Thursday, July 17, 2008

Byte Into It - 16 Jul 08



Time machine needed to get iPhone? - Boing Boing
Eric Mueller took this photo of an AT&T store on lower Broadway in downtown Manhattan (near Park Place / City Hall) today. Seems the iPhone is "temporally out stock." Perhaps it'll be available last year.

Apple pushes 1 million iPhone 3Gs, 10 million iPhone Apps
Apple announced this morning that it had sold 1 million 3G iPhones over the weekend since the device's launch on Friday. The device launched in 21 countries (France, one of the original 22 countries, is sitting this one out until July 17) to long lines that lasted throughout the weekend, making this the most successful device launch yet—at least in terms of sales. This was all despite significant problems over the weekend, including unresponsive iTunes activation servers, supply issues, and up-and-down MobileMe service.

What kind of iPhone data plan do you really need?
Here's an overview of some common activities, how much data they used, and how long they took. Note that the tests were done with an iPod touch over WiFi, so there will be some differences with cellular data use.

Only 6 percent of iPhone buyers purchasing this summer
In the past two weeks, SRG has asked a total of 1,127 potential iPhone buyers when they were planning on purchasing the device, and only 6 percent said that they would be buying either this month or next month. Around 30 percent of those asked said they weren't sure or would be buying "later". A full 25 percent of those surveyed are planning to buy around Christmas, and roughly the same amount are planning on buying in early 2009.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Fix found for net security flaw
Mr Kaminsky discovered the error in the workings of the Domain Name System (DNS) about six months ago.

DNS is used to convert web addresses written in words - such as www.bbc.com - into the numerical sequences used by computers to route internet traffic around the world.

The flaw revolves around the way that the servers that translate words into numbers handle the requests they get.

Unresolved the flaw would make it simple to operate "phishing" scams, in which users are directed to fake webpages supposedly for genuine banks or businesses and are tricked into disclosing credit card details or other personal data.

Mr Kaminsky talked to Microsoft, Sun and Cisco and many others in March and has been part of a team engaged in secret research since then to develop the security patch which has now been released simultaneously.

"This hasn't been done before and it is a massive undertaking," said Mr Kaminsky.

Despite the scale of the operation few are expected to see any disruption to their web experience as the patch is applied. It is not thought that the flaw had been exploited prior to its discovery.

Technical details are being kept secret for another month to give companies a chance to update their computers, before malicious hackers try to unpick the patch.

Personal computers should pick up the patch through automated updates. Microsoft released its patch on 8 July as part of its regular security cycle.

Apres CAPTCHA, le deluge - Boing Boing
CAPTCHAs -- the technology used to stop spammers from using computers to sign up for email accounts and the like -- are thoroughly broken; spammers and researchers are finding better and better ways to get computers to recognize the word-soup.

Time machine needed to get iPhone? - Boing Boing
Eric Mueller took this photo of an AT&T store on lower Broadway in downtown Manhattan (near Park Place / City Hall) today. Seems the iPhone is "temporally out stock." Perhaps it'll be available last year.

MPAA: actual P2P distribution often "impossible" to prove
Copyright holders shouldn't have to prove that an unauthorized distribution of their work occurred in order to collect damages, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. The group made its argument in an amicus brief filed on Friday to Judge Michael Davis, the judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas trial, after he asked for feedback from the industry before deciding whether to order a mistrial. Both sides realize that the stakes are high and are throwing everything they've got Judge Davis' way.

P2P leecher targeted in Germany for making files available
Evidence used to "prove" P2P users guilty of copyright infringement has been called into question a number of times recently, as the argument about whether "making available" music and movies counts as copyright infringement continues to rage on. In one case across the pond, it turns out that a German user who was targeted for making files available through the eD2K network had actually tweaked his eMule client so that it would not upload any files whatsoever. Telling the world "But I was leeching!" will rarely earn you any sympathy, but might in this case.

Campus copyright battle moves to textbook torrents
The RIAA's extensive campaign against filesharing has drawn in a lot of individuals, but college campuses have remained a major target of the content owners' legal threats. It's pretty clear that there's significant expertise with filesharing on college campuses, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that this expertise has been put to use with other copyrighted materials. Textbook companies are getting worried about the sharing of their bread-and-butter online, and have started a campaign designed to block the sharing at its source.


Friday in San Jose CA: hearing to punish Universal for sending copyright threats to dancing toddler - Boing Boing
If you're in Silicon Valley this week and want to have some legal-type fun, you could drop in on the Lenz v. Universal hearing (dress nice, behave yourself!) in which EFF will be arguing that Universal should be punished for sending a bogus copyright threat to a mom who posted a 29-second youtube of her adorable toddler dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy."

BBC NEWS | Technology | Viacom 'backs off' YouTube demand
Viacom has "backed off" from demands to divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched a video on YouTube, the website has claimed.

Google had been ordered to provide personal details of millions of YouTube users to help Viacom prepare its case on alleged copyright infringement.

Google, owners of YouTube, will now hand over the database but without data that could identify users.

Microsoft tells Congress Yahoogle will own 90% of ad market
A US Senate subcommittee heard testimony today about the competitive implications of Yahoo's recent deal with Google, which will see the company mix ads supplied by Google with its own on search result pages. In addition to two individuals who currently purchase search advertising, the hearings featured testimony from senior executives from the two principals involved in the deal, as well as Microsoft's top lawyer, Brad Smith. Their testimony presented radically different pictures of what constitutes competition in the search market, how this deal will affect that competition, and the ongoing negotiations between Microsoft and Yahoo.

Microsoft: $1 of piracy = $5.50 in "lost opportunities"
Each dollar lost to software piracy equals $5.50 in lost opportunities, claims Microsoft. A new white paper released by IDC and funded by the software giant looks at how copyright infringement affects the software ecosystem as a whole, not just how it affects a single corporation. IDC claims that, if Microsoft were to make back each of those lost dollars, partner companies would gain $4.37 in increased revenues and $1.13 in lower operational costs. That's assuming, however, that the Business Software Alliance's estimated losses due to piracy are correct—an assumption that IDC makes in this report, despite having admitted in the past that the numbers are misleading.

NVIDIA newest patent beatdown target for Rambus
We thought that Rambus' legal saga was finally winding down this year, with the cards largely having fallen in Rambus' favor. A jury in California determined that the company's patenting of DDR technology was not done fraudulently, and the DC Court of Appeals has determined that the FTC did not provide sufficient evidentiary support for its intervention in the RAM market. But instead of winding down, Rambus was apparently just warming up. The IP-only memory company has decided to start looking beyond traditional RAM manufacturing companies for further licensing, and has set its sights on graphics giant NVIDIA.

Apple finally sues unlicensed Macintosh cloner Psystar
Apple's adventures with Mac clones had at best, mixed results, and Steve Jobs quickly ended the program in 1997 after his return as CEO. While a company named Psystar ignored that memo when it decided to release its own unofficial Mac clones earlier this year, there's no way it's going to miss Apple's latest memo, which came in the form of a just-uncovered lawsuit filed earlier this month.

This past April, Psystar made instant waves by announcing a bargain-basement Mac clone for $399 that could run Leopard, the latest version of Apple's Mac OS X. Psystar's PC is an upgradeable tower with a respectable amount of features which, at face value, starts $200 lower than Apple's cheapest—and highly unconfigurable—Mac mini at $599. Despite drawbacks like incompatibility with some Apple software updates, a flood of orders brought the company's site down for days at a time.

Backup Utilities: Five Best Windows Backup Tools
Read on for a closer look at the five best Windows backup tools (according to Lifehacker readers), then give your vote to the application you like best:
- MozyHome does unlimited online backup for just $5 a month. Mozy is a set-it-and-forget-it solution, and the setting up part is incredibly simple. If you're just looking to give it a test run or you don't need unlimited backup, sign up for MozyHome Free, which gives you 2GB of backup space for gratis.
- Cobian Backup is free backup software that supports scheduled local and remote backups. Users love its rich feature set, as Cobian supports nearly every feature of its shareware alternatives. All current versions of Cobian are freeware, but the latest (version 9) is no longer open source
- SyncBack is full-featured backup software available in both freeware and shareware versions. The freeware SyncBack has a few limitations that the shareware version doesn't, like inability to backup open files, but both versions offer extensive features—including backup profiles and options for local and remote backups. The shareware version of SyncBack will set you back $30.
- Acronis True Image creates full live disk images of your PC so that when the time comes that you need to restore a backup, you're not just restoring files—you're restoring an exact copy of your PC as it was. The latest version of Acronis supports excluding individual files and folders from your image or you can set criteria for the data that you want to back up (in case you don't actually want to include everything in your disk image). Acronis True Image costs $50 and a 15 day trial version is available.
- Carbonite is an online backup solution similar to MozyHome. For $50 a year, Carbonite provides unlimited online backup and is another set-it-and-forget-it solution which offers off-site backup to remote servers. The biggest difference between Carbonite and Mozy is the price: Carbonite is $50 per year upfront compared to MozyHome's $5 per month, which adds up to $60 a year but doesn't lock you into a year. Carbonite does not offer a free version like MozyHome Free's 2GBs, but there is a 15-day trial.

Firefox 3: Ctrl+Drag a Tab to Copy It and Its History
When you want to backtrack a few paces in your web surfing clicktrail but not lose the page you're on, in Firefox 3, click on your current tab, hold down the Ctrl key and drag it. This will duplicate the tab and keep its history in the copy—that way you can back out and stay where you are in another tab. Sadly this trick only works in Firefox for Windows, not on the Mac. Don't forget, you can also drag tabs between browser windows in Firefox, too.

Screenshot Captor

Screenshot Captor is a program for taking screenshots on your computer. It's different from other screenshot utils in several notable ways.

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