Monthly Archives: July 2009

Serious vulnerability in the iPhone

Posted on by

There is a potentially serious vulnerability in the iPhone (and most other SMS phones) that was revealed yesterday. Fortunately, Apple has a fix ready to go and they have release an update to the iPhone 3.0 software. To install the software update:

• Make sure you are using iTunes 8.2. Connect your iPhone to your computer.
• When iTunes opens, select your iPhone under Devices in the Source List on the left.
• In the iPhone Summary pane, click Check for Update.
• Click Download and Install. Do not disconnect your iPhone until the update has finished.

Ready to jailbreak my iPhone (updated)

Posted on by

Apple warns against jailbreaking iPhones to run “unapproved” software. But, increasingly, Apple seems determined to force users like me into jailbreak mode.

How do they manifest this?  The latest, and most blatant, example is Apple’s (i) rejection of Google’s GoogleVoice app for the app store and (ii) pulling prior GoogleVoice apps created by non-Google-related developers.  This is a very big deal. I have complained to Apple directly, and I suggest others do so as well. [Take some time and read the experience of an independent developer who's app was just pulled by Apple.] As I previously posted, I think GoogleVoice is a terrific service. Why should I be blocked from using it via convenient app on what is supposed to be one of the finer mobile devices on the planet? Why should Apple have this kind of arbitrary control over a piece of hardware that I have purchased?

I have personally recommended Apple products to a great many friends. I own several Macs, a couple of AppleTVs, the usual smattering of iPods, and my second iPhone. This incident has caused me to seriously question why I should buy a platform (the iPhone) from a company that cripples its functionality for no discernible reason. Would I buy a Mac that could only run applications approved by Apple? Hell no!

I have also been instrumental in securing support for the iPhone in the company I work for. I did it based on a belief that the iPhone truly is a breakthrough platform that can enhance business opportunities in ways otherwise unavailable. But the cavalier attitude of Apple causes me to question my belief. And if I, as a basic end-user, begin to question my belief in the platform, what do developers who put their blood, sweat and tears into new apps think about their decision? What efforts will they be willing to make in the future? Every app that doesn’t get built weakens the platform.

By the way, of course I understand that AT&T, that steaming pile of shit, is probably responsible for forcing Apple into this position. But with as popular a product as the iPhone, if Apple allows a carrier to force them to cripple a product, shame on Apple.

More here, here, and here.

Wake up Apple.

Update: Apple is fighting in court to establish that jailbreaking an iPhone is not just to be avoided, but is, in fact, illegal. Further Apple claims that jaibroken iPhones could be used to “crash” cell phone towers. This is totally reminiscent of the arguments that the original old AT&T made in the 60s that if users were allowed to buy their own phones and plug them into the vaunted AT&T network, the network could crumble and collapse. I call bullshit.

Another shrewd arrest by police

Posted on by

In Mobile, AL, police used pepper spray AND a taser on a mentally disabled and deaf man who would not leave a bathroom in a store. Then, they attempted to charge him with “disorderly conduct” which the magistrate refused to allow. The victim’s family says that police officers dropped the victim off in the parking lot of their apartment building without saying what happened or why he had been missing for six hours. More hideous details at Reason. And if you are not overly sensitive, you should check out this taser incident.

Refusing an order by a police officer, especially where the order was likely to be misunderstood if it was heard at all, is not a crime. While the police say the use of the taser was justified under their policies, this is yet another situation that should call for a national review on the use of tasers for law enforcement purposes.

Jonathan Turley describes yet another recent case of taser abuse by police here.

Matt Taibbi: Healthcare reform is dead

Posted on by

Matt Taibbi eulogizes real healthcare reform.

Money quote:

It won’t get done, because that’s not the way our government works. Our government doesn’t exist to protect voters from interests, it exists to protect interests from voters. The situation we have here is an angry and desperate population that at long last has voted in a majority that it believes should be able to pass a health care bill. It expects something to be done. The task of the lawmakers on the Hill, at least as they see things, is to create the appearance of having done something. And that’s what they’re doing. Personally, I think they’re doing a lousy job even of that. I lauded Roddick for playing out the string with heart, and giving a good show. But these Democrats aren’t even pretending to give a shit, not really. I mean, they’re not even willing to give up their vacations.

Hitchens on Gates

Posted on by

Christopher Hitchens argues persuasively that Gates shouldn’t have formed his defense on racial profiling, but on simple (but powerful) constitutional rights.

Money quote:

I can easily see how a black neighbor could have called the police when seeing professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. trying to push open the front door of his own house. And I can equally easily visualize a thuggish or oversensitive black cop answering the call. And I can also see how long it might take the misunderstanding to dawn on both parties. But Gates has a limp that partly accounts for his childhood nickname and is slight and modest in demeanor. Moreover, whatever he said to the cop was in the privacy of his own home. It is monstrous in the extreme that he should in that home be handcuffed, and then taken downtown, after it had been plainly established that he was indeed the householder. The president should certainly have kept his mouth closed about the whole business—he is a senior law officer with a duty of impartiality, not the micro-manager of our domestic disputes—but once he had said that the police conduct was “stupid,” he ought to have stuck to it, quite regardless of the rainbow of shades that was so pathetically and opportunistically deployed by the Cambridge Police Department. It is the U.S. Constitution, and not some competitive agglomeration of communities or constituencies, that makes a citizen the sovereign of his own home and privacy. There is absolutely no legal requirement to be polite in the defense of this right. And such rights cannot be negotiated away over beer.

Google Voice is great

Posted on by

Google Voice is a new (free) service that gives you a local phone number that you can give to all your friends or business associates. Calls to the Google Voice number then ring through to all of your normal phone numbers that associate with your Google Voice account. This lets your friends reach you whereever you are. It also allows you to have greetings specific to the caller, email messages with voice mail they leave, and a number of other features. Importantly, this gives you a “permanent” telephone number.  Fantastic.

You can sign up for an account here. They are limiting subscriptions at this point, but I recommend you get your name in if you have multiple phone numbers.

Unfortunately, as usual, AT&T is crippling the iPhone by insisting that Apple reject a Google Voice app for the iPhone.

Obama and Hawaii

Posted on by

Hawaii was admitted to the Union fifty years ago. In honor of the event, Rep. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, has introduced a resolution honoring the event. But there is trouble in paradise because the resolution includes the following whereas clause:

Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii…

GOP Congresswoman Michele Bachmann cannot allow this to happen.

Despite her objection, the resolution ultimately passed the House unanimously (including her vote and the votes of all the other birthers present).

911 tape in Gates case released

Posted on by

It looks like the police may have more problems with the Gates arrest. The City of Cambridge released the 911 tape. The caller did not claim that she saw two men breaking into the house.

The caller, Lucia Whalen, told the dispatcher she was calling on behalf of an older woman who lived on the street and had seen the men — who turned out to be Professor Gates and his cabdriver — forcing their way into the home. Police officials have said the older woman had just moved into the neighborhood. Ms. Whalen, 40, works on the block.

“They kind of had to barge in, and they broke the screen door and they finally got in,” Ms. Whalen said on the recording, adding that she had also seen two suitcases on the porch.

She later said, “I don’t know if they live there and just had a hard time with their key.”

The City also released a tape of Sergeant Crowley’s radio communications with the police dispatcher.

After Sergeant Crowley arrived at the home, according to the tape, he radioed that he was with a man who “says he resides here,” but he described him as “uncooperative” and asked for backup, saying, “Keep the cars coming.” He also asked the dispatcher to “send the Harvard University police this way.”

More and more it does look like the police over-reacted.

Gates: the real issue

Posted on by

Forget all the talk about race. The real issue in the Henry Louis Gates matter is not race. The real issue is the abuse of police power to enforce nothing more or less than good manners in dealing with the police. It is not, and should not be, a crime to be rude to a police officer that is speaking to you inside your own home.  Whether the homeowner or the policeman is black or white is a matter of no difference.  This article from Reason has it right.

By any account of what happened—Gates’, Crowleys’, or some version in between—Gates should never have been arrested. “Contempt of cop,” as it’s sometimes called, isn’t a crime. Or at least it shouldn’t be. It may be impolite, but mouthing off to police is protected speech, all the more so if your anger and insults are related to a perceived violation of your rights. The “disorderly conduct” charge for which Gates was arrested was intended to prevent riots, not to prevent cops from enduring insults. Crowley is owed an apology for being portrayed as a racist, but he ought to be disciplined for making a wrongful arrest.

Yet more unfavorable Goldman press

Posted on by

This time the story is in New York Magazine, written by Joe Hagan. It is not a flattering portrayal of shrewd but ethical businessmen and is certainly worth your time to read. Goldman certainly does not seem happy with all the attention.  When do a few stories turn into a drumbeat?

“I think this company is essential in terms of the American capital markets,” says [Goldman spokesman and Chief of Staff John] Rogers.

His tone is placid, soothing—until, that is, the subject of American International Group comes up. At this, his eyes widen, his face grows angry, his hands gesture in the air.

“If you didn’t like the policy,” he says of the decision to bail out AIG and pay off its debts to Goldman, “one avenue for pursuing your own interests was to attack Goldman Sachs.”

It’s a sore spot for good reason. The AIG rescue is the incident from which all other Goldman conspiracy theories spring—the original sin, in a sense, of Goldman’s current public tarring. It’s the act that first made the average man on the street sit up and say, “Hey, wait a minute. The secretary of the Treasury, who used to be the Goldman CEO, just spent $85 billion to buy a failing insurance giant that happened to owe his former firm a lot of money. Does that smell right to you?” It also seems to have the legs of a potential scandal, with Neil Barofsky, the inspector general overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, conducting an audit of the buyout.

***

Of the $52 billion paid to AIG’s counterparties, Goldman Sachs was the biggest recipient: $13 billion, the entire balance of its claim. The amount was surprising: Banks like Merrill Lynch that had bought credit-default swaps from failed insurers other than AIG were paid 13 cents on the dollar in deals moderated by New York’s insurance regulator. Eric Dinallo, the former New York State insurance commissioner, who was at the AIG meetings, characterizes the decision this way: AIG’s counterparties, Goldman being the most prominent, “got to collect on an insurance policy without having the loss.”

Over time, it would appear to many that Goldman Sachs had received a backdoor bailout from a Treasury Department run by the firm’s former CEO. Why did Paulson bail out the banks that did business with AIG, critics have demanded ever since, and not Lehman Brothers? Certainly executives at Lehman want to know. (As one former Lehman managing director there puts it, “The consensus is that we were deliberately fucked.”)