, what are we using as Symbian/Windows Mobile/Android users?
That is NOT Opera for iPhone, it is actually Opera "mini" for iPhone. Seeing the real Opera on iPhone requires you to have some real high level of access to Opera secure servers. That is a theory only of course, nobody knows if Opera actually coded the real Opera for iPhone and keeping it until app store fascism ends.
Well, let them change the domain to slashdot.us and allow only USA/Canada IPs?
Not like we (rest of the World) didn't get used to that kind of (Godwin) for a long time.
If you see someone claim UN is "united nations" so, it is international, just ask where the HQ is located.
It pisses them off, even diplomats.
I use Opera all the time and I can't thank them enough for supporting Symbian S60 with a decent browser.
The issue with Opera, Safari (it is way more than Webkit shell), IE is: Who knows how many of such issues exist on them? It is more frightening if some gray/black hat found a similar issue on them and put it on black market.
Recently Opera released a security update to 10.53 (10.54) and declined to tell the "major" "critical" issues they fixed. I can't blame them, it is how they work. On the other hand, with Firefox, we _know_ about the exploit, AV vendors too (they can add to heuristics), system admins can take measures against it.
Don't get me wrong, the emphasis to security on Opera browser is amazing, that is one of the reasons why it doesn't have "too powerful" extensions and Widgets will never have the same power as Extensions. It is just, nothing can beat Firefox on "openness" and community. Just because Webkit/Chrome etc. are open source, it doesn't make them same as Mozilla Firefox.
Now, here is a very unknown and interesting thing. Turkey is also 16th country with largest online population. I also heard it is 5th largest user of Facebook.
ICQ was the de-facto messaging standard here and AOL genius management/admins, instead of fixing their systems with basic bayesian filtering/speed triggers/spam reporting, blocked the ENTIRE country IP block from accessing the servers. For couple of months, people played around with proxies, open proxies resulting in a way bigger issue as some of those open proxies are actually nice honeypots for passwords operated by bad guys acting like stupid.
Soon, people stared to their desktop and they have seen they actually have another instant messenger pre-installed by MS (windows messenger) which they previously joked as it is like stone age compared to features ICQ offers. All launched it regardless of how backwards it is and let me tell you what happened now: 35 million Microsoft messenger/live _active_ users in Turkey. That number is so high that, MS had to double check their statistics system. Today, you can even get Live messenger IDs of small grocery shops in villages to order stuff "online".
I still run ICQ on my handheld etc. and guess what? Weeks after Russian acquisition, ICQ spam problem is down from daily/hourly to weekly. So, it could be fixed...
It is not like AIM had any existence in Turkey so, "conspiracy to kill ICQ" is not valid. Unfortunate thing is, MS "Live", that backwards thing became the king because of them.
Can you imagine if they actually listened to CmdrTaco at right time and open the damn source (no matter how bad quality it is) years before?
I speak about this article
http://web.archive.org/web/19980113192359/slashdot.org/slashdot.cgi?mode=article&artnum=425 That is way before the "Cathedral and the Bazaar wondering around at Netscape building" times.
That is from 1998. Of course, AOL is also the company who effectively destroyed last remains of Netscape brand via rushing Netscape 6.x out of the door while ANY Mozilla user/developer could tell them that it is way too early.
MS says they made 3D possible over net with the latest Windows Server with a good GPU. Of course, we are speaking about a lot of money here with a good server and very fast connection (gigabit).
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/06/07/windows_7_server_2008_r_2_sp1_beta/
"Called RemoteFX, the update to Remote Desktop Services enables hardware-accelerated graphics and the use of local USB devices for a remote user connected to a virtual machine (VM). RemoteFX is based on desktop virtualization software acquired when Microsoft took over Calista Technologies in early 2008."
Nice thing is, if you can really find a good "thin client" for home with HDMI output, the possibilities are very interesting.
I used Netscape 4.x and IE 4 (or 5?) on a PowerBook Duo 270c, which has a 68030 with 24 MB of RAM running MacOS 7.6. You know what? It worked fine, except (unsurprisingly) Flash animations.
As I know the power and culture of Amiga, which runs 32bit for ages to begin with, I can't see a reason why such a modern code like Firefox should suck on it, especially in days with PowerPC processors running Amiga.
If you mean A1200/A4000 Amigas by official, I really wonder about it too. For example if one could port 68060 running Amiga 4000 and how would it perform?
If we are talking about "didn't deserve but..." thing, Apple PowerPC, including G5 (which is 64bit) has been obsoleted by Apple right after 10.6 release.
It gets security updates, Safari update but at the end, core OS (including open source parts and most importantly, drivers) doesn't get updated. That is not some eccentric platform either, it is 64bit to begin with.
Amiga OS users say they got last OS update a year ago. What is obsolete? Amiga or PowerPC Mac, from $250 billion Apple Inc?
Really, a lot of people jumping to PC ship always wondered how come Amiga could work without memory protection.
Why? Basically, we had some real mean Amigas (A3000, A4000) which were in use at production, sometimes in live TV (titling etc, still used) and I never remember any of them crash. 3d titling animations like stuff sometimes required days to render and at the end, you always had the result, not some "guru meditation". Such machines were never turned off, rebooted, always used in hot environments, heavily multitasked and full of unsupported CPU upgrades.
So, really, why didn't Amiga crash that much?
For an advertiser, the real value of mobile advertising resides on "location", less sense of privacy, convenience like "click here to call", a common standard hardware with very identical OS and predictable behavior.
I am not saying these are good things, it bugs the hell out of me and I never, ever use advertising supported software on any handheld. I am just saying that, if Apple can do it, every credible (note: credible) company should do it, informing the user first of course.
Apple's excuse is, they want to protect their customers privacy. In fact they treat them like 6 year olds but it isn't the issue, it is their excuse.
Google, still thinking entire planet thinks they are "good guys" has major problems with their corporate culture and actions based on that. From "updater" to "Google Chrome" with default settings, Google is always blamed (rightfully) for not respecting users privacy. Some already calls them private data leeching vampires.
Steve Jobs saw this coming and used "privacy" as excuse to lock down the "real" advertising (location/analytics) to their own network. Now Google pops up and complains, people will say to them "look to mirror".
Some panel of advertisers or some people from analytics community should be speaking, not them. Anyway, too late now.
I couldn't imagine why would a telco need user's mail address and how on earth trusts to the user entered mail address.
I also wonder if the infrastructure was using http or httpS for that communication, you know while collecting user mail addresses for some (??) reason.
You know what? It should be Apple to protest this massive leak at first place. Didn't they declare monopoly on location based advertising "to protect user privacy"? Eh, mail address in some organization named itself "goatse", anything worse could happen?
OS X has a HFS flag (bit I guess) that will display the content of the removable storage if it is set. Toast Titanium has that function and Apple -of course- uses it for OS X Install DVD, iLife tools install DVD. Note it DIPLAYS, doesn't do anything else. So you see a nice "Install xxxxxx" to double click on it, by _your_ decision.
Once upon a time, we users had a convinient feature, that we can install input managers to our home directory (e.g. 1password, grammarian) without needing to install them as Admin. The day couple of morons exploited this feature for their trivial "OS X can get viruses" demos, Apple depreciated it and totally removed it from 10.5+. Now, an input manager has to have very strict permissions and owner (root) and has to be installed to /Library/Input Managers. Input managers in home directory are ignored. That required a lot of software to be changed and in fact, unfortunately, some software to be totally dead for average user.
There are several decisions like that on Apple land which generates a lot of Developer flame sometimes. MS should take "good aspects" of Apple OS X just like Apple does sometimes. There would be no loss if some explorer window pops up instead of automatically running something.
"There is no "TURBO" feature on any of their commercial products, but nice FUD you've got there."
Dear AC or WD something
Here is the directory from that drive:
$ls
WD_Windows_Tools autorun.inf
(remaining file, since it is virus cleaned)
$WD_Windows_Tools: ls
restart.exe
Please tell me a logical reason why an hard disk, portable one runs "autorun" and why it even needs a restart? Let me tell why. Those incompetent friends of yours also installs a windows driver, in old fashioned way. My friend is very glad that she works at DTP sector where "everything happens", someone could even claim that she was installing trojans to their private network thanks to WD.
There is no "Turbo" software? WD support site says otherwise:
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=116&sid=108&lang=en
File Name: WD+TURBO_Installer_v_1_1_0.zip
It is full of kernel extensions. At least it is OS X where such junk is easily hunted thanks to directory structure. On Windows with 3000 file system32 and 100MB registry? Good luck.
BTW, the drive which that image resides is a WD hard disk too and I am perfectly happy about it, my first drive that actually hit SATA1 bandwidth speed limit.
Well, Redhat Linux, back when the time they were shipping a Desktop Linux (5 I guess) had that neat idea of autorunning software from CD. Quake 3 from Loki did it.
Of course, as Redhat (and other vendors) have normal logic, they saw what is coming and it became a thing of past very quickly.
The problem with MS is, they even "extend" the functionality let alone getting rid of it. There is a huge risk of endless BSOD/system freeze in case of corrupt media since they made sure Windows Vista+ will check the contents of drive, reading whatever it can to show that nag window about what to do. Of course, if there is a flaw in their TIFF/JPEG etc. handling... Something way worse may happen like the Autorun/JPEG virus.
Recently I helped a friend who had 1TB disk formatted in FAT32 to convert it to HFS+ Journaled. As I image the disk, I notice some really strange things, like .exe files in Pictures folder, the _hard disk_ itself having autorun.exe. It is not some Taiwanese invention either, it is the Western Digital.I believe it is one of the most expensive ones.
It turns out, WD _idiots_ had this great idea of installing their USB drivers named something TURBO (no kidding!) who are supposed to speed up the drive transfer. I bet it does some cache hacks etc. It also does some very unwelcome things like adding itself to startup, not removing itself automatically (of course!), does trivial and dangerous hack of adding some "WD" logo to OS X icon of the drive. OS X, of course doesn't have autorun functionality, I believe on Windows, that drive is the ultimate driver hell machine which will _also_ install couple of viruses!
That is one of the most prestigious Hard Disk manufacturers. Just imagine what those no name freaks do.
The rest of files? Some really bad worms who _all_ uses autorun functionality. If I was responsible for security of Windows, I would really say "please, get a life" to those autorun loving companies and disable it the next day. Just output of ClamAV scan for that disk should make anyone who did anything about security alerted.
MS spent billions for security and fixing their image and yet, they just can't give up the absolutely stupid idea of automatically running an executable.
It has nothing to do with where it is made. It is just, Olympus who isn't a no name company doesn't buy 3 of best antiviruses and setup a system where every single byte which goes out of company (digitally or physically) is checked. "All files regardless of content and header" in Kaspersky fashion.
As a Video guy, once I had to ship a CD with Video players (back in days when you need to install a mpeg player) and I clearly remember buying 3 antiviruses from leading companies of that time (didn't change a lot) and scanning the file in master ISO before giving it out. A single video guy does that at home. It doesn't cost much anyway.
I heard IBM made a similar mistake recently, it is plain sad, once the undisputed king of AV/Security suites, the big blue...