Apple vs Amahi

Read:

• http://blog.amahi.org/2011/06/21/apple-hits-amahi-with-a-cease-and-desist-wait-what/

Absurd for Apple to try to pick on Amahi. Wonder what the true motive is ? By making this move, Apple is actually trying to give an impression it may not want, which is, Apple is targeting the Open Source community (by picking on Amahi) which can be an accidental impression.

Apple needs to trod on this issue carefully or it would find itself isolated and flamed by the Open Source Community.

Sloppy Firefox 5 Usage

I decided to download Firefox 5 for my Ubuntu and test it's beta out after hearing the features despite it's horrendous history of crashing (especially with Flash plugin) and non-backwards compatibility of some plugins I wanted to preserve for use.

I extracted the downloaded "tar.gz" compressed file into a "firefox-5" folder and tried to run the "run-mozilla.sh" and "firefox" shellscript but both failed to load Firefox 5. I checked the README and thought I was missing something out and lo and behold .. the README was CRAP... below is the entire readme text:

For information about installing, running and configuring Firefox
including a list of known issues and troubleshooting information,
refer to: http://getfirefox.com/releases/

This is unbelievably sloppy of Mozilla team. I have long wanted to migrate away from Firefox to some open source browser like Google Chrome or maybe Chromium browser (hopefully without much of Google's reach inside it) and would be looking forward to moving away from Firefox for good.

Firefox have always left a bad after taste and I would say that my short experiences with IE 8 was surprisingly pleasant and far better than Firefox despite IE 8 is one of the most hated browsers out there. 

Firefox is slowly slipping to become the IE 6 and probably if IE continues to work well on open standards, adopt a robust WebGL, beef it's security, probably open source itself and release a Linux version, I would consider it for some test.

I wouldn't be interested in Firefox 5 any sooner after this horrendous experience. By the way, I went to the webpage as specified in the README and I simply got totally confused by the amount of data the webpage has. 

Another problem is Ubuntu doesn't push down a Firefox 4 upgrade and simply upgrades the Firefox 3.6 variant. If Ubuntu pushed a Firefox 4 upgrade (I am using Ubuntu 10.10 as I am skeptical of 11.04) and Firefox were to fix backward compatibility of plugins, I would seriously consider using Firefox.

Good bye, Firefox 4 and 5.

Edit: I realized the version of Firefox 5 I downloaded was the final version. It seems like Mozilla simply pushed out Firefox 5 after 4 just within 3 months. I wonder why they are in a rush to skip from version 4 to version 5 ?

Crypto Hash Lifecycles

Enjoy:

• http://valerieaurora.org/hash.html

Interesting view on how people usually react to cryptographic hashes that are about to be broken or broken.

BitTorrent patent craziness

Read:

• http://www.osnews.com/story/24863/BitTorrent_uTorrent_Sued_for_Patent_Infringement
• http://torrentfreak.com/utorrent-bittorrent-sued-for-patent-infringement-110619/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torrentfreak+%28Torrentfreak%29

Totally absurd. For those who want to mount a patent battle to fight it out, please prepare yourself very very carefully before you decide to sue the pants out of someone to make money for your own by claiming they stole your patents.

Bitcoin Wallet Heist

Read:

• http://www.pcworld.com/article/230377/worlds_first_virtual_heist_bitcoin_user_loses_500000.html

I am not a Bitcoin user but I have been contemplating on getting one for a long time. Upon hearing this virtual currency heist, I felt that Bitcoin could make do better with physical data files security that are hosted in a user's computers besides network based security and transaction integrity.

A suggestion would be always maintaining a password protected wallet file (wallet.dat) that contains important cryptographic keys and information about a user. The wallet.dat should always be encrypted in all scenarios and the data from the wallet.dat should only exist in decrypted form in the memory when the file is read to memory for computational uses (the user must manually enter a password to decrypt the wallet.dat for all instances of use to provide more security despite inconveniences). At all times, the wallet.dat should exist as encrypted form on disk.

To step up security by another level, the wallet.dat could enjoy heightened security by using the BMICS (Project SECFILE) protocol to securely protect the data files on disk. In an event a hacker managed to gain access to the user's computers, the BMICS protected data file on the disk (strong encryption and proper procedures must be applied) would add another layer of protection to the wallet.dat besides simply encrypting the file as fake data can be planted into BMICS file formats to confuse attackers without knowledge of the actual keys and algorithms.

Apple's Anti-Camera Technology

Read:

• http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/16/new-apple-technology-stops-iphones-from-filming-live-events/?test=latestnews

Restrictions always comes with more problems and more complex issues. What if, a malicious user were to misuse the technology Apple developed to disable cameras on iPhones and other possible iDevices for their own benefits and managed to compromise the iOS via some compromised coded messages in the laser ?

Extradition to US for Copyrights without Guilt

Read:

• http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2079590/british-student-extradition-copyright-infringement

This is totally ABSURD in all sense. What is the EU and the British Government doing to protect their own citizens from being abused by Big Bro trolling around asking for extradition to the USA ? The EU and British Government should protect their citizens from Big Bro's bullying and trolling. 

Stand up against these tyranny !!!