* Posts by Blain Hamon

336 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Apr 2007

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Can Windows Phone 7 gain momentum with all eyes on Apple?

Blain Hamon
Coat

But, but, but

I'm just waiting for the Microsoft Surface to truly take the world by storm!

Right. Mine's the one with the huge table in the pocket.

Ballmer says Windows will shame iPad

Blain Hamon
Big Brother

Google icon

We already have a Google icon. It's between the terminator icon and the penguin icon. Looks like this one here.

It is rather easy for a company to give out loss leaders if they have a monopoly elsewhere. Like MSFT can have an operating loss for the XBox. Or Google can have an operating loss for everything that isn't advertising.

Google readies 'late fall' Chrome OS release

Blain Hamon
Big Brother

Is it me,

or did this announcement sound particularly Microsoftian in how much vaporware is being waved about? I know all companies do it to some degree, but maybe we need a 'jumping the shark' icon in the list.

Mac spyware infiltrates popular download sites

Blain Hamon
Boffin

Random letters and numbers

As of this posting, the malware is no longer listed on either Version Tracker or Softpedia, but is still on MacUpdate. What's more, apple.com/downloads itself has two 7art screensavers (I sent feedback to Apple pointing this out).

This hasn't been the first Mac malware, but it may be the first in a long while to successfully be indirectly distributed by reputable names. What happens next will be very interesting, in terms of security on the Mac.

Snails on crystal meth: The facts

Blain Hamon
Flame

Aw, how cute.

The idea that what you discover will always be what you're researching. He thinks science works that way.

Especially amusing when you consider that radiation therapy, which is used to cure some cancers, was made possible because of some guy in Scotland was trying to recreate pretty rainbows on clouds, something even more loony than snails on drugs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Nevis#Observatory

While snails on drugs might be more likely to lead to a cure for Alzheimer's, it's also possible that they're on the path to curing cancer, and not even aware of it.

Atlantis spacewalkers snapped through shuttle windows

Blain Hamon
Boffin

Urban Legend is right

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

Short version: Fisher made the pens on his own without one red cent from the US, and sold them to NASA at a reasonable $2.95/pen. Russia also used the Fisher space pens. You can still buy Fisher pens, for more than $2.95.

http://www.spacepen.com/

As to why a mechanical pencil now, I figure that the space shuttle has less exposed wiring than the Apollo pods, and certainly don't use the near-100% oxygen atmosphere (Or else there'd be no aluminum, either). And I don't think the Fisher pens used erasable ink.

Britons: iPhone eighth most important invention — ever

Blain Hamon
Coat

Wait, what?

You mean to tell me that the greatest invention of all time, Duck/Duct Tape, wasn't even top 10, much less 100? Do these people ever try to repair anything?

Opera for iPhone: The review

Blain Hamon
Headmaster

guess-ti-mate. Noun or transitive verb.

an estimate usually made without adequate information

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/guesstimate

Or, if you insist on proper British english,

an estimate based on a mixture of guesswork and calculation.

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/guesstimate?view=uk

iPad anti-virus shield guards against phantom threat

Blain Hamon
Headmaster

Malware, not virus

There are known malware strains, but you really have to search for them, and they're quite unsuccessful. Note the use of the term malware, not virus. This covers things like trojan horses, like the malware that claimed to be a video codec, or modified cracked versions of iWork floating about on p2p a while back. Yeah, it's a lame stretch and a little sensationalistic, but technically correct.

The nice thing is that they're not claiming to need the iPhone to be blown open like F-secure was. Instead, they did it in a way that if/when iPhone OS does need virus checking, is the right way to go: Offload the scan to the desktop computer, one that doesn't have sandboxing but won't run iPhone binaries and does have the RAM/CPU to search, and even has access to backups and the means to ghost the iPhone completely to a known good sate.

iPad CPU yields up (some) secrets to x-ray scan

Blain Hamon
Paris Hilton

Title title title

Anyone know what those dots really are? Are they the solder balls mentioned by iFixIt, or are those the pins underneath the package? I'm guessing the former.

iPad security broken in less than 24 hours

Blain Hamon
Boffin

Minor point

While I have to agree it's not trivial, it's doable to a degree. There are several web browsers for iPhone available, admittedly using Apple's webkit under the hood. And the ability to set the set the user agent in an HTTP request is documented. So in theory, a web browser would be able to spoof the user agent and make it to the app store or may already be there.

Of course, if you're using an HTTP proxy in the middle, this is all moot as the HTTP proxy could change the user agent regardless of the final device.

Developers turn sour on Apple iPad

Blain Hamon
Boffin

Hack toolkit engineer here

I've been working on getting 1.2 out the door, so I didn't even know of the survey. It's actually at

http://www.appcelerator.com/mobile-developer-survey/

if you're interested, but I'm guessing not. Anyways, the sample was taken from people using Titanium, so anyone abandoning Titanium wouldn't be part of the survey and it's probably likely that they'd not significantly affect the iPad numbers either way. I honestly don't know if they contacted the same people that they did in January.

iPad apps flood Apple's App Store

Blain Hamon
Welcome

Apple's gun-jumping reason #4

Given that you can buy iPhone apps without even having an iPhone, this lets people buy the apps a few days in advance. Thus, the servers aren't as hammered come Saturday and it'll boost the number of ipad app sales Apple will undoubtedly crow about.

I, for one, welcome our pre-selling gun-jumping overlords.

Germany warns surfers against Firefox

Blain Hamon
Welcome

Hah! I'm safe!

They called me mad when I held onto my copy of Lynx! Mad, I tell you!

Cybercrime's bulletproof hosting exposed

Blain Hamon
Pirate

The problem with being a good guy is that you have to be good

I actually got to speak with one of the white hats, and they did mull over the whole, 'take over botnet, make it clean itself' idea. The problem is, as tempting as it is, removing a bot, even if it means a simple restart, puts them in the crosshairs of any lawsuit if things go wrong (And knowing how even tested patches can go haywire, they WILL go wrong). This was made even worse by the fact that some of the botnet zombies were hospital computers or other important systems. The only thing they could really legally do was to try to contact the already negligent companies, and hope they fix things.

So where are the vigilantes? Well, they're gritting their teeth, smart enough to realize that the botnets are holding hostages.

Apple's draconian developer docs revealed

Blain Hamon

Free only if your time is worth nothing

I never said refund. I said liability. If you use software, and a vuln in it causes damage to your business, the GPL license means you're SOL in terms of recompense, and there's no way to get the author of the code to fix the bug or even give you the time of day (Exceptions being a contract with Red Hat, but the contract isn't free, natch).

Is the license too restrictive? In my opinion, yes it is too restrictive in spots, but not too restrictive for me to outweigh the benefits.

My point is the parts that I do find restrictive are neither the limitation of liability nor the no-reverse-engineering clauses. And that the EFF could have spent its time better focusing on things that aren't run-of-the-mill legal boilerplate.

Blain Hamon
Paris Hilton

American company does american company things. film at 11.

Yes, the part of the agreement that's lifted from FIght Club is daft on Apple's part, but the most horrific crimes are actually pretty common boilerplate.

Nintendo does the same "No reverse-engineering" clause for its hardware, as do many software companies.

And really, Apple's $50 limitation of liability is $50 more than the GPL gives you, which doesn't even admit to enough liability for a happy meal.

Android - the winning formula for tablets and netbooks?

Blain Hamon
Paris Hilton

It's the UI, stupid!

Remember the iPhone commercials? What really drummed up the hype? No specs, no checkboxes, no talk about openness, just, "Here's the iPhone. This is how you use it. See how it's so smooth and cures cancer with easy-to-understand pinch-and-zoom gestures."

Android still has miles to go in terms of UI look and more importantly, consistency. I use a G1 for reasons of carrier, and Android's inconsistency still bothers me a lot. Overloading the back button and having inconsistent placement of 'send/return' for the onscreen keyboard for example.

MeeGo, from what I can see, isn't even addressing UI. I've combed their website, and have yet to see a screenshot, Human-Interaction-Guidelines, or much beyond a few structural diagrams and 'Go to our IRC channel and Mailing List!'.

Paris knows the importance of good user interface.

Smartphone app botnet experiment blows up a storm

Blain Hamon
Happy

Happy, happy

Who said it couldn't make an artificial monopoly AND promote security at the same time?

Regarding Apple's App store, you do have to provide a slew of information to Apple if you're either 1) registering as a company or 2) want to charge for an app or in-app purchases. So they know where to send the cops if need be. True, true, there is identity theft, but it's still more protection than random web links.

Then there is the little-discussed but not-yet used remote killswitch, in that the phone does check a blacklist, in case some malware did pop up. It's worth noting that the killswitch hasn't been activated at all so far, not even against things like cydia, tethering apps, wifi-apps, etc.

So when malware happens, the cops have a trail to follow, and Apple can remove it from phones faster than any virus scanner could.

Open source webdesktopmobile kit refreshes for iPhone, Android

Blain Hamon

We're working on it!

I know Jeff was working on http://developer.appcelerator.com/documentation until the wee hours of the night/morning, and Nolan's been working on a book version.

For better or worse, the Kitchen Sink project is often the best source of 'here's how to do it' sample code currently.

Gmail Labs' experiments: What's in, what's out?

Blain Hamon
Boffin

Hooray for fixed-width!

> The only place I've ever seen it be useful is in programming languages

And guess what can be commonly discussed in email mailing lists!

Not only that, but well, where else can we have ascii art?

iPad and smartphone rootkits demo'd by boffins

Blain Hamon
Grenade

Someone hasn't heard of Google

http://www.google.com/search?q=symbian+rootkit

Not only are there rootkits, trojans, and virus, but there's even anti-virus for Symbian dating back to 2006 or before.

Security by obscurity doesn't work. Not on Linux, not on Symbian, not on iPhone, not on Windows Mobile (or whatever they're calling it this week).

Computer Engineer Barbie coming soon to a toy store near you

Blain Hamon
Coat

To be honest, it IS Mattel.

I doubt SWE had much say in the matter after the Barbie people stepped in and decided to pink everything up. It's the same plastic doll wearing the same plastic smile and the same 50s-era eyeshadow with the same unrealistic body proportions.

At first, I thought, given the sort of shirts that Think Geek and the like have, you could do some actual tie-ins. You know, maybe have a shirt that has a big Autobot or Decepticon logo. But no, those are Hasbro. Maybe 'Sorry, but your princess is in another castle', but that's Nintendo. Me wife suggested "Natural 20", but that's TSR. So I look to see what things Mattel DOES make. Barbie, Hot Wheels, that's pretty much it.

Actually, Mattel also owns He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. She could have had a tattered shirt that said 'She-Ra' but given Barbie's shape, maybe Skeletor would be more appropriate.

Mine's the one with Man-At-Arms in the pocket.

Blain Hamon
Headmaster

Real engineers build engines?

So, um, why do you say she doesn't have said engineering degree? Or is Dentist barbie practicing without a license as well?

I will note, despite having said magic slip of paper myself, an engineering degree is a poor judge of someone's programming ability. And pointing out that the term engineer has been diluted only reminds us of nascent and immature computing, as a whole, is.

PayPal suspends India service

Blain Hamon
Go

Make sure you have a backup, asap

http://blog.apparentsoft.com/business/124/is-paypal-good-for-your-microisv-business-a-short-paypal-horror-story/

If nothing else, have a second account with a different processor, one that has no recurring fees, so that when (not if, when) paypal screws you, you can switch and keep the cash flow (more or less) while you try your best to get unscrewed.

As for something better, I know that kagi is popular among indie Mac software makers. Paypal has lower fees, but much higher risk.

iPad runs Windows, Nokia runs OSX

Blain Hamon
FAIL

Not even running at native resolution

The pixel doubling is masked by scaling down the image, but the 1x button tells all: They're running a VNC for the iPod Touch in the iPad emulator. Oooh, stop the presses.

The Nokia story is much more impressive.

Apple tablet wins open source Appceleration

Blain Hamon
Coat

I asked, but...

(The company's called Appcelerator, the product's called Titanium and we're too small to have departments)

They mentioned that they had a sarcastic technicality protection clause in place. In the event that Apple introduces a new line of iPod Socks instead, they'll declare the Newton a tablet, and we'll support that. I've already started brushing up on the Dylan language and AppleTalk communication, just in case.

(Mine's the one with egg freckles in the pocket)

Blain Hamon
Heart

Minor update

I talked with Martin. The MSI installer (And uninstaller) did make it into desktop version 0.8, which was released last week, so there you go.

If you're still there, mister AC, what, exactly, did you want to build? If you haven't been able to find a solution elsewhere, maybe I could still be of help. The documentation is in need of updating, but maybe I could direct you to some helpful pages.

Blain Hamon
Heart

Plague here, pleased to meet you!

(I'm one of the blokes who works on the iPhone version of the Titanium engine.)

Most of the Appcelerator team uses Mac OS or Linux, where uninstallers aren't needed, and the installer was made with cross-platform codebase in mind. Martin's been working on native installers (MSI, PKG, etc) but I don't remember if it made the latest version. I figure the uninstaller on Windows should show up by the time we hit 1.0 or so.

So what did it not do for you? iPhone development does require Mac OS 10.5 or later, since it uses the native iPhone SDK. You will need to use your own text editor, since we're focusing on the actual making-the-app instead of reinventing the text editor, but any good dev already has a favorite.

If you're still having trouble with programming, take a look at

http://www.appcelerator.com/community/titanium-quick-start/

If you still don't trust our code, go ahead and download it all at

http://github.com/appcelerator/

and you can inspect and build it yourself. (It's written in C, C++, and Objective-C for Mac/iPhone)

Anything else you need?

Teen attacks father in Fifa 2009 fight

Blain Hamon
Coat

Violent games?

“We bought him FIFA 2009 because we didn't want him playing violent games."

Because we all know how there's been riots started by God of War fans, and we all remember when Zidane headbutted Materazzi while playing Bioshock.

Mine's the one with the red card in the pocket.

Clinton throws down the gauntlet to China over Google

Blain Hamon
Paris Hilton

I was about to say...

Save for diplomatic posturing (which it assuredly is), what's the point of asking China to investigate?

Assuming they were behind it, they'll just claim it was by some rogue tibetans or something, forge up some evidence, and use it as an excuse to do even more of their usual hijinks. And if they weren't behind it, there's little discernible way to differentiate between the previous possibility.

Microsoft Office 2007 retailers dodge patent injunction

Blain Hamon
Troll

Psst

A little bit of advice from a Mac fanboy: never use the term "M$". It's unnecessary, detracts from the point, and really destroys any credibility of the argument.

Also, we're well aware that OpenOffice exists. But you mention the same reason I don't mention iWork here: Readers won't be looking for something that 'sorta works' but doesn't match 100%. The trick is to point out that not even MSFT (See what I did there? Using the stock ticker name is nice and neutral) Office matches itself 100%.

So if you must troll, try something like the line below. No, it might not be fully true, but it works for FUD.

"So does this mean that Office 2007 won't even be able to read Office 2007 files?"

Google releases Nexus One SDK

Blain Hamon
Headmaster

SDK. Software Development Kit. Noun

An SDK is the tools, software libraries, header files, compilers, and other parts needed to make a program on the SDK's target. Documentation, sample code, and other such help can also be considered part of the SDK.

'Steve Jobs' repeals AT&T iPhone prank

Blain Hamon
Pint

What, what?

"provides critical communications services for more than 80 million customers"

You're kidding me. People actually consider AT&T fit for purpose while they've got a 1 in 3 phone disconnect rate in New York?

Watchdog mauls Disney woman's breasts

Blain Hamon
Big Brother

What's an ASA?

In the states, were it on TV, during prime time, broadcast, maybe it could be banned, due to the FCC. Online, or on cable, all bets are off.

SF's rogue admin finally gets day in court

Blain Hamon
Unhappy

Sadly,

it appears that that's how lawyers prefer it, so that they win on who can make the most convincing argument, not on who is actually right. It's oft heard that the easiest way to get off of jury duty (at least in the States) is to have a college degree, or to actually know law.

AT&T to choke your iPhone

Blain Hamon
Dead Vulture

Needless title

> there are may American websites where we can read things from an American viewpoint

Yeah, but they're nowhere near as fun. At least, not since Crazy Apple Rumors went on hiatus. Mind you, I don't disagree regarding returning to the Brit angle. If anything, this could make for snappier titles.

"AT&T to Yank on Yanks' iPhone Data Yokes."

It could even have the AT&T/Death Star image.

Packard Bell catches burning battery blight

Blain Hamon
WTF?

Wait, what?

Packard Bell is still around? I thought they perished in the late 90s.

(Okay, it was more a wish than a thought, but still)

Microsoft grinches W7 Family Pack in US

Blain Hamon
Alert

Dude, ixnay! Ixnay!

We don't want them to see the light, because that'd mean less for us. And definitely don't mention how neither the standard OSX upgrade nor the OSX family pack uses license keys, since Apple doesn't treat its users like criminals. Now repeat with me, and try not to giggle:

That's right, those macs are way overpriced compared to a comparable PC, because you can buy a high-end Dell (which would actually have specs comparable to a Mac) for the same price that Dell sells those disposable shovelwared desktops! Oh, and you could always just build your own laptop from parts, right! And it's not like the laptops are built more solidly or anything; black plastic is just as strong as aluminum if it's got enough of those Intel Inside stickers on it!

eBay wanted to buy Craigslist, Whitman tells judge

Blain Hamon
Boffin

Honest Answer

For things like jobs and the like, they actually charge. The usual craigslist stuff is a loss leader.

http://www.craigslist.org/about/help/posting_fees

Considering they charge $75 a job posting in SF bay area, for example, and that there's over 400 job postings in that area for just today, I'd imagine it works out really well.

Spyware threat haunts squeaky-clean iPhones

Blain Hamon
Boffin

Almost

1) The address book is unprotected with standard documented APIs. (They're in the ABAddressBook frameworks). Geolocation requires user interaction; there are ways to override this, but this causes a rejection from the app store. Email, however, is protected (With 3.0, you get MFMailComposer, but it doesn't reveal the email account that you send the mail with, much less any passwords) within documented calls.

Web history and the like? I'm interested how he claims to do that through legit calls.

2) In order to install an app from the app store, you have to type in your itunes account password, and the only way to change the account is when hooked up to a computer. In other words, either the perp connects it to their computer in which all bets are off, or they have to know your iTunes acct password, which is almost as unlikely.

3) Apple has two tools in case such a thing happens. One is that they know where you live. If a personal developer, they have enough to process your credit card, right? If a company, you have to provide a LOT of company information to get authorized. Second, as a last ditch nuke, they can push out a killfile that will remove the app. They have yet to do this, as it's overkill for anything but malware.

Physicists assemble world's smallest snowman

Blain Hamon
Grenade

Details, details

Sure! All you have to do is be able to assemble it in blu-tac, and make it a hundredth of a millimeter in size.

Motorola's banana-mutilation ad disses iPhone

Blain Hamon
Headmaster

If you're going to mention the photo, do it right

They're not knocking the CNet shot, they're referring to this specific shot, which even has the people placed in the same position:

http://blog.duncandavidson.com/2009/12/droid-video-recalls-iphone-pho.html

Accused phone thief snared after phone sends pic to victim

Blain Hamon
Paris Hilton

Self Incrimination? There's an App for that!

Just kidding. iSelfIncriminate was rejected from the App Store.

Actually, what phone was used? I doubt it was an iPhone and the articles are silent on it.

Attack exploits just-patched Mac security bug

Blain Hamon
Coffee/keyboard

Wait, what?

People still use Java on web sites? That's for reminding me to turn off that plugin.

Microsoft's Silverlight 4 - Flash developers need not apply

Blain Hamon
Coffee/keyboard

We've been here before

Only with WMV. MSFT came out with a windows media player for the Mac, let it languish, and finally killed it off with third party picking up the slack (See: Flip4Mac). Even if it's not some diabolical scheme, there's business reasons to focus on Windows (See: Adobe Flash CPU performance on Mac, Linux).

I'm sure Silverlight will be installed on every copy of Windows by sheer virtue of bundling/updates/IE. But because of history and the above reasons, even if they did have a decent port, I'd have no desire to see Silverlight on my machine.

Google pockets half of 'unlicensed' news dollars, says study

Blain Hamon
Thumb Down

Words words words

So if blogs are less than 10%, what's the 90%?

If 56% of the sites have less than 125 words in common, what's the minimum words needed to be considered relevant? If I have a news article titled just, 'War!', can I claim that any site that talks about wars be copying my title?

How many of these articles are from a common unlicensed source? IE, company makes press release, newscritter finds release, copypastes it as article. Is the original counted in this survey as an 'unlicensed copy'?

Does anyone else appreciate the irony that FairSyndication's findings are very information-light, full of sound bytes, but little else?

Activision denies Modern Warfare 2 Russian ban

Blain Hamon
Paris Hilton

@ Nick 24

> it endorses the notion that it is OK to randomly and mercilessly kill people under certain circumstances.

But,

> Your cover was blown already, the mob boss kills you (an American) at the end of the spree so that the Americans get blamed for the massacre.

So your direct actions in the game has direct negative consequences. How is that endorsement, again?

Adobe Flash attack vector exploits insecure web design

Blain Hamon

For all 5 of us Mac users...

If you haven't downloaded ClickToFlash, do so. http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/

Hotmail imposes tracking cookies for logout

Blain Hamon
Paris Hilton

So wait...

People still use hotmail?

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