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Comment Re:Or, if we are about the open source, (Score 5, Insightful) 328

by lurker-11 (#29880715) Attached to: Psystar's Rebel EFI Hackintosh Tool Reviewed, Found Wanting

If someone else tries to make profit off of Apples product without license from Apple, then Apple is absolutely within their rights to prevent it.

It's perfectly legitimate to resell products at a profit without permission or "license" from the manufacturer. That's exactly what any retail store does to make money (in the case where they buy from a distributor and aren't the original manufacturer).

Comment Re:What about other keyboard manufacturers? (Score 1) 275

by lurker-11 (#28912199) Attached to: Apple Keyboard Firmware Hack Demonstrated

The only way to solve this (partially) with existing hardware would be to block access to hardware devices from applications running as non-root users, which is fundamentally contrary to the desire to get device drivers out of the kernel for stability.

Note that the root user account and the special priviledges usually given to it have nothing to do with kernel mode. Code running as root may be able to get code to run in kernel mode, such as by loading a kernel module (and in theory this priviledge could be given to other accounts as well), but is still running in regular user mode.

Comment Re:First Step (Score 1) 216

by lurker-11 (#26521515) Attached to: Beginning iPhone Development

As I've said here before, no, you don't need Microsoft Windows to develop (near-) native applications for Windows Mobile. You can do so with Mono on Linux (or FreeBSD, or Mac OS X...) by copying the .NET Compact Framework DLLs off of the WM device and pointing the Mono compiler to them.
Music

Will People Really Boycott Apple Over DRM? 664

Posted by kdawson from the for-tuppence-and-a-pretty-interface dept.
Ian Lamont writes "DefectiveByDesign.org is waging a battle against DRM with a 35-day campaign targeting various hardware and software products from Microsoft, Nintendo, and others. On day 11 it blasted iTunes for continuing to use DRM-encumbered music, games, TV shows, movies, audiobooks, and apps with DRM, while competitors are selling music without restrictions. DefectiveByDesign calls on readers to include 'iTunes gift cards and purchases in your boycott of all Apple products' to 'help drive change.' However, there's a big problem with this call to arms: most people simply don't care about iTunes DRM. Quoting: 'The average user is more than willing to pay more money for hobbled music because of user interface, ease of use, and marketing. ... Apple regularly features exclusive live sets from popular artists, while Amazon treats its digital media sales as one more commodity being sold.' What's your take on the DRM schemes used by Apple and other companies? Is a boycott called for, and can it be effective?"
Games

What Are The Best Free Games Online? 389

Posted by Zonk from the big-fan-of-line-rider dept.
almostdead writes "CNET has just put up a story about what it thinks are the best online flash games of all time. These include titles like Line Rider, Bejeweled, Desktop Tower Defense and Portal, all of which I enjoy playing a lot. But my thirst for free games is peaking at the moment, probably due to an incredibly boring job and lack of imagination. Can you suggest any more good free games online?" Two words: Puzzle Pirates.

OS X Leopard Ships On October 26th 762

Posted by Zonk from the big-cat-in-my-laptop dept.
David in AZ writes "According to the Apple website, Mac OS X Leopard will start shipping on October 26! From their blurb: 'Packed with more than 300 new features, Mac OS X Leopard goes on sale Friday, October 26, at 6:00 p.m. at Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, Apple announced today. And, beginning today, customers can place pre-orders on Apple's online store. "Leopard, the sixth major release of Mac OS X, is the best upgrade we've ever released," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "And everyone gets the 'Ultimate' version, packed with all the new innovative features, for just $129.""
Programming

GCC Compiler Finally Supplanted by PCC? 546

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the all-good-things-must-end dept.
Sunnz writes "The leaner, lighter, faster, and most importantly, BSD Licensed, Compiler PCC has been imported into OpenBSD's CVS and NetBSD's pkgsrc. The compiler is based on the original Portable C Compiler by S. C. Johnson, written in the late 70's. Even though much of the compiler has been rewritten, some of the basics still remain. It is currently not bug-free, but it compiles on x86 platform, and work is being done on it to take on GCC's job."
Data Storage

The Many Paths To Data Corruption 121

Posted by Zonk from the luke-alan-cox-is-your-guru dept.
Runnin'Scared writes "Linux guru Alan Cox has a writeup on KernelTrap in which he talks about all the possible ways for data to get corrupted when being written to or read from a hard disk drive. This includes much of the information applicable to all operating systems. He prefaces his comments noting that the details are entirely device specific, then dives right into a fascinating and somewhat disturbing path tracing data from the drive, through the cable, into the bus, main memory and CPU cache. He also discusses the transfer of data via TCP and cautions, 'unfortunately lots of high performance people use checksum offload which removes much of the end to end protection and leads to problems with iffy cards and the like. This is well studied and known to be very problematic but in the market speed sells not correctness.'"
Spam

Ameritrade Security Audit Finds Privacy-Busting Back Door 111

Posted by Zonk from the dang-canned-pork dept.
RalphTheWonderLlama writes "In recent months, online stock brokers have apparently been upset by the sale of their email addresses to spammers. Today TD Ameritrade released details of their investigation into the matter (along with a video message from the CEO and special FAQ). It seems some 'unauthorized code' had exposed client email addresses and possibly other sensitive information from an internal database. 'TD Ameritrade tracked down the break-in while doing an internal investigation into stock-related spam. The company called in forensic investigators and they discovered "unauthorized code" in their system that provided access for the hacker or hackers. According to the advisory, the code has been eliminated from the system. Moglia, speaking in an online video-taped message to customers, said he is "confident" that they have figured out how the information was taken.'"

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