Corvus Crow
The Fireraven
Saturday, 04. July 2009, 16:15
Friday, 03 July 2009
Software George Hotz, who you may recall as the teenage hacker who originally unlocked the iPhone, has let loose a jailbreaking app for the iPhone 3GS code named purplera1n.

Holtz notes that he normally doesn't make tools for the general public and wouldn't rather wait for the iPhone dev team to do that.

John Biggs over at CrunchGear is among those who have already given already given purplera1n a go and declares the jailbreaking process "amazingly simple."
I never understood the despotism Apple tries to keep over their customers. Just give them the hardware and let the market do the rest. Nobody would buy a computer that can only run applications which are brown nosing its manufacturer.
Thursday, 02 July 2009
Software In shipping the software, Acer, Sony, and Lenovo have defied cease and desist letters from US software maker Solid Oak, which claims that Green Dam includes code pirated from its Cybersitter net-filtering tool.

"Not only does it block access to a wide range of web sites based on keywords and image processing, including porn, gaming, gay content, religious sites and political themes, it actively monitors individual computer behavior, such that a wide range of programs including word processing and email can be suddenly terminated if content algorithm detects inappropriate speech."

This is confirmed by Brian Milburn and Solid Oak. If you type certain words related to Falun Gong, for instance, Green Dam shuts down your notepad.
Green Dam was never about blocking porn; that's just the official reason to introduce the total monitoring of citizens and the censorship of unpleasant information. If you look around, that's nothing limited to China. Many other nations do the same, although they use a more narrow reasoning: fighting child porn and terrorism. Everybody knows that it will fail, but if you speak up against it, you are suddenly a child abusing terrorist supporter.
Wednesday, 01 July 2009
Pranks Taiwan consumer regulators have ordered Dell to honor an online pricing error that offered 19-inch LCD monitors for only NT$500 (US$15).

Dell has been ordered to make good on the erroneous price for customers who placed an order on one monitor and offer diminishing discounts on additional monitors ordered.
Although it's a Dell, the price is ok.
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Software Microsoft has been sticking to a strict "No comment" on rumors that a version of the upcoming Windows 7 operating system will be available on a USB memory stick.

Unlike the Vista and Windows XP Starter editions, the Windows 7 Starter will have the ability to run more than three concurrent applications on a PC, boosting the potential productivity of the netbook.
Wow, more than three applications at a time. Now that's real world multitasking. I can't really imagine running it on a USB stick for portability. We're talking about Windows here. The OS that BSODs as soon as you make changes to the hardware.
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Filesharing News reached the press today in Sweden - The Pirate Bay might get aquired by Global Gaming Factory X AB.

It's time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody.

I hope everybody will help out in that and realize that this is the best option for all. Don't worry - be happy!
Time to add TPB to the blocklists. After claiming all the time that they fought for freedom and against draconian copyrights, selling out to the industry is a roundhouse kick against its userbase. The GGF already stated that they want "to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content", so in other words, "pay or leave". Using this as a business model for a site like TPB is instant fail. In a few months, there will be an accouncement that, despite superior offerings from the media industry, pirates refuse to pay for the downloads and TPB will have the same level of importance like Napster. Other trackers will now see a massive increase of users migrating off of TPB.
Random quote from Philip Greenspun: Everything that I've learned about computers at MIT I have boiled down into three principles: Unix: You think it won't work, but if you find the right wizard, he can make it work. Macintosh: You think it will work, but it won't. PC/Windows: You think it won't work, and it won't.