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Cellphones

China Smartphone Maker Xiaomi Apologizes For Unauthorized Data Access 64

SpzToid writes Following up an earlier story here on Slashdot, now Xiaomi has apologized for collecting private data from its customers. From the article: "Xiaomi Inc said it had upgraded its operating system to ensure users knew it was collecting data from their address books after a report by a computer security firm said the Chinese budget smartphone maker was taking personal data without permission. The privately held company said it had fixed a loophole in its cloud messaging system that had triggered the unauthorized data transfer and that the operating system upgrade had been rolled out on Sunday. The issue was highlighted last week in a blog post by security firm F-Secure Oyg. In a lengthy blogpost on Google Plus, Xiaomi Vice President Hugo Barra apologized for the unauthorized data collection and said the company only collects phone numbers in users' address books to see if the users are online."

Comment Re:Wow (Score 1) 312

Yes, they are and have been telling Android users to f off. If you want to use Android to watch their videos, you have to use their bastardization of Android.

Kindle and Amazon VOD can go suck an egg.

Comment Jitsi Licensing Problem? (Score 1) 112

While Jitsi is nice and all, it looks to me like they have a licensing problem. Jitsi has a dependency on ZRTP4J, which is under the GPL, and Jitsi is under the LGPL. Can anyone explain how this is possible without a license exception? And if they have a license exception, where is it documented? and isn't transfered upstream? If so, why not just make ZRTP4J LGPL instead of GPL? And why are they releasing the whole application under the LGPL, and not the GPL anyway?

Comment Just say no to usernames. (Score 1) 383

Using usernames exposes your users account names to anyone they email. That's not a good practice. Security by obscurity, I know, but it can help.

givenName.surName@ generally works pretty well, and givenName.middleInitial.surName@ in the case of a conflict should help. If there is a conflict at givenName.middleInitial.surName@, you can add an index, eg., givenName.surName.00@ - just make sure you do something like specify what characters are ok (for example, not allowing accented characters or whitespace).

You might also want to have policies and procedures in place to handle special situations - for example someone has a significant privacy issue or has a name that isn't... well... polite :) when you string givenName.surName together.

Comment Nook Color? Why? (Score 5, Insightful) 103

I wonder why the comparison was made against the nook color, and not the nook tablet? The tablet is more of a direct competitor. $50 more for the nook tablet gets you the same cpu as the fire, 2x the ram (1GB), 2x the internal storage (16GB), support for up to an additional 32GB via external storage, a less reflective display, and a microphone.

You can even run the amazon app store, kindle app, and amazon instant video player app on the nook tablet. Both the Nook Tablet and the Fire have been rooted, and both have been reported to be able to access the Android Market.

Comment Re:Farenheight 451 (Score 1) 221

Heh. Until somebody gets the idea to use the Interstate Commerce Clause. Then creating and sharing yourself without going through a big publisher will be banned because it's a non-commercial activity that "would have a substantial effect on interstate commerce, even if the individual effects are trivial.". (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn )

I'm actually rather pleasantly surprised that the big software companies haven't tried to use this against open source (at least as far as I know), although I suppose they might if we ever manage to get rid of the big stick they have now (patents).

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