Posts by Franklin

Apple sues three more over power adapter 'knock-offs'

Quick lesson on American patent law

The patent in question is a design patent, not a utility patent.

A utility patent is what people normally think of when they think of the word "patent"--a patent on some sort of gizmo that someone has invented.

A design patent is a patent awarded on the characteristic appearance of an object, where such design or appearance does not serve a function other than aesthetics. You can get a design patent on anything, provided that its appearance is sufficiently unique. Dizzy Gillespie had a design patent on his iconic bent trumpet.

Apple has not patented the idea of a power adapter. This patent is on the shape and configuration of the power adapter, that's all.

iTunes hack used to fiddle App Store ratings

So round about seven or eight weeks ago...

...I started getting a spate of spam emails with subject lines like "You Have Received a $50 iTunes Gift Certificate!" and "iTunes Account Gift Certificate enclosed." They all contained, naturally enough, an .exe file attachment, which for obvious reasons I didn't try to run.

Anyone want to take any bets as to whether or not the .exe would have asked me for an iTunes account name and password (to "apply" the gift certificate, natch) and whether or not any account names and passwords I dutifully typed in would be sent to Vietnamese hackers?

ThinkGeek trembles before Pork Board's pork sword

Not a copyright issue

This is a common place where people get confused.

In the US, parody is specifically protected under copyright law. However, trademark law is a very, very different matter. Trademark and copyright are not related to each other (trademark is actually a subset of patent law).

Here in the States, there is absolutely no protection from trademark infringement for parody. Furthermore, owners of trademark have no choice about pursuing infringement. Under US trademark law, if I own a trademark and I DON'T pursue someone who infringes it--even if the infringement is trivial or silly--I lose my trademark.

Companies don't like going after this sort of thing. It's a waste of money, time, and resources, and it subjects them to ridicule from people who don't understand trademark law. But they have to. If they don't, they lose their trademark. Stupid as it is, that's the way the law is written.

Apple lifts iPhone code ban (for chosen few)

A title is required

Microsoft was hung, drawn, and quartered because under US law, it is not illegal to be a monopoly, but it IS illegal to leverage a monopoly position in one market in order to dominate a different market.

Many folks don't understand the law, and believe that a company is not allowed to have a monopoly position. That's not true; it only becomes a problem when the company seeks to exploit their monopoly status in different markets.

For example, Standard Oil used to ship so much of their oil by rail that they were able to dictate to the rail shipping companies how much they could charge for shipping competitors' products, and even for shipping cargo that had nothing to do with oil at all. Since Standard Oil was by far the rail shipper's biggest company, they were able to leverage their near-monopoly in oil into a near-monopoly into real shipping as well. (At one point, they were even making a tariff on oil shipped by other companies.)

Similarly, Internet Explorer's bundling with Windows was an attempt to extend a monopoly in one arena (desktop operating systems) into a monopoly in a different arena (Web browsing, and ultimately Web development, since people tend to code to the dominant browsers). That's why they got drawn and quartered.

If Apple had a monopoly on cell phones, and then tried to extend that monopoly into, say, game console development, by somehow using their cell phone monopoly to, I don't know, force Sony to rewrite their terms for PS3 development, then they'd be doing something similar.

Fanbois howl over 'hang a lot' Safari 5

No problems here...

...though two popular Safari addons, Saft and PuthHelmet, don't work with Safari 5. If you use 'em, you gotta disable 'em.

Ballmer says Windows will shame iPad

Are we talking about the same Steve Ballmer?

The same Steve Ballmer who said "the iPhone is a loser"?

Oh, right. Nothing to see here, then. Carry on!

Mac spyware infiltrates popular download sites

Fascinating

Outside of religion and politics, it's hard to imagine any subject that people get more emotionally upset about. You'd think that people's self-worth was staked out on the issue of what computer they use. It's weird, and more than a little sad.

On the topic of Apple malware: Of course it exists. It has existed for a very long time. Both the Apple fanbois and the neurotic haterz are partly right; OS X is inherently more secure, and a harder malware target, than Windows, and it's also a less appetizing target in terms of sheer numbers.

This malware, like other Mac malware, is exploiting the largest security hole in any operating system: the user's brain. As with other malware, it is ineffective and can not spread unless it is intentionally downloaded and intentionally installed with an administration password.

That is not a reflection on the security of the operating system, or lack thereof; if I can persuade a person to intentionally download a bit of software and intentionally give that bit of software administration privileges, I will pwn the box no matter what it's running. Linux, Windows, Solaris, BSD, makes no difference. The neurotic haterz who clamor "See! See! See! This is proof that OS X is exactly as insecure as Windows! See! See! See!" are just flat-out wrong.

And, yes, there are fewer OS X installs than Windows installs, so if a vulnerability appears in either OS X or Windows and would take roughly the same amount of effort to exploit on either platform, most malware writers who are in it for the money are going to go for the fatter target. This isn't rocket science, and the fanbois who say market share is totally irrelevant are as deluded as the neurotic haterz who claim there's no difference at all in the security profile of Windows and OS X.

Captain Cyborg sidekick implants virus-infected chip

Naah

You don't even have to slice your hand open with a scalpel. Just copy the malware onto a micro SD card and eat it. Same net effect with a lot less slicing.

Probably a lot less media coverage, too. If this joker had said "I just put a virus on this RFID tag and ate it," I wonder if he'd be getting any column inches.

NASA telescope gazes into heart and soul of universe

Now all they need to do...

...is search for dark stellar-mass objects radiating in deep infrared, which would be a good indication that someone somewhere has been spending some time building Dyson spheres.

Google hails Pac-Man with retro gaming homepage

And I can't help but notice...

They did it all without Flash.

Adobe declares 'LOVE' for Apple

We love all platforms--some more than others

"At Adobe, we believe that the open flow of creativity, ideas, and information should be limited only by the imagination," the site says.

It then goes on to say "What we don't love, however, is fixing gaping security holes in our products, conducting internal security audits of our code, or making our code run on Linux without crashing."

Or at least it should.

I'd be behind Adobe 100% in this little war were it not for the tiny but nevertheless still important fact that Flash is total, utter crap, and has been crap for years, and Adobe doesn't appear to be interested in making it be anything other than crap.

Viagra spam shop live on Twitter for a month

"They are not even hiding the fact, thus are NOT breaking the TOS."

You might want to re-read the Terms of Service; I see two areas they are violating just off the top of my head.

Section 7 of the Terms of Service, "Restrictions on Content and Use of the Services," has a sentence reading "Please review the Twitter Rules (which are part of these Terms)". The Twitter Rules have two prohibitions which are directly on=point:

"Unlawful Use: You may not use our service for any unlawful purposes or for promotion of illegal activities. International users agree to comply with all local laws regarding online conduct and acceptable content." In almost all jurisdictions, purchasing prescription drugs without a prescription is unlawful.

"Spam: You may not use the Twitter service for the purpose of spamming anyone. [...] Some of the factors that we take into account when determining what conduct is considered to be spamming are: If your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates;... Your account may be suspended for Terms of Service violations if any of the above is true. " The account in question consists of nothing but links.

You may support the right of people everywhere to advertise phony products as prescription drugs, or the right of consumers to purchase phony products from organized crime, but claiming this is permitted by Twitter's Terms of Service demonstrates to me that you have not, in fact, actually read those Terms of Service.

"Its not spam unless they message you directly with links. "

Incorrect. For the definition of 'spam' as used by Twitter, see

http://help.twitter.com/forums/26257/entries/18311

Cops raid Gizmodo editor in pursuit of iPhone 4G 'felony'

Didn't call Apple.

Nope, he didn't call Apple; the person he bought it from did. Apple's front-line phone staff didn't know what to do about it, so the person who found it sold it to Chen.

The problem is that California makes buying found property a crime. Add to that the fact that Chen knew who the owner was, and, well...

Um...actually, it does.

"Carelessness on your part does not constitute a felony and "stolen" claims on another person."

Actually, in this case, it does. The whole thing took place in California. Under California state law, § 2080 - 2082, keeping, buying, or selling found property is in fact a crime.

Novell (not SCO) owns UNIX, says jury

Title

My bet on when they'll die? Somewhere just before the heat death of the universe.

That is, if they don't claim a patent on entropy in an attempt to get a judge to postpone said heat death until after the litigation is concluded.

US 'Anubis' stealth assassin robo-missile nearly ready

Actually...

...closer to the roboassassination missile in the less popular movie Xchange, I think. The Runaway weapon was fired from a pistol, and had very limited range and no loiter capability. The weapon in Xchange could be fired from many miles away and loiter for a day or longer searching for its target.

Always interesting to see DARPA trying to keep up with sci-fi B movies...

Forgot your ThinkPad password? Get new hardware

Poor analogy

If you lock your keys in your car, AAA won't fix the problem for free--but neither will they require you to replace the engine and transmission.

Yes, yes, I get that it's an emotional response; having contempt for "stupid" users makes you feel better about yourself. I've worked in IT for years; I know how this game is played. But let's not fall into the trap of false dichotomy while we're being all self-congratulatory! The fact that Lenovo is willing to fix the problem for $400 shows that it isn't about security. If it were, they wouldn't do it at any price. The fact that they are willing to fix it for $400 shows that they will, in fact, fix it. They simply ought to charge less, that's all.

But then it wouldn't punish people enough, would it? Which is really what this is all about. To Lenovo, it's about profit; to Lenovo's supporters, it's about delighting st the thought of "stupid" people suffering. It's not actually about security to anyone.

MS uses court order to take out Waledac botnet

Focusing on the wrong thing

Hey, I like a good solid round of Microsoft thrashing as much as the next guy, and don't get me wrong, I think Microsoft's approach to security is a bit like putting a high-security Medeco lock on a glass door, but...

If I become the king of the world and start calling the shots, one of the things I'd do is to make ISPs more responsible for handling their share of the problem.

It'd go a long way if ISPs, rather than simply pulling the plug on malware sites and being done with it, were required to freeze the contents of such sites and drop an email to law enforcement. Not asking them to do any more than that--just click a few buttons--and I realize that a lot of the sites (and malcreants) are outside the range of Western law, but it'd help.

Laws making ISPs financially responsible for knowingly hosting malware, with the presence of at least one complaint email to the ISP's abuse@ address constituting prima facie evidence of knowingly hosting malware, would remove the financial incentive to host such malware. It's surprising how many ISPs, even right here in the US, will respond to "you are hosting virus downloaders" with "yeah, so?"

The C&C traffic for many botnets is well understood. ISPs can do filtering and deep packet inspection to look for P2P traffic but they can't do anything about botnet command and control traffic? You hear that sound? It's the sound of the world's smallest fiddle playing in sympathy for the poor overburdened ISPs that have plenty of time to play lap dog for the RIAA by searching for college kids downloading the latest Metallica track but can't do anything about large-scale organized crime activity on their networks.

This kind of crime is economic crime. There are a surprisingly large number of ISPs, many of them located in the US, that benefit economically in direct and indirect ways by facilitating that crime. A bit of economic liability would probably do a lot to make the problem evaporate.

Is it art or is it pr0n? Australia decides it's ALL filth

Self-correcting problem

If all nude depictions of children under all circumstances are always pornographic, then I reckon the problem will sort itself out quickly enough. Australia will no longer be able to train or create medical textbooks for pediatricians. Give it a generation or two, wait for the resulting depopulation, send another wave of folks to re-settle the now-barren continent, change the laws. Problem solved!

'Friends with Benefits' sex does no psych harm - profs

Re: Inevitable Title

"The first implies a more-or-less longstanding agreement between two people..."

Perhaps that should read "The first implies a more-or-less longstanding agreement between two or more people..."

Hell, for that matter, even long-standing romantic relationships can happen between more than two people.

McKinnon family 'devastated' by Home Sec's latest knock-back

So when did...

...a 43-year-old become a "young man"?

..."Don't hold me accountable, I have Asperger's" become a get-out-of-jail free card?

...different judicial standerds in the US and the UK become relevant in a case where the defendant has made a full confession?

..."I was looking for flying saucers" become a rationalization for Web site defacement?

I must have missed the memo.

Generators and UPS fail in London datacentre outage

Fortunately...

...not all of Tata's customers were affected. Spammers seemed to have uninterrupted service; got two spam emails this morning and one last night advertising Tata-hosted "make money fast" sites. Good to know that not all their customers had probems!

New analysis points to ancient Martian ocean, river valleys

@AC 18:41

"So what exactly happened to the red planet?"

I'm thinking of creating a Web site where I explain how the same "galactic cycles" that the Mayans wrote about which will spell our doom in 2012 wiped out the Martian civilizations eons ago. I know somebody somewhere will believe it--hell, it might even make it into the papers (anyone know Michael Bay's phone number?)--but I'm not sure if that fact makes me amused or sad.

FDA takes aim at illegal net pharmacies

Grounds to terminate?

"The FDA said the notices sent to service providers and registrars may give them grounds to terminate service to their customers."

The ISPs already have grounds to terminate service; violation of the ISP's Terms of Service. The ISPs can terminate the spammers any time they like; they just choose not to. Spammer money spends just as well as anyone else's.

Boffins 'write directly to memory' of living brains

Well, I for one...

...recall already welcoming our brain-twiddling overlords.

Apple posts iPhone update

Whenever I read reports like this...

...or, more often, comments on reports like this, I always wonder how I end up so lucky.

I must lead some kind of charmed life. I upgrade my iPhone, no problems. I install OS updates for Windows and Mac machines, and while the Internet is filled with tales of woe and disaster, no problems. I dunno why that is; maybe I'm just special.

Or maybe I don't load my systems up with all kinds of crapware from all and sundry. That might have something to do with it.

Anyway, I'm off to install the new iPhone update. Maybe I should play the video lotto while I'm at it; electronic devices seem to like me.

Brute-force attacks target two-year hole in Yahoo! Mail

@tom 7

"Either you have an easy login method and millions of users or a secure login method and couple of hundred."

Methinks you miss the nature of the attack.

Yahoo's front-end logon, the one that users see, IS secure. The insecurity exists in the API, which allows programs and other Web sites to log into a Yahoo account. Fixing this insecurity would not affect people who go to Yahoo's Web page and log in at all.

Sentence cut off

The last sentence of the article appears to have been cut off at the end. Given Yahoo's normal modus operandi, it should probably read:

"Yahoo! takes online security very seriously," a company spokesman said. "We are investigating the situation and will take appropriate action if it turns out to be embarrassing enough to us."

NASA panel: Human spaceflight in 'unsustainable trajectory'

So what they're saying...

...is that for the cost of two weeks' worth of American misadventure in the Middle East, NASA can meet its goals.

Well, then. The solution suggests itself.

Feds break Apple's code of App Store silence

Apple actually doing right?

Now hang on a minute, here...I think so many folks get so caught up in schadenfreude glee any time Apple is deemed to have done something evil that they sometimes miss Google being evil.

Is Apple opaque and strong-armed about the apps it approves? Sure. Is Google evil with the data it collects and stores about all its users? You bet.

In this particular case, if Apple did in fact fail to approve Google's app because Google's app copies the user's contact list without informing the user, hey, I say score one for Apple. I don't know about you guys, but I don't cotton to any app developer copying my data off my phone and onto their servers; especially if I'm not notified and given an option not to let it happen. Who here thinks that's a good idea?

In all honesty, that sounds like a damn good reason to deny approval for an app to me...

Exploding iPhone total rises as Oz officials probe alleged fakes

Just this very morning...

...I got a piece of spam in my inbox advertising iPods for $40 each and iPhone 3GSes for $99 each.

The same email offered me BlackBerry Storms for $100 each, PlayStation 3s for $64 each, and Abercrombie & Fitch polo shirts for $9.17 each.

You mean there are fake goods floating around? Seriously? Shocked, I am. Shocked, at the very suggestion!

Zune exec bails ahead of player's upcoming HD launch

Just looked up while reading this...

...and told my girlfriend "Microsoft Zune sales are falling again."

She said "What's a Zune?"

Says it all, really.

Model-slag blogger sues Google for blowing her cover

God bless the Internet

Where else can you see grown adults behaving like emotionally stunted six-year-olds on crystal meth? If it's not adult women getting involved in lovesick teenage angst, it's this. The nice thing about mass communication is that it lets us vicariously trawl the sewers of other folks' emotional instability from a safe distance.

Be up the pair of 'em like a rat up a drainpipe? No thanks.

Campaign for official Turing apology gathers steam

Not pointless

By the same logic of "the past is done, the people responsible are dead, there is no reason to apologize," we could say "the past is done, the Board of Directors of the corporation that made all those asbestos ceiling tiles are no longer with the company, the current Board of Directors had nothing to do with it, so there is no point in paying damages to the families of the people killed."

When a group of people acting together does something wrong, as long as that entity still exists, that entity is responsible for those things, even if some or all members of the original group quit, retire, die, whatever.

Though, to be honest, I think all us Yanks owe you Brits a debt of gratitude.

You guys really had an opportunity at the end of WWII to create a whole brand-new computer industry; had Alan Turing been given the proper support and funding, it's entirely possible that you guys would have invented modern electronic computers first, and you'd be the economic powerhouse of the world.

But instead you said "Eeek! He's gay!" and fumbled the lead, allowing us over here on this side of the pond to dominate what would become arguably one of the single most important parts of post-industrial society.

It's as if someone invented the first steam engine, and the society he lived in said "He's gay, so let's kill him and not follow up on this technology," and simply handed it off to some other nation.

So as a Yank, thank you. You had an opportunity, you fumbled and passed it to us, and we have benefited enormously from it.

Police, Cameras, Pixellation

Easy solution to the problem

If police officers wear black face masks or ski masks everywhere they go whenever they leave the precinct house, they need not worry about being identified by members of the public!

Yahoo! lavishes $75m on self

While they're at it...

...perhaps they could throw some money my way to help them out of some of their security problems.

I'm up to about 50 spam emails a day that all work the same way: the spammers use automated software to set up phony Yahoo groups, the spammers place a redirector on the Yahoo group's front page, the spammers spam the address fo the Yahoo group instead of their own domain.

For just a tiny percentage of the money they're spending, I could tell them to fix their CAPTCHA and to disallow embedded JavaScript in the description of a Yahoo group. It'd be win-win! I'd make a few bucks, they'd get control of their servers back.

Google mocks Bing and the stuff behind it

@Christopher Ahrens

"The reason it started showing up on Bing is proof that Bing works, it detected a large number of users searching for the item and saw an increase of clicks to the one page and raised the page's ranking in results, as a search engine should."

As a search engine should? That's a TERRIBLE idea, and I sincerely hope Bing doesn't work that way, or it will soon be corrupted into uselessness. Clicks on a link should not affect a page's search engine ranking, for obvious reasons that will be left as an exercise to the reader. (if you need a hint, think of what a simple bot written in a few lines of Perl could do to the rankings of a search for "Viagra".)

Apple fans targeted by smut-punting malware

Does affect Macs

The example that is linked to shows the alert message a person will get if they surf to the fake porn page using Windows and Internet Explorer, but this malware also has a Mac flavor and will attempt to infect people using Mac browsers (including Safari and Firefox).

Anyone on any platform using any Web browser who attempts to "play" one of the promised "movies" will see what looks like a Windows XP Internet Explorer popup window complaining that a new ActiveX control must be installed. The fact that the phony popup looks like an XP dialog window should be a tipoff to Linux, Mac, and Vista users.

In fact, the phony popup "window" is just a graphic, and clicking on it will try to download the malware.

When a user clicks on the phony "dialog" the software on the back end looks at the browser's user-agent strings. If the user-agent string is a Windows browser, it attempts download of a Windows .exe file. If the user-agent string shows a Mac browser, it downloads a file called "QuickTime.dmg" which contains a Mac installer.

If a Mac user downloads the .dmg, then mounts it, then runs the installer, then enters his administration password, then the Mac user will be infected with malware which silently changes the Mac's DNS settings and installs a cron task which will periodically change them again should the user attempt to reset them.

This is nothing new. The Zlob gang has been doing the same thing for over a year; the Mac version of the Zlob malware is occasionally downloaded from nearly identical sites if the site sees a Mac user-agent string.

When ESThosts went dark a while back, the Mac community caught a break; the Mac malware was served up from IP addresses in ESThost's range, and the people responsible for it soon moved the Windows malware downloaders to new servers but it took them quite a while to restore the Mac download servers.

It's a very crude social engineering trick--the phony popup dialogs are designed to look like Windows dialogs, and they talk about installing an ActiveX control. The Mac malware can not install itself (it requires user action and the entry of an administrator password to be installed). It's also not a new trick; the only novel twist is the particular strain of malware being downloaded.

I talked about this at length quite some time ago:

http://tacit.livejournal.com/238112.html?thread=2363168

Webhost hack wipes out data for 100,000 sites

Did he piss off the wrong clients?

Vaserv subsidiary a2b2.net has something of a history of providing IP space for phishes and spam/phish maildrops, and as recently as last week was running a site offering turnkey phish kits from the same IP address that had recently hosted several bank and PayPal phishes:

http://tacit.livejournal.com/297618.html

http://tacit.livejournal.com/297775.html

http://tacit.livejournal.com/299317.html

Wouldn't surprise me one bit to learn that the attack was perpetrated by a current or former customer, somehow.

Carnalpedia: PR possibly premature

I really wanted to like this site

I've done a number of similar projects, such as the Map of Human Sexuality (humansexmap.com), so I thought "a Wiki about sex! Cool!"

Rather disappointing in reality, though. I can think of about five or ten categories, and at least a hundred and fifty entries that are sadly lacking (not even including autogynephilia, which is a new one on me).

I'm actually tempted, for the first time ever, to become a Wikifiddler meself...

(And AC, people who like dacryphilia--which is a fetish one of my girlfriends has, just for the record--don't have to avoid weddings. Like all fetishes, context is everything. Even a masochist doesn't like stubbing his toe...)

Yahoo! shuts! failed! social! networking! site!!

Unpopular?

Come now, that's a very harsh judgment. Yahoo 360 proved to be *extremely* popular...

...with spammers, anyway. who often hosted redirectors to spam sites on Yahoo 360, then spamvertized the redirectors. I've received two such spam emails in the past three hours, in fact, and the day is still young.

Non-beta Google betas may lose beta tags

Liability?

"I am guessing that Google is keeps its products in beta for legal reasons, to avoid legal liability if its products cause problems for users."

Since when has the failure of a piece of software or an online service, regardless of whether it's called "beta," been an issue of legal liability? The EULA for every software I've ever seen pretty much says "If it breaks, then we assume no liability for either piece."

Dutch cat skinner publishes critics' personal details

The real hypocrisy...

....is all the folks who claim this is "disgusting" yet pay no attention whatsoever to the hundreds of thousands of stray and unwanted cats that die every year all around us. Where's the shock and horror for them?

The issue here, seems to me, is that people hear about a pet being made into a handbag and emotionally respond as though their *own* pets were going to be killed. A cat can starve a slow, lingering death in the alleyway ten meters away from them, and the folks crying foul won't blink; I find that very interesting indeed.

Paris loses her BlackBerry in Cannes hotel

Funny...

...I thought the worst thing that could happen was the heat death of the universe. Or, y'know, an asteroid the size of Texas smacking into the planet, or something.

How very wrong I was, apparently.

YouTube flooded with porn

@Sal

"As for some of the comments already posted, how anyone with any degree of intelligence can condone or celebrate the act of showing porn to children, is way beyond my comprehension."

How anyone with any degree of intelligence can let children use YouTube without supervision is beyond my intelligence.

Seriously, how dumb does someone have to be in order to believe that YouTube is a child-friendly space? Seriously? Boggled, I am.

iPhone users to walk and read at same time

@Tony Hoyle

"The iphone camera doesn't do video.. even in 3.0."

But the camera's preview *is* video. It just can't *record* video. So it works quite nicely.

This is actually quite an ingenious idea, and the first tentative step toward an immersive augmented reality. The idea of combining this with Google Maps or Google Street View is brilliant.

I hate to say it, but I think the naysayers here lack...err, vision.

Microsoft blocks dirty dozen apps from mobile store

Competition

This is simply free-market competition at work. Apple did something; Microsoft is competing. That's how the system works.

Apple puts silly restrictions on what you can do with their phones; Microsoft competes by being *more* silly and *more* restrictive. Microsoft is a heavy-handed monopoly; Apple competes by being *more* heavy-handed. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?

Mine's the one with the Palm Pre in the pocket. They're #3; they try even harder!

Lame Mac 'email worm' limps into view

@AC

"People have been saying that for EIGHT YEARS.

Still nuffink."

Well, folks who don't fancy Macs needed SOMETHING to replace the "Apple is about to go out of business" trope that was trendy a few years back...

US prosecutor orders Craigslist 'erotic listings' shutdown

Not just illegal...

...but illegal AND unlawful? Both? Zoinks!

El Reg needs a "rolls eyes" icon.