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Two Unpatched Flaws Show Up In Apple iOS 171

Posted by samzenpus from the rotten-apple dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "The technique that the Jailbreakme.com Web site is using to bypass the iPhone's security mechanisms and enable users to run unapproved apps on their phones involves exploiting two separate vulnerabilities. One of the vulnerabilities is a memory-corruption flaw that affects the way that Apple's mobile devices, including the iPad and iPod Touch, display PDFs. The second weakness is a problem in the Apple iOS kernel that gives an attacker higher privileges once his code is on a targeted device, enabling him to break out of the iOS sandbox. The combination of the two vulnerabilities — both of which are unpatched at the moment — gives an attacker the ability to run remote code on the device and evade the security protections on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. The technique became public earlier this week when the Jailbreakme.com site began hosting a set of specially crafted PDF files designed to help users jailbreak their Apple devices and load apps other than the ones approved by Apple and offered in its official App Store."

Comment Re:Let me be the first one to say it ... (Score 1) 1870

by imaginaryelf (#27614861) Attached to: Pirate Bay Trial Ends In Jail Sentences

My own view is that as a society we should be encouraging people "to work", rather than "have worked", copyright protections encourages people to stop working and live of their past actions. Look at some of the old rock bands going around, they make money of "Performance" (the present) rather than "recordings" (the past)

You have it backwards. People work to get paid. If you know you'll never ever get any compensation for your hard work, you'll not do "it" whatever it is. This is basic human behavior.

I grew up in a communist society where the person working diligently in a factory gets paid the exact same amount as the person who smokes and reads papers all day. Guess how much work everyone eventually strived toward?

If I know that after spending a year making some cool app that I will never receive a penny of compensation for it, I won't do it out of practicality. Even if I may be motivated by "good of humanity" arguments or just fame and recognition among my peers, I still have to bring food to the table, so to speak.
Censorship

The Coming Censorship Wars 197

Posted by timothy from the just-go-around dept.
KentuckyFC writes "Many countries censor internet traffic using techniques such as blocking IP addresses, filtering traffic with certain URLs in the data packets and prefix hijacking. Others allow wiretapping of international traffic with few if any legal safeguards. There are growing fears that these practices could trigger a major international incident should international traffic routed through these countries fall victim, whether deliberately or by accident (witness the prefix hijacking of YouTube in Pakistan last year). So how to avoid these places? A group of computer scientists investigating this problem say it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to determine which countries traffic might pass through. But their initial assessment indicates that the countries with the most pervasive censorship policies — China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia — pose a minimal threat because so little international traffic passes their way. The researchers instead point the finger at western countries that have active censorship policies and carry large amounts of international traffic. They highlight the roles of the two biggest carriers: Great Britain, which actively censors internet traffic, and the US, which allows warrantless wiretapping of international traffic (abstract)."

Comment Only Meta-Data was damaged (Score 5, Interesting) 231

by imaginaryelf (#26099627) Attached to: Data Recovered From DVD Leads To Conviction, 24-Year Sentence

"Our analysis showed there to be damage to the lead-in section of the data," Keith Gnagey, vice president of professional services for i365, said in an e-mail statement about the recovery effort. That meant any attempt "with normal playing software would not be able to get past the beginning of the data."

That's like the directory tree being messed up but the data being intact.

I can't believe the other "two local data recovery firms" got stumped by this simple problem.

RealPlayer 11 Is a Real Rip Contender 226

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the making-enemies-on-all-sides dept.
rishimathew writes to tell us TechNewsWorld is reporting that the new RealPlayer 11, not even out of beta yet, has a lot of great new features including the ability to easily rip streaming videos from sites like YouTube, Revver, and Heavy.com. "With the release of RealPlayer 11, the company is boldly moving into another dicey realm: ripping streaming video. Sure, there are lots of means out there to capture video from sites like YouTube Latest News about YouTube, Revver, Heavy.com and such. There are programs like WM Recorder (US$49.95) and Replay A/V ($49.95), as well as Web sites like Keepvid.com and Mozilla Latest News about Mozilla Foundation Firefox add-ons like VideoDownloader. I've tried some of them. Few, though, can match the slick ease of use of RealPlayer 11 -- and it isn't even out of beta yet."
The Internet

Bosworth On Why AJAX Failed, Then Succeeded 265

Posted by kdawson from the before-its-time dept.
An anonymous reader writes "eWeek has a story describing a talk by former Microsoft developer Adam Bosworth, now a VP at Google, entitled 'Physics, Speed and Psychology: What Works and What Doesn't in Software, and Why.' Bosworth depicts issues with processing, broadband, natural language, and human behavior; and he dishes on Microsoft." Quoting: "'Back in '96-'97, me and a group of people... helped build stuff that these days is called AJAX,' Bosworth said. 'We sat down and took a hard look at what was going to happen with the Internet and we concluded, in the face of unyielding opposition and animosity from virtually every senior person at Microsoft, that the thick client was on its way out and it was going to be replaced by browser-based apps. Saying this at Microsoft back in '96 was roughly equivalent to wandering around in a fire wearing matches,' he said. 'But we concluded we should go and build this thing. And we put all this stuff together so people could build thin-client applications... Now you hear about AJAX all the time, but this was built in '97,' Bosworth said. Yet, AJAX failed for a variety of reasons, including some 'big mistakes.'"

Notebook with Huge 20 Inch Screen Reviewed 307

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the desktop-replacement-not-laptop dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Trusted reviews has a look at the Acer Aspire 9800. This massive machine has a 20.1" screen, two 120GB hard drives in a RAID 0 array, super-multi DVD burner, analogue and digital TV tuners and an Intel Core Duo dual core CPU. And at over 17lb you can even use it for weight training!"

The Challenges of A DVR Service 134

Posted by Zonk from the under-the-antennas dept.
ChelleChelle writes "'The two burdens that are probably most annoying to the user are a complex and difficult control interface and lack of reliability.' So says TiVo cofounder Jim Burton as he describes the challenges of designing and delivering an easy-to-use yet highly effective and reliable DVR service. The article is quite broad in focus, providing information on the design aspects of TiVo (hardware, security, source code, etc) yet also taking into consideration the human element, with a large section devoted to service design principles. Overall, a good read for anyone interested in purpose-built systems." Update: 04/21 18:54 GMT by Z : Tim Burton no longer cofounding Tivo.

New Patent on TV Forces You to Watch Ads 470

Posted by CowboyNeal from the forced-attention-spans dept.
WebHostingGuy writes "A patent application filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office says researchers of the Netherland-based consumer electronics company have created a technology that could let broadcasters freeze a channel during a commercial, so viewers wouldn't be able to avoid it. Philips acknowledged that this technology might not sit well with consumers and suggested in its patent filing that consumers be allowed to avoid the feature if they paid broadcasters a fee."

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Work expands to fill the time available. -- Cyril Northcote Parkinson, "The Economist", 1955

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