Category: Earthformed

Why the iOS 7 Activation Lock Is a Disaster Waiting to Happen

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There’s no question that the iPhone 5S and iOS 7 together make for the best phone ever made. The din of offhand, dismissive criticism from the Android fan base that Apple never innovates should be silenced, at least for awhile, given that Apple now sells the only dual-tone LED flash; the only 64-bit mobile CPU; the only 64-bit OS; the fastest touch-screen performance phones by far; the only wide-scale deployment of Multipath TCP; and the only useful, usable and widely used fingerprint scanner ever placed on any consumer electronics device. Yes, there’s plenty of petty grousing . And who knows what competitors will ship tomorrow? But today, it’s clear that Apple rules the smartphone market. The Android fan critics now also have to contend with a razor sharp, concise rebuttal to the cacophony of general criticism of Apple by Apple VP Craig Federighi: “ New is easy. Right is hard. ” He said that after referring to Samsung by saying that Apple “didn’t start opportunistically with 10 bits of technology that we could try to find a use for to add to our features list.” Ouch! Unfortunately, iOS 7 is going to cause some huge problems that nobody is talking about yet, but will do when the unwanted bricking epidemic starts. The Looming Activation Lock Crisis Everybody’s praising iOS 7’s new Activation Lock. And, yes, it’s a great feature. Activation Lock bricks your iPhone or iPad when you report it lost or stolen with Find My iPhone. Once bricked, the device cannot be used by whomever is in possession of it. This is a great deterrent for “Apple Picking” crimes where thieves deliberately look for white earbuds to jack Apple devices based on their high re-sale value. Activation Lock is great, but also introduces new problems. In addition to […]

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Dread Pirate Roberts Illegal Drug Website Siezed by Feds – Gawker.com

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Once upon a time, you could sign on to Silk Road and buy everything from LSD to Moon Rock molly with Bitcoin. That time is now over because the FBI along with a few other federal agencies have seized the domain and shutdown the drug-dealing site. The only question is, what took them so long? Silk Road found its way into popular culture a couple of years ago when Gawker’s Adrian Chen a big exposée on "the site where you can buy any drug imaginable." Chen made the point that it wasn’t just illegal drugs that were being sold on the anonymous black market site. But when you look at the criminal complaint , it’s pretty obvious that it’s the drugs the Feds are interested in. The Criminal Complaint Indeed, the very first count in the complaint is for "Narcotics Trafficking Conspiracy." The complaint is filed against a Mr. Ross William Ulbricht, a.k.a. "Dread Pirate Roberts," a.k.a. "DPR," a.k.a. "Silk Road." The second and third counts include "Computer Hacking Conspiracy" and "Money Laundering Conspiracy," and based on the numbers in the complaint, the scale of the operation was nothing less than severe. The complaint says that Silk Road did some $1.2 billion in sales, amounting to $80 million in commissions: S This was not run like your standard member of the Better Business Bureau, either. At one point, Ulbricht actually tried to hire a hit man to kill a Silk Road user and paid in Bitcoin: S And if you had any hopes that Silk Road was actually a safe place to buy massive quantities of illegal drugs, think again. The cops were on to this place a long time ago, and they had undercovers carry out over 100 purchases. They even tested the drugs, and the drugs were […]

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It Hits the Fan for Mom Bloggers Everywhere – We're looking at you WSJ

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Let’s start with the title. “The Mommy Business Trip” is the headline on Katherine Rosman’s piece in the Wall Street Journal and its tagline is the equally icky “Conferences Appeal to Women With A Guilt-Free, Child-Free Reason to Leave Home.” It gets worse from there. In 1,228 words, Rosman takes a real trend — the explosion of conferences for women with online businesses and a parallel surge in the numbers of advertisers who are courting those entrepreneurs — and turns it into a tale of desperate housewives who use the pretext of work as an excuse to escape from home and act like ninnies. A few questions: Is it possible that the reason a woman attends events like BlogHer and Mom 2.0 is NOT because she needs an excuse to “leave her husband and children,” but rather because those conferences provide her with the connection and know-how to do her job? Would Rosman ever describe Dad 2.0, which attracted hundreds of men who write about parenting, as a gaggle of Daddies “who need a legitimate reason to leave home”? Haven’t men been going to sales meetings and conferences for generations? Staying at lovely hotels and dining in fine restaurants — and sometimes acting really silly? Do you think there is a single article about men and work travel that oozes the same patronizing tone as this one? Find me one. I challenge you. Isn’t there a big ‘ol conference in Austin every spring , where the crowd is mostly male and the schmoozing and partying is considered far more of the draw than the actual sessions? Didn’t Rosman write about that conference two years back, calling South By Southwest a place where “Internet entrepreneurs, engineers, journalists, promoters, moneymen and web-savvy Hollywood types meet to discuss technology, brand and buzz”? […]

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