Category: Uncategorized
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iPhone Unlocking Secret Revealed
The iPhone unlocking story took its next logical turn this week, with the release of a free iPhone unlocking program. Previously, unlocking required buying a commercial program or following a scary sequence of documented hardware and software tweaks. How this happened is interesting in itself. (Caveat: This is based on the stories I’m hearing; I…
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Intellectual Property and Magicians
Jacob Loshin has an interesting draft paper on intellectual property among magicians. Stage magic is a form of technology, relying on both apparatus and technique to mislead the audience about what is really happening. As in any other technical field, innovations are valuable, and practitioners look for ways to cash in on their inventions. They…
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HR 811 Up For House Vote Tomorrow
H.R. 811, the e-voting bill originally introduced by Rep. Rush Holt, is reportedly up for a vote of the full House of Representatives tomorrow. Passing the bill would be an important step in securing our elections. I have supported H.R. 811 from the beginning, and I am still firmly behind it. I hope it passes…
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New business models in the recording industry
The New York Times Sunday Magazine has a fascinating piece that interviews and discusses Columbia Records’ hiring of Rick Rubin as their new studio chieftain. Rubin has been a well-known music producer (among other things, he orchestrated the famous mash-up of Aerosmith and Run-DMC and worked with Johnny Cash later in his life), and is…
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Debate: Will Spam Get Worse?
This week I participated in Business Week Online’s Debate Room feature, where two people write short essays on opposite sides of a proposition. The proposition: “Regardless of how hard IT experts work to intercept the trillions of junk e-mails that bombard hapless in-boxes, the spammers will find ways to defeat them.” I argued against, concluding…
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Does Apple Object to iPhone Unlocking?
I wrote Monday about efforts to “unlock” the iPhone so it worked on non-AT&T cell networks, and the associated legal and policy issues. AT&T lawyers have aggressively tried to stop unlocking; but Apple has been pretty silent. What position will Apple take? It might seem that Apple has nothing to lose from unlocking, but that’s…
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iPhone Unlocked; Legal Battle Looming?
In the past few days several groups declared victory in the battle to unlock the iPhone – to make the iPhone work on cellular networks other than AT&T’s. New Jersey teenager George Hotz published instructions (starting here) for a geeks-only unlock procedure involving hardware and software tweaks. An anonymous group called iPhoneSimFree reportedly has an…
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Why Was Skype Offline?
Last week Skype, the popular, free Net telephony service, was unavailable for a day or two due to technical problems. Failures of big systems are always interesting and this is no exception. We have only limited information about what went wrong. Skype said very little at first but is now opening up a little. Based…
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OLPC Review Followup
Last week’s review of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) machine by twelve-year-old “SG” was one of our most-commented-upon posts ever. Today I want to follow up on a few items. First, the machine I got for SG was the B2 (Beta 2) version of the OLPC system, which is not the latest. Folks from…
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One Laptop Per Child, Reviewed by 12-Year-Old
[I recently got my hands on one of the One Laptop Per Child machines. I found the perfect person to review the machine. Today’s guest blogger, SG, is twelve years old and is the child of a close friend. I lent the laptop to SG and asked SG to write a review, which appears here…