This is one of the problems with the patent system (yes, I know, everybody likes to say that). They are patenting the idea, not a process or design. For once Apple came up with a legitimately good idea, and they are almost certainly going to abuse it. If they want to patent the process or design, which was the intent of the patent system, it wouldn't be a problem....other companies would certainly develop the same concept with their own handsets (which wouldn't match the iphone design for a number of obvious reasons).

With so many companies backing down on certain patents in the name of not being purely despicable (ie. IBM), Apple should announce this one is a patent they will only hold in name only and demand no licensing.

If they insist on the licensing, I would love to see the hacker communities (xda & android probably the most capable) take a step to duplicate the functions. Even if Apple decides to do the wrong thing, there's no reason to allow them to hold an exclusive.

...Microsoft announces an app store built on .Net applications and plan on making it as Mono friendly as possible. (pretend they didn't already announce this for windows mobile)


One year from now...
- Sun announces closure of app store. Notable achievement: 6 popular apps

- Microsoft announces wildfire success.
Note: They also announce the rollout of their 3rd DRM scheme in hopes of ending the massive piracy rates on apps coming from the store.

There's at least one other reason that the botnet holder may have opted to kill it....If he downloaded something that gave him a reason to freak out. Imagine a scenario where you're looking through some stolen data and realize you just picked up information about a government run weapons facility or assassination plans. The dumbest thing you could do is leave tracks, but since that's already been done, you might as well try to destroy your tracks and hope nobody notices.

On a side node, between the semi-bogus slashdot headline and the wildly sensationalized article, which is also misleading on at least a couple of points, there's surprisingly little news here. If more accurate information was in that article, it might be different.

I suppose I was too specific...yes, I agree, I certainly don't bother using different passwords for each and every site, especially the ones I need to sign up to and intend to use just once (commenting on something so stupid I needed to say something, or downloading a single file). For many of those, I don't even use an email address that ever gets checked, like a free yahoo address.

Bank/Credit Card/etc, these get something unique and don't even share a password between each other. Hey, what can I say, I still don't trust Paypal...

<sarcasm>Yeah, cause they want the resumes<sarcasm>

You must have missed the last 800 times this has happened to companies. They steal the email/name/username and the password, then try them on other sites with something more valuable to them (read: paypal, banks, online stores that also keep credit card info).

BTW, in case it's not obvious from what I just wrote. Make sure you use a different password on every website. Even if it's only a small variation on a simple password, it might not stop a friend from guessing it, but it will stop a hacker with a database of 2 million name/password pairs from bothering to try changing 'password001' to 'password002'