Weekend Open Thread

I also take heart in the belief that the Revolution will not be televised.

You don't have full control over your mobile OS, because two of your default applications rely heavily on technology and data provided to you by Google, your greatest enemy. I am talking, of course, about YouTube and Google Maps, which have been part of iOS since the very first iPhone.

Removing YouTube is simple enough. Google wanted full control of the YouTube app, and YouTube isn't competitive to your core business. There isn't a problem letting Google launch a YouTube app through the App Store. People can use their iPhones just fine without YouTube, anyway.

Mapping is a core function of any smartphone. Every person who has a smartphone has a need for maps. If Apple removed Maps from iOS completely, customers would start switching to other smartphones. It's just that important.
So if you're Tim Cook, you have two choices. You can either A) let your enemy Google continue to power your default Maps application, or B) you can build your own Maps app and kick Google to the curb.

This is the decision that Tim Cook and his team faced when they decided to jettison Google Maps as the default mapping application for iOS.

did Apple make the right decision with Maps? It's easy to say in hindsight that Apple should have stuck with Google or waited another year to release its own Maps app. However, consider the factors that Apple had to deal with:

quote:

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Allowing Google to control a key piece of iOS was unacceptable. If Apple had no alternative to Google Maps, the search giant could have made high demands that Apple would have had to accept. Having no default Maps application is unthinkable for a major smartphone.
The longer Apple took to release its own Maps app, the more entrenched Google Maps would be.
The only way to test a new map application at a large scale it to release it to users. They will be able to find holes quicker than a small team of engineers.
A mapping application can only go so far without large amounts of user-generated data.

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Interesting read.

It seemed to do okay for me in my local city (taking me to local grocery stores, etc). Satellite imagery is better in my city than Google Maps (albeit, my city is one of the few cities that Google Maps did not cover well).

I'm willing to take the ride on this one with Apple. Worse come to worse and I end up trying to fill up my car on top of a skyscraper, I'll just hop over to the web and grab the directions from maps.google.com.

Here's to a less buggy maps!

Not everyone thought that Apple switching map apps was a mistake.

We spoke with Eszter Pattantyus, SVP of Maps Product Unit at TomTom. She reiterated this statement, telling us that Apple isn't relying strictly on TomTom data. Apple's maps list two dozen partners, which means it blending TomTom data with other data and its own proprietary data. Somewhere in that blending process mistakes could happen.

To underscore the idea that it's not TomTom's fault people are unhappy with Apple Maps, in its press release it says, "TomTom’s map data is the foundation of our own smartphone application, which consistently gets high consumer ratings in the iTunes App Store."

In other words, when we do mapping applications on our own, people like it. When Apple does it, people are unhappy. You figure out who to blame.

Highly unlikely I'll get an iPhone. I really like Android.

For my iPad3 and iPod Touch, there will be no upgrades from iOS 5.x until I get an untethered jailbreak and a return of Google Maps.

what are you watching on? is this a rental or something on demand??

U.S. banks on high alert against cyberattacks
Hackers engaging in wire fraud by gaining access to bank networks, FS-ISAC says

The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) has put U.S. banks on high alert against cyberattackers seeking to steal employee network login credentials to conduct extensive wire transfer fraud.

The FBI has noticed a new trend where cyber criminals use stolen employee credentials to wire transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars from U.S. customer accounts to overseas banks, the FS-ISAC noted.

"The wire transfer amounts have varied between $400,000 and $900,000, and, in at least one case, the actor(s) raised the wire transfer limit on the customer's account to allow for a larger transfer," the alert said.

The FS-ISAC noted that it has moved it cyberthreat level from 'elevated' to 'high' as a result of the activity.

The FS-IACS's warning comes the same week that two large U.S. banks -- Bank of America (BofA)and J.P. Morgan Chase --suffered unexplained network disruptions.

A group, calling itself the "Cyber fighters of Izz ad-din Al qassam" on Tuesday warned of an attack against BofA and the New York Stock Exchange.
In a PasteBin message, the hitherto unknown group said it was targeting the two organizations in retaliation for a controversial anti-Islam movie that has roiled much of the Middle East for the past several days.

According to the information-sharing center, in some cases, cyber attackers managed to steal login credentials from multiple bank employees and systems administrators.

The attackers then circumvented the authentication mechanisms the banks put in place to detect and deter fraudulent wire transfers. "This allowed the intruders to handle all aspects of a wire transaction, including the approval."

Before attempting to initiate a fraudulent wire transfer, the intruders would obtain customer account transaction histories,
read-up on the proper use of U.S. payment systems and learn or modify bank-specific wire transfer settings.

All the crooks have to do is make sure to use good ol' MICROSWIFT software,

Also, newer cellphones, at least my Android one, has the ability to receive emergency warnings about weather and other emergency events.

»www.informationweek.com/governme···40002942

This feature is live on my phone.

I dunno how many go to the Big E at any one time(never drove up when I still lived in CT). But I had no speed issues on my Galaxy S3 during the 7th inning stretch of the Phillies game on Friday, and there where 40k+ in the stadium.

Iran plans to switch its citizens onto a domestic Internet network in what officials say is a bid to improve cyber security but which many Iranians fear is the latest way to control their access to the web.

The announcement, made by a government deputy minister on Sunday, came as state television announced Google Inc's search engine and its email service would be blocked "within a few hours".

"Google and Gmail will be filtered throughout the country until further notice," an official identified only by his last name, Khoramabadi, said, without giving further details.

The second phase of the plan would be to connect ordinary Iranians to the national network, he said.

According to Iranian media, the domestic system would be fully implemented by March 2013 but it was not clear whether access to the global Internet would be cut once the Iranian system is rolled out.

Only way for conditions to improve is for the workers to act together....

Also, that was about the calmest "Riot" I've ever seen. Nobody being beaten, nothing on fire, nobody getting shot....