iPhone syndrome

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I've sent him links to all the Google help documents twice. I'm not driving to Wisconsin to work his phone for him.
 

MaxBurn

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Have him call google support. Oh wait google support is only for their customers (advertisers) right?
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I actually do have a domain for people who are using paid Google Apps there. I just don't want to put him on it. He's a peon who happens to have an iphone, not someone with a business-related reason to want Calendar and Contact sync.
 

MaxBurn

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RETRACTING "MR. DAISEY AND THE APPLE FACTORY"

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/03/retracting-mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory

The China correspondent for the public radio show Marketplace tracked down the interpreter that Daisey hired when he visited Shenzhen China. The interpreter disputed much of what Daisey has been saying on stage and on our show. On this week's episode of This American Life, we will devote the entire hour to detailing the errors in "Mr. Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory."

Daisey lied to me and to This American Life producer Brian Reed during the fact checking we did on the story, before it was broadcast. That doesn't excuse the fact that we never should've put this on the air. In the end, this was our mistake.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Anybody want to put money on how much of that retraction is coming from the kinds of pressure a totalitarian government that places no particular value on human life might put on executives at a manufacturing concern, a bunch of factory workers and a translator?
 

Santilli

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When I was in Hawaii, the former Chinese guy I worked with said something like,
"Watch. It won't happen now, but in awhile, they will disappear."
 

MaxBurn

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mp3
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcast.thisamericanlife.org/podcast/460.mp3

Select quotes from Mike Daisey 36 - 42 act two.
"I wanted to make a monolog to make people care" "It's not journalism, it's theater" "I agree it is not up to the standards of journalism" "I stand by it as a theatrical work, I stand by how it makes people see and care about the situation thats happening there, I stand by and I regret deeply that it was put into this context on your show" "I think you can trust my word in the context of the theater" "I really regret putting the show on this american life and it was wrong for me to misrepresent to you and to Brian that it could be on the show"

They did have some statements from the translator in earlier parts whom I agree could be compromised but as Mike admits this here they are moot.

They go through exactly what they really do know via other sources in act three with specific examples.

New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg
"Let me pose the argument that people have posed to me about why you should feel bad and you can make of it what you will, and that argument is; there were times in this nation when we had harsh working conditions as part of our economic development. We decided as a nation that that was unacceptable. We passed laws in order to prevent those harsh working conditions from ever being inflected on an American workers again and what has happened today is that rather than exporting that standard of life which is within our capacity to do, we have exported harsh working conditions to another nation"

This reflects my thoughts but are we supposed to be exporting the american way or should we be butting out and letting other nations do things as they will? Honestly I don't think we need to be cramming the american way down everyone else's throat across the globe.

Props to TAL for throughly covering the retraction.
 

MaxBurn

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Here's How Law Enforcement Cracks Your iPhone's Security Code

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygre...ment-cracks-your-iphones-security-code-video/

He claims that the company doesn’t use backdoor vulnerabilities in the devices created by the manufacturer, but rather seeks out security flaws in the phone’s software just as jailbreakers do, one reason why half the company’s 75 employees are devoted to research and development.

They crack all phones but this article is heavy on the iPhone so what the hell. Pretty much just like jailbreaking, same vulnerabilities it appears.
 

BingBangBop

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My solution to all forms of Law enforcement issues: Don't do anything that would cause law enforcement to go after you. Then even if they do, it won't matter for there is nothing for them to see or use against you. The real problem with trying to keep law enforcement (or the Govt. in general) at bay by using security techniques is that you are fighting the best funded and most experienced hackers there are. The odds become stacked against you.

A good example of what you are potentially fighting against: Windows NSA key. While it may be claimed that the NSA no longer has a backdoor into more modern Windows OS's they are not going to advertise that they have one. Common sense says they do. The same may be true for any OS and that includes Linux, BSD, IOS, or even Mac's.

You may also think that the NSA is different than the generic "Law enforcement" but in the end they are all just a part of the Govt. and things are shared within. So if you have things you wish to hide from the Govt. just don't. There is no such thing as perfect security. If they want access, access will happen.
 
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timwhit

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How would Linux/BSD contain a backdoor? They are open source and many thousands of people look at the source code on a daily basis. Don't you think one of them would have publicized the backdoor by now?

I guess it could be added by the distributions prior to compilation, but that would mean every distribution would have to be strong armed into adding the NSA patch. Several distros aren't run by US based organizations.
 

BingBangBop

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If there is a backdoor, no one would ever advertise such and even if found the rule is denial, denial, denial. Even today, the NSA denies that it had a backdoor to early Windows products but it is hard to explain the second system key with the label NSAkey. Why would Windows even need a second key?

As to Linux, I don't know but I would think that it would have to be inside the kernel rather than being added as part of a distribution add-on. Being open, I would agree that it would be much harder to hide but I don't exclude the possibility.

I wouldn't rely on the assumption that there isn't a backdoor or that whatever security system exists that there isn't a hack that could gain access.
 

MaxBurn

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Not a big secret to companies. When I was doing some work in bermuda I was across the street from the Bacardi building and we never saw anyone going in or out. I asked about it and they are just there for the minimal presence to get the tax benefit, I didn't realize all the companies in the area are just taking part in the tax haven. I got to see the inside of the millennium house as they were finishing that up nearby, a rare look I have had into how the astoundingly rich live.
 

ddrueding

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Wait, you mean companies will act in a way that maximizes their profits!?!?!? I'm shocked!

If California or the US wants Apple's (or any other company's) tax revenues they can lower their tax rates to more reasonable levels.

Or plug the gaping holes in the code that let a (fundamentally) American company to pull crap like this.
 

Stereodude

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Or plug the gaping holes in the code that let a (fundamentally) American company to pull crap like this.
Good luck with that. They'll simply become a non-American company if you try to put the screws to them. So, if you want to drive companies out of the US and lose jobs that's a great strategy.
 

MaxBurn

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Spotted this morning during morning tea.

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/1684.html

1684.gif
 

Handruin

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"Investigators need to know user’s original Apple ID and password in order to gain access to online backups."

Hmm...same is true for just about everything online. Am I missing something of importance with their news or is there really nothing to report?
 

mubs

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Being the skeptic and privacy freak that I am, I've never believed in storing anything online. The day might come when every OS on every device does it, and I'll go there kicking and fighting till my last breath.

Just look at how the so called gold-standard guys get hacked - credit card processors.
 

MaxBurn

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A better question is, why isn't that stuff encrypted by default?

This is a damn good question because you CAN encrypt the backups on your local machine if you backup via iTunes. What is unclear is if you have the encrypted backup option turned on do the iCloud backups get encrypted? I have never actually tried to restore a device via iCloud backup so I don't know if it asks for the encryption password which for me is different from all other passwords.
 

Handruin

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iCloud backups are encrypted according to Apple. I still fail to see the point of that article. Basically the way I read it was that a user's user ID and password are needed to view online backups. Well wtf, that's like any other service!? :confused: How is that a security risk beyond the norm?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4865

iCloud Security

iCloud secures your content by encrypting it when sent over the Internet, storing it in an encrypted format, and using secure tokens for authentication.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I'd love to see the eldritch, non-Euclidean pixel geometries Apple would have to use to make 1280x720 fit a 4:3 aspect ratio.
 

MaxBurn

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I think iPhone is 3:2 aspect ratio but above I was just pulling numbers out of the air. I just want it bigger to about a 4.3" and not to lose the high dpi. Unfortunately I don't see it happening, again.
 

MaxBurn

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Analyst Says Google Chrome Is Coming to iOS
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/05/15/chrome-ios-apps

I would like to be able to switch default applications.

I think the security component with the nitro engine is fine but it is key that this is one of the things that other browsers are complaining about over on the windows RT platform, that the native app has access to methods not exposed to third parties that makes them faster and creates an "unfair" playground. Good security and an unfair playground I think is ok.
 

MaxBurn

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The main question I see on that is how are they subsidizing part of the phone cost on a prepaid plan? Calculated risk? Unfortunately I think they use sprints network so I'm not really interested. As far as plan terms go they seem really good.
Both versions are available with Cricket's $55 "unlimited" everything plan. This includes talk, text, and data, but of course with a catch based on their fair use policy, which is 2.3GB of data.

Compared to Straight Talk BYOP/SIM only plan with no clearly defined data limit and a variety of things happen to you when you go over some mythical number, including closing your account forfeiting any money remaining on the account and losing your phone number.
 

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Today's iCrap conundrum:

I have been asked to help find a secure data sharing solution for a small group of people. They're about 70% OSX in their office with a Server 2003 machine. They need remote access to a relatively large store of data, around 80GB. The data is mixed-format, not all pictures and MS Office documents. These people want access to their data to be internet-accessible, including the ability to modify the data from their phones and iCraps. Apparently they've all been using Dropbox accounts to keep little subsets of their data on-line, but the cost for a group account is too ridiculous for them to consider ($2000/year?)

If they had all Office-formatted data I might suggest a Sharepoint system. Just setting up a VPN isn't going to help much since iOS doesn't know what to do with shared drives or data unless it's in some sandboxed format. Google has a cloud data service, but the trend in all things Apple seems to be to disallow or replace as many Google services as they can on their devices. I don't think it's highly likely that Google-anything is going to work on iCraps long-term.

Honestly, I don't even want to think about this since no one is paying me to do anything, but I'd be interested to know if anyone has any ideas because to me this sounds like something that smacks right into the wall of everything that's wrong with iOS.
 

Handruin

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At work we've standardized on http://www.zenprise.com/ MDM for iPhones, iPads, Blackberries, and some Androids. Maybe they offer something that would work with the iCrap device you spoke of, but they don't list that as supported.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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The fact that the smallest category of users/devices the Zenprise people offer is 1 - 200 suggests that they're not going to be anything like reasonable or sane for pricing on a 15-user workgroup.
 

time

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Firstly, $2000 is barely going to top a ¼ % of their payroll. That's $11 per month for each user.

Secondly, dropbox is overpriced yet offers minimal functionality. It's okay when it's free.

I would very strongly recommend Soonr if you want to edit documents from mobile devices. You can actually edit documents from an iPad (not sure about an iPhone though) as long as you have internet access. Of course, you can do a lot more with any Android device.

The pricing is still far from free, but at least you get a big chunk of well-thought-out functionality for your money - you really need to trial it to see. Be aware that they have two classes of users: Members and Connections. Members have more capabilities than Connections, eg. mobile device editing, and are priced higher. Even a Connection can still access and edit remotely with a PC though.

Oh yes, and it supports iCrap. ;)
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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As I said, no one is paying me so I don't care all that much. I think the issue is more that people are so used to getting huge game-changing functionality from web services for free and then get sticker shock when they want to use them to do real work. These are the same sorts of people who grouse about $50/user/year for Google Apps or $12/seat for corporate antivirus. But iCrap support is the huge stumbling block for everything that came off the top of my head, and they're more or less telling me they can't work without having that. Which is silly. What did they do for data access before they bought everyone those devices? Apparently their plain old PPTP VPN was fine back then.
 
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