Comment Re:As they should be. (Score 1) 260
You're looking at this from the point of view of a new developer where you have the freedom to easily change your mind since you haven't invested any time or money into your application yet. What about all those developers that decided to go with the iPhone platform and AdMob a long time because that looked like a good choice for them at the time? You are just going to tell them that they are free to trash all their code and start over from scratch because they "can move to Android and try to do better there"? Really?
Comment Classic security versus privacy problem (Score 1) 92
With the rise of malicious links weeding through social networks and the various shortcomings of URL shortening services, I can see how this is useful. Twitter can "pull the plug" on a link instantly and it's automatically blocked on future tweets as well.
Sure Twitter can get some sweet analytics out of it too, but if you don't like the fact they can see what you see then there's a magical mechanism called cut and paste too.
Comment Re:Great features but... (Score 1) 1184
Hell, Apple's own WiFi network couldn't handle it.
I can't wait for people in a crowded internet cafe yelling for people to turn off their laptops and WiFi so their iPhone 4 can work.
I can't wait for people in a crowded internet cafe yelling for people to turn off their laptops and WiFi so their iPhone 4 can work.
Submission + - U.S. Climate Satellite Capabilities in Jeopardy (wired.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The United States is in danger of losing its ability to monitor key climate variables from satellites, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.
The country’s Earth-observing satellite program has been underfunded for a decade, and the impact of the lack of funds is finally hitting home. The GAO report found that capabilities originally slated for two new Earth-monitoring programs, NPOESS and GOES-R, run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Defense have been cut and adequate plans to replace them do not exist.
Meanwhile, up until six months ago, NASA had 15 functional Earth-sensing satellites. Two of them went down in the past year, and of the remaining 13, 12 are past their design lifetimes. Only seven may be functional by 2016, said Waleed Abdalati, a longtime NASA satellite scientist now teaching at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Taken together, American scientists will soon find themselves without the ability to monitor changes to key Earth systems at a time when such measurements could help determine the paths of the world’s energy and transportation systems.
The country’s Earth-observing satellite program has been underfunded for a decade, and the impact of the lack of funds is finally hitting home. The GAO report found that capabilities originally slated for two new Earth-monitoring programs, NPOESS and GOES-R, run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Defense have been cut and adequate plans to replace them do not exist.
Meanwhile, up until six months ago, NASA had 15 functional Earth-sensing satellites. Two of them went down in the past year, and of the remaining 13, 12 are past their design lifetimes. Only seven may be functional by 2016, said Waleed Abdalati, a longtime NASA satellite scientist now teaching at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Taken together, American scientists will soon find themselves without the ability to monitor changes to key Earth systems at a time when such measurements could help determine the paths of the world’s energy and transportation systems.
Feed Techdirt: Police And Courts Regularly Abusing Wiretapping Laws To Arrest People For Filmin (techdirt.com)
Back in April, we wrote about the case of a motorcyclist in Maryland who was wearing a helmet-mounted camera while riding his motorcycle (admittedly, above the speed limit). As he stopped at a traffic light, an off-duty police-officer in plain clothes and an unmarked car jumped out of his car with his gun drawn. All of this was caught on video. No matter what you think of the cop's reaction, what happened later is ridiculous: after the biker, Anthony John Graber III, posted the video from his helmet cam to YouTube, he was arrested for illegal wiretapping, based on Maryland's two-party consent rule for recording. As we explained at the time, wiretapping laws that require all parties to consent were not, at all, designed for this type of situation.
However, apparently this sort of thing is becoming all too common -- and stunningly, many courts are siding with the cops. Gizmodo recently had a good article highlighting how police in states that require all parties to consent to recordings have been using this law against being videotaped in public, and the courts are siding with them. What's really scary is that most of those laws even have clearly written exceptions for recording in public places "where no expectation of privacy" exists.
Yet, the police and the courts both seem to ignore that part of those laws:
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However, apparently this sort of thing is becoming all too common -- and stunningly, many courts are siding with the cops. Gizmodo recently had a good article highlighting how police in states that require all parties to consent to recordings have been using this law against being videotaped in public, and the courts are siding with them. What's really scary is that most of those laws even have clearly written exceptions for recording in public places "where no expectation of privacy" exists.
Yet, the police and the courts both seem to ignore that part of those laws:
The courts, however, disagree. A few weeks ago, an Illinois judge rejected a motion to dismiss an eavesdropping charge against Christopher Drew, who recorded his own arrest for selling one-dollar artwork on the streets of Chicago. Although the misdemeanor charges of not having a peddler's license and peddling in a prohibited area were dropped, Drew is being prosecuted for illegal recording, a Class I felony punishable by 4 to 15 years in prison.That last sentence is the real problem here. Two-party consent laws were clearly designed to be used in situations where someone was being recorded privately -- such as over a phone call, or in a private conversation. When police are doing things (especially questionable activities) out in public, we should be encouraging the public to record those incidents and report them. The laws are being abused to try to stop people from whistleblowing on bad behavior by police. That has nothing to do with the purpose of two-party consent laws. It's really scary that the courts didn't immediately throw out these cases.
In 2001, when Michael Hyde was arrested for criminally violating the state's electronic surveillance law -- aka recording a police encounter -- the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld his conviction 4-2. In dissent, Chief Justice Margaret Marshall stated, "Citizens have a particularly important role to play when the official conduct at issue is that of the police. Their role cannot be performed if citizens must fear criminal reprisals...." (Note: In some states it is the audio alone that makes the recording illegal.)
The selection of "shooters" targeted for prosecution do, indeed, suggest a pattern of either reprisal or an attempt to intimidate.
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Submission + - Chip Companies Form Company to Develop Linux (xbitlabs.com)
Nunavut writes: ARM, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments (TI), this week announced the formation of Linaro, a not-for-profit open source software engineering company dedicated to enhancing open source innovation for the next wave of always-connected, always-on computing... Linaro was formed to increase investment in open source, address the challenges in developing products for sophisticated consumer markets and provide the support of a broad array of semiconductor products from multiple companies... Linaro will work with the growing number of Linux distributions to create regular releases of optimized tools and foundation software that can be used widely by the industry, increasing compatibility across semiconductors from multiple suppliers.
Submission + - FTC Proposal Would Tax Slashdot (washingtontimes.com)
FutureDomain writes: In an attempt to save the old media, the FTC is floating proposals to subsidize news sources and tax consumer electronics and news aggregators such as Slashdot. Among the proposals is a plan to "Allow news organizations to agree jointly on a mechanis to require news aggregators and others to pay for the use of online content, perhaps through the use of copyright licenses." Are news sites like Slashdot the next thing on the government hit list to be taxed?
Feed Engadget: Motorola Droid Xtreme pictured yet again, still not announced (engadget.com)
Quickly becoming the most well-leaked handsets since the next iPhone, Motorola's fine little piece of kit informally known so far as the Droid Shadow / Xtreme has shown up yet again -- and this time, we're getting a great view of that bulbous posterior. The 8 megapixel cam, HD video capture, and dual LED flash are all confirmed, which takes just a little edge off the EVO 4G's reign, we'd say. Competition is grand, ain't it?
Motorola Droid Xtreme pictured yet again, still not announced originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Jun 2010 20:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Droid Life |Email this|CommentsFeed Engadget: Dell Streak HDMI dock gets the hands-on treatment, kickstand-equipped case makes (engadget.com)
We managed to get an early look at the HDMI dock for the Dell Streak way back in February courtesy of T3's Greek site, but the accessory is now finally official (if not widely available), and Laptop Magazine has come through with what appears to be the first proper hands-on. Of course, there's not exactly a lot to go hands-on with, but it seems that dock does indeed function as a dock, and it also thankfully has a USB port and a line-out in addition to that HDMI port. Perhaps just as notable, however, is a Streak case that Laptop has also managed to get its hands on, which has a built-in kickstand. Check it out after the break.
Dell Streak HDMI dock gets the hands-on treatment, kickstand-equipped case makes a cameo originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Laptop |Email this|CommentsFeed Techdirt: Dutch Court Says Just Publishing Links To A Movie Is Illegal And Must Be Blocked (techdirt.com)
It's still amazing that any court thinks that just publishing links to something should be illegal, but it seems to happen again and again. Over in the Netherlands, usenet community FTD, has lost a case filed by a movie studio, because some of its users pointed out links where you could download a certain movie. FTD didn't host the movie. It didn't store the movie. The movie never touched its servers. FTD didn't offer a torrent of the movie. All it did was let users post where the files existed. And the court found that to be illegal and barred. One of these days, maybe we can expect judges to understand basic technology concepts, but it seems like that day is still a long way off.
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Submission + - Internet Explorer 9 the most compatible? (microsoft.com)
_Shorty-dammit writes: Microsoft has released some numbers showing that the IE9 Platform Preview is more standards-compatible than Mozilla Firefox 3.6.3, Opera 10.52, Apple Safari 4.05, and Google Chrome 4.1. This seemed rather interesting at first, until I stopped looking at the charts and re-read the introduction, which states that they are all test pages that Microsoft wrote. They do, however, say that they were developed in conjunction with the W3C. Though I wonder how the IE9 PP would fair against the same competitors in a test that they had no hand in laying out.
Submission + - Researchers To Demo Android Phone Rootkit (zdnet.co.uk)
WrongSizeGlass writes: ZDNet is reporting that two researchers are scheduled to demonstrate a rootkit running on an Android-based smartphone at the Defcon security conference in July. They're claiming the rootkit could give an intruder full access to all the functions of the device. The malware is activated by an incoming call from a 'trigger number', upon which it sends a shell to the attacker, allowing them administrative access via a 3G or Wi-Fi connection. The rootkit runs as a loadable kernel module, giving it full access to all of the handset's functions. 'Android forms a perfect platform for further investigation due to its use of the Linux kernel and the existence of a very established body of knowledge regarding kernel-level rootkits in Linux,' the researchers wrote.
Submission + - SPAM: Alleged $100M scareware sellers facing charges
alphadogg writes: Three men are facing federal fraud charges for allegedly raking in more than $100 million while running an illegal "scareware" business called Innovative Marketing that tricked victims into installing bogus software. The company's products generated so many consumer complaints that the FTC brought a civil action against Innovative Marketing and call center partner Byte Hosting in 2008, effectively putting them out of business. On Wednesday, a grand jury in Chicago handed down the criminal charges, meaning the three men now face jail time if convicted.
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Comment Re:PIN != content access control (Score 1) 264
For the same reason many of the people I support refer to their computer tower as the "hard drive". They really just don't know/care about the difference. ;)
