Originally posted by GGM
Man if I was RIM I'd be all over this . Android and iOS getting ripped apart privacy/security wise and that's one of their biggest selling points.
He's already a head of you lol
RIM urges Russia to pick innovation over security concerns
MOSCOW—BlackBerry maker Research In Motion said Russia could help development of new technologies by finding a balance between state security and innovation.
Co-chief executive Jim Balsillie said on Monday the Canadian company had “ambitious plans” in Russia and offered President Dmitry Medvedev—an avid user of Apple’s iPad—a new BlackBerry PlayBook tablet at a meeting on developing new technology.
RIM, whose BlackBerry products are used by executives and politicians including U.S. President Barack Obama, has faced demands from countries such as India and Saudi Arabia to give authorities access to its encrypted communications services.
Speaking to reporters before a private meeting with Medvedev, Balsillie said: “A very important (question) for Russia is how do they balance the need for letting innovative things happen, but managing state security.
Many countries grapple with this around the world,” he said, adding a balance was needed that “allows innovation to happen, but still state security to be looked after”.
India this year demanded full access to BlackBerry services as part of efforts to fight militancy and security threats over the internet and through telephone communications.
RIM said in January it has given India the means to access its Messenger service but reiterated no changes could be made to allow the monitoring of secure corporate emails.
RIM encrypts email messages as they travel between a BlackBerry device and a computer known as BlackBerry Enterprise Server. The company has said it does not have a master key to decode these emails and only the sponsoring business or organization has the technical capability to grant access to encrypted enterprise email.
Russia’s two biggest carriers began offering BlackBerry services in late 2007, after years of negotiations between RIM and the Federal Security Service (FSB) that did not involve handing over encryption codes.
The FSB domestic spy service called earlier this month for access to encrypted communication providers like Gmail, Hotmail and Skype, saying uncontrolled use of such services could threaten national security.
Russia’s communications minister, Igor Shchyogolev, told Reuters ahead of Medvedev’s meeting the government wanted international companies like RIM to be present on the Russian market, offering “the most up-to-date technologies”.
“If there are some network security demands, and they exist globally, we need to seek compromise to provide security and at the same time not to set up barriers for companies,” he said.
Balsillie said Russia was still a relatively small market for RIM meaning it had “extremely ambitious plans to sell BlackBerry in Russia, invest in R&D, (and) also to invest in start-ups”.
(Might as well try Obama and the Saudi King Abdulah and rest of the world leaders too Rim?)
President Obama Has an iPad 2 [Photo]
A photo from the official White House Photostream shows President Obama walking to Marine One with iPad 2 in hand.
President Barack Obama salutes as he walks to Marine One following a town hall meeting in Fairless Hills, Pa., April 6, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
September 4, 2010 at 8:54 pm
Looks like Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulah conducts his business via an iPad 3G. Does the magic even exist there yet?
E2EK1EL
Prototype white iPhone 4 shows up on eBay
The real white iPhone 4 won’t even hit the hands of consumers until Wednesday, but prototypes are still popping up all over the place. Last week, a white 64 GB prototype iPhone 4 made its way into the hands of a Vietnamese site, and now a 16 GB white prototype iPhone 4 has shown up for sale on eBay. The device, with bidding starting at $2000, is marked with a the prototype model number of 995-6364LL and features the numbers DF3039 engraved on the front. These numbers identify, internally, which prototype this is. The back features the markings of “XX” like all the other prototype iPhone 4s we’ve seen in the wild. We are really not sure how Apple could lose so many prototypes of one product. Thanks, Sonny D.
(God damn this IP4 can run on all of our major networks in Toronto.)
E2EK1EL
Windows Phone 7 tracks too?
Might as well let other major mobile operating system manufacturers in on the location-tracking scandal fun, no? While Apple, and to a much lesser extent Google, have come under fire for their phone location storage practices, other major OS manufacturers have been silent. We’re not sure being the “squeaky_wheel” would pay dividends in this instance. That hasn’t stopped the media from asking, however, and CNET posed the question to Microsoft: what do you track?
“Microsoft says its operating system transmits the MAC address of the Wi-Fi access point (but not the name), signal strength, a randomly generated unique device ID retained for an unspecified limited period of time, and, if GPS is turned on, the precise location and direction and speed of travel,” writes CNET. “That happens when the ‘application or user makes a request for location information,’ the company says.”
CNET has a laundry list of questions for Microsoft that remain unanswered. The current location brouhaha now has the attention of the courts and some distinguished members of the United States Congress — so we’re betting most major mobile operating system manufacturers will be answering questions in an official capacity in the near future.
E2EK1EL
Apple to Use Sharp P-Si LCD for the iPhone 6?
Apple has reportedly selected Sharp's poly-silicon LCD display for the 2012 iPhone 6, according to Japanese newspaper Nikkan.
The paper reports that Sharp will begin manufacturing of the displays in the spring of 2012 and has already begun preparing equipment at its Kameyama Plant No. 1.
The low-temperature poly-silicon technology allows for thinner and lighter screens that consume less power than traditional LCD screens, according to AppleInsider.
In a "p-Si LCD," the thin film transistor, or TFT, of the screen is made of polycristalline silicon. With this method, the display drivers can be mounted directly onto the glass substrate, shrinking the TFT section and allowing for a thinner LCD display. This technology has allowed companies to create "system on glass" devices, in which the optical sensors, signal processing circuits and other components are located directly on the glass substrate.
(Oh man ... this could make me avoid HUP to the next gen iPhone in Sept)
VDub
Yah I'm definitely waiting for next years...
And I'm surprised you haven't been posting all of the unicorn iPhone talk...
Looks like tomorrow's the big ugly iPhone day!!!
E2EK1EL
Don't like posting rumors, leaked prototypes are ok and upcoming 3rd party cases, which is designed by leaked blue print.
E2EK1EL
Apple answers back and update on the way
Apple has finally broken its week-long silence over the location-tracking database scandal surrounding iPhones and 3G iPads running iOS 4 and higher. The company states that it never has, and never plans to, track users’_iDevices, and that the purpose of the database file in question — consolidated.db — is to “help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested.” The company noted that a software update will limit the size of the location file and be available in the next few weeks — the next major iOS release will add a layer of encryption to the file. Apple’s full statement is after the break. Have a look and let us know what you think.
Apple Q&A on Location Data
CUPERTINO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apple would like to respond to the questions we have recently received about the gathering and use of location information by our devices.
1. Why is Apple tracking the location of my iPhone?
Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so.
2. Then why is everyone so concerned about this?
Providing mobile users with fast and accurate location information while preserving their security and privacy has raised some very complex technical issues which are hard to communicate in a soundbite. Users are confused, partly because the creators of this new technology (including Apple) have not provided enough education about these issues to date.
3. Why is my iPhone logging my location?
The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested. Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements). These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.
4. Is this crowd-sourced database stored on the iPhone?
The entire crowd-sourced database is too big to store on an iPhone, so we download an appropriate subset (cache) onto each iPhone. This cache is protected but not encrypted, and is backed up in iTunes whenever you back up your iPhone. The backup is encrypted or not, depending on the user settings in iTunes. The location data that researchers are seeing on the iPhone is not the past or present location of the iPhone, but rather the locations of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers surrounding the iPhone’s location, which can be more than one hundred miles away from the iPhone. We plan to cease backing up this cache in a software update coming soon (see Software Update section below).
5. Can Apple locate me based on my geo-tagged Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
No. This data is sent to Apple in an anonymous and encrypted form. Apple cannot identify the source of this data.
6. People have identified up to a year’s worth of location data being stored on the iPhone. Why does my iPhone need so much data in order to assist it in finding my location today?
This data is not the iPhone’s location data-it is a subset (cache) of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database which is downloaded from Apple into the iPhone to assist the iPhone in rapidly and accurately calculating location. The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below). We don’t think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this data.
7. When I turn off Location Services, why does my iPhone sometimes continue updating its Wi-Fi and cell tower data from Apple’s crowd-sourced database?
It shouldn’t. This is a bug, which we plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below).
8. What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.
9. Does Apple currently provide any data collected from iPhones to third parties?
We provide anonymous crash logs from users that have opted in to third-party developers to help them debug their apps. Our iAds advertising system can use location as a factor in targeting ads. Location is not shared with any third party or ad unless the user explicitly approves giving the current location to the current ad (for example, to request the ad locate the Target store nearest them).
10. Does Apple believe that personal information security and privacy are important?
Yes, we strongly do. For example, iPhone was the first to ask users to give their permission for each and every app that wanted to use location. Apple will continue to be one of the leaders in strengthening personal information security and privacy.
Software Update
Sometime in the next few weeks Apple will release a free iOS software update that:
reduces the size of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database cached on the iPhone,
ceases backing up this cache, and
deletes this cache entirely when Location Services is turned off.
In the next major iOS software release the cache will also be encrypted on the iPhone.
(edit: After reading the entire article, it does make sense now. When I had my Holux A GPS receiver, it took forever to find my location and the iPhones does it instantly)
jester
quote:
Originally posted by E2EK1EL
Looks like Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulah conducts his business via an iPad 3G. Does the magic even exist there yet?
It probably only exist for him. Doesn't the House of Saud own like 5% of Apple?
GGM
I'm glad they're making those changes and for the most part what they say makes sense. It just sucks companies never do this from the start and have to be pushed/busted/motivated to do so. Digital privacy is in the midst of a make or break phase right now so make sure you fight for it where you can.
quote:
Originally posted by jester
It probably only exist for him. Doesn't the House of Saud own like 5% of Apple?
They own 5% of everything. A few decades ago they started to realize that oil is a finite resource and have gone nuts making every investment they can since then. Hence why Dubai exists...
E2EK1EL
White IP4 Launch Line up Hong Kong
Sure it is just a different color (with perhaps an improved proximity sensor) but that isn?t stopping some apple aficionados from waiting in long lines. _Here?s the lineup in Hong Kong where the white iPhone goes on sale in just under an hour.
E2EK1EL
Rogers launching LTE this year in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Ottawa
The last time we heard anything about the Rogers Long Term Evolution (LTE) plans was back in February during an interview with Rogers EVP Network and CTO Bob Berner. At the time he boldly stated that “we’ll be the first in Canada to deploy it” and it looks like they just might. We received an email today that Rogers plans to launch LTE in “Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Ottawa in 2011″ and then follow up with the top 25 markets sometime later in 2012.No word on exact dates.
LTE gives you the power the have download speeds of up to 150 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 70 Mbps. To make people aware that LTE is coming they have set up the “IwantmyLTE.ca” website. This gives info on what LTE is, when it’s coming to your area and even a contest with a grand prize of a trip to the 2011 Honda Indy.
Jer
quote:
Originally posted by E2EK1EL
Sure it is just a different color (with perhaps an improved proximity sensor) but that isn’t stopping some apple aficionados from waiting in long lines. _Here’s the lineup in Hong Kong where the white iPhone goes on sale in just under an hour.
