imaginaryelf - Slashdot User

Two Unpatched Flaws Show Up In Apple iOS 171

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday August 04, 2010 @07:55PM 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 Earth is like a big house (Score 1, Insightful) 296

by imaginaryelf on Saturday August 29, 2009 @02:06PM (#29244837) Attached to: Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch Worries Researchers

This is what happens when people forget that our little planet is like a big house. When you "dump" your garbage, it's just getting moved from one room to another, unless you recycle it.

Comment Re:Let's see... from memory.... (Score 1) 130

by imaginaryelf on Friday July 17, 2009 @02:04AM (#28726515) Attached to: A History of Early Text Adventure Games

I always get the egg from the nest up in the tree outside the house first.

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

by imaginaryelf on Friday April 17, 2009 @12:11PM (#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.

The Coming Censorship Wars 197

Posted by timothy on Saturday March 21, 2009 @05:42PM 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 Hormone imbalance usually means menopause right? (Score 1) 320

by imaginaryelf on Monday January 05, 2009 @12:17PM (#26330797) Attached to: Steve Jobs Issues Update On His Health

Or is it a new euphemism for cancer now?

You know, such as when some bigshot gets fired, the press release usually says so and so resigned to "spend more time with family."

$99 HD-DVD Player Coming Soon? 257

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday July 14, 2007 @12:20PM from the first-one's-free dept.

Frank writes "Rumors of the high definition holy grail persist. The latest is that Toshiba will be offering their basic HD-A2 player at $99 for one week only, beginning July 22. An added bonus is three free HD-DVD's."

Bosworth On Why AJAX Failed, Then Succeeded 265

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 30, 2007 @06:37PM 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.'"

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