Comment Re:Eheh (Score 1) 407
Of course they have web browsers. What's wrong with IE6?
Two Unpatched Flaws Show Up In Apple iOS 171
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 Virtualbox (Score 1, Troll) 279
Who cares about dual booting when you can run win 7 in virtualbox?
Opera 10.0 Released 325
neonsignal writes "Opera 10 has been released. It now supports rich text email, the 'turbo' Opera proxy server feature, some HTML 5 support, XML 'pretty printing,' extra skinning features, and a 100/100 score in the Acid3 test. There has been no official announcement as yet."
The Ethics of Selling GPLed Software For the iPhone 782
SeanCier writes "We're a small (two-person) iPhone app developer whose first game has recently been released in the App store. In the process, we've inadvertently stepped in it, bringing up a question of the GPL and free software ethics that I'm hoping the Slashdot community can help us clear up, one way or the other. XPilot, a unique and groundbreaking UNIX-based game from the early/mid nineties, was a classic in its day, but was forgotten and has been dead for years, both in terms of use and development. My college roommate and I were addicted to it at the time, even running game servers and publishing custom maps. As it's fully open source (GPLv2), and the iPhone has well over twice the graphics power of the SGI workstations we'd used in college, we decided it was a moral imperative to port it to our cellphones. In the process, we hoped, we could breathe life back into this forgotten classic (not to mention turning a years-old joke into reality). We did so, and the result was more playable than we'd hoped, despite the physical limitations of the phone. We priced it at $2.99 on the App store (we don't expect it to become the Next Big Thing, but hoped to recoup our costs — such as server charges and Apple's annual $99 developer fee), released the source on our web page, then enthusiastically tracked down every member of the original community we could find to let them know of the hoped-for renaissance. Which is where things got muddy. After it hit the App store, one of the original developers of XPilot told us he feels adamantly that we're betraying the spirit of the GPL by charging for it."
Read on for the rest of Sean's question.
Comment A workable open source solution (Score 1) 136
There are hundreds of various EMR products, which typically cost $30,000 per physician to buy, and $5,000/year/MD for maintenance costs. After paying all that, the EMR products are incompatible with each other, so that records cannot be sent from MD to MD, except to print out the information and scan the pages into the other MD's system. If the digitized information is lost, then the value of the EMR to track information is also lost.
A better solution would be to encourage ro require the use of a single backend product, which would be open sourced, such as the VA's system. This system should be capable of handling all patient encounters: hospital, clinic, OT, PT, labs, etc. Separate front-ends could be created for different situations. The variety of these various situations (hospital front ends, ENT clinics, family practice clinics, pediatrician's office, and so on would be a great environment for private investment. A generic open source front end could be maintained for minimal cost (such as the current VA front end. This would lower the cost of projects, while increasing diversity in front ends (all the healthcare workers care about) and create an opportunity to share digitized information between providers who have permission to share this information from the patient.
Comment Re:Electronic Prescriptions (Score 1) 136
In the United States there are constant problems with coverage, preferred medications, and so on. Having prescriptions delievered without the patient's or doctor's information would be incredibly unworkable.
Comment Deaths from Hand Foot and Mouth Disease???? (Score 1) 1
Speaking as a pediatrician, this is a stunner. Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease leading to death is practically unheard of. However, typical Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease is caused by coxsackie virus, while these illnesses were attributed to enterovirus 71 - known to cause viral meningitis. While viral meningitis is typically mild and self-resolves, deaths have been reported (Lum, LCS, Wong, KT, Lam, SK, et al. Fatal enterovirus 71 encephalomyelitis. J Pediatr 1998; 133:795.). So, this is not necessarily the emergence of some superbug. We will just hope and see.
In the meantime, wash your hands.
