To Catch a Pirate…

From Adrants

The MPAA launched a new site called Miivi.net in order to act like pirates and catch pirates in the act of pirating.  Hte site doesn’t exist anymorebecuase they pulled it off once the guys at Pirate Bay issued an alert about the self righteous organisations dirty tactics.

With help from an equally pompous agency called Media Defender, the MPAA launched fake movie torrent Miivi, which promised “fast and easy downloading all in one great site.” The real purpose of the great site was to catch sinners in the act of sinning. There was even an app that simplified the downloading process.

Pirate Bay called shenanigans, leaking news of the gross deception to ZeroPaid. The site got pulled shortly thereafter.

Dumbasses.

Technorati Tags: MPAA, Piracy, Pirates, Adrants, Dumbasses

Links 06-07-07

230+ Keyboard Shortcuts for Top Web Services… GMail, Google Reader, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Wikipedia, Blogger, Remember the Milk, Pandora, etc. etc.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Basic Film Techniques – How to turn your boring movie into a Hitchcock Thriller!

Cute Dead Things

Nintendo Wii: Wii’ll not forget

Technorati Tags: Keyboard Shortcuts, Alfred Hitchcock, Hitchcock, Cute Dead Things, Nintendo, Wii

Hackers Descend on the iPhone

The race to hack the iPhone is on. Forum threads are buzzing with action, but so far the only achievements are the downloading of the iPhone firmware, and some sniffing of the traffic over the USB cable between iTunes and iPhone

The root password, and that of the default user, named “mobile” have also been cracked. That’s significant as the root account gives access to the deepest levels of the operating system (it is also called the “superuser”), but there is no terminal access to enable a login yet.

Immediate goals for hackers atthe moment are:

1) Bypass activation. This is the big one. If achieved, it will open up the possibility of unlocking the SIM lock and also the Network lock (which ties the phone to a particular provider).

2)Install Third Party Software.There were a lot of complaints when Steve Jobs revealed at Apple’s WWDC programmers conference that there would be no software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone. This is understandable. You hardly ever see an SDK on a v1.0 product as the manufacturer wants room to tweak before opening up the platform. Open it too early and simple v1.1 fixes can break third party applications.

This won’t stop hackers trying to install their won software. The iPhone runs full OS X, albeit stripped of the parts a phone doesn’t need, like printer drivers. If hackers can gain access to the file system, they’ll be able to install anything on there. Currently the file system is sandboxed, meaning the the iPhone offers little if any hooks for other programs, but like we say, it’s OS X in there. It won’t be long.

This thread over at Hackint0sh details the root password crack.

The above is a direct copy from here, where there’s a lot more detail…

South Africans (and South African hackers) will need to wait till November before they can experiment on the iPhone, but it’s always better to see what other’s have done and follow on to better innovation. Then again, given the price tag it’s most likely to be in SA, I don’t think many people are going to mess about with it. This is interesting anyhow :)

Technorati Tags: Hackers, Hacking, iPhone, Apple

Disney’s Desperate Housewives

Technorati Tags: Desperate Housewives, Disney

Indian Men asked to “Join the Whitening Revolution”

Nivea for Men has invited Indian men to participate in its new campaign, “Join the Whitening Revolution”. Nivea India is supporting the launch of Nivea for Men with a local campaign that invites men to beauty action through TV, print ads and POS materials. The campaign aims at establishing “Whitening” as the term for male fairness products.
General Manager, Nivea India, Kai Bendix said, “The more than 500 million Indian men are a tremendous, yet untapped potential for the cosmetics industry and for Nivea.”

From a marketing perspective I know that the market for “whitening” products is particularly big in Asia and the Middle East.  The same marketing or product wouldn’t fly in many places in Africa, especially South Africa… “So, you want me to become white? How insecure do you think I am?”

However the new targeting towards men is very interesting.  This stuff would fly in Middle Eastern Countries, I once insulted an Arab man by asking him if he was from India or Pakistan and got So Pissed!  So there you go.. next market for launch… UAE, Abu Dhabi, Oman, Saudi Arabia…

Technorati Tags: India, Nivea, Whitening, Men, Marketing

Transformers are back!

Is this nostalgic or what… The Transformers were the shit back in the 80′s.

Anyway, Lore from Wired ‘s got a humourous take on the whole thing.  Basically if the new Transformers movie takes off, we can all expect Hollywood to dig in to the whole toy chest of Generation X 80′s kid pop culture and bring out other movies.

Like say… Bionic Six, Sabre Rider and the Star Sherrifs, Brave Star (That American Indian Guy with the Horse that packs a shotgun -a lso Eye of the eagle, ear of the wolf, etc. etc.), Thundercats…

My mind is reeling, I so miss being a kid in the 80′s :)

At last, the Transformers have a movie. Well, they had a movie before, but they finally have a live-action movie.

The Transformers themselves won’t be live-action of course. No
amount of nostalgia justifies an action movie with guys in plastic
robot outfits. But these days “live action” means “less than 85 percent
CGI,” so our transforming friends will be animated characters
interacting with human beings, just like that one video where Paula
Abdul dances with MC Skat Kat. Exactly like that.

Assuming the Transformers movie makes a ton of money, we’re going to
see a scramble in Hollywood as producers snap up the rights to any and
all toys from the ’80s to turn them into action-packed, PG-13 special
effects retro-ganzas. I’m going to outline a few possibilities, so that
once the movies get made I can file a nuisance suit and get paid off.

Technorati Tags: Transformers, Movie, Bionic Six, Brave Star, Thunder Cats, 80′s, Generation X

Use the Apple iPhone without AT&T

via
I’ve found a way to activate a brand new unactivated iPhone without giving any of your money or personal information to AT&T NSA. The iPhone does not have phone capability, but the iPod and WiFi work. Link to post, which includes download for “Phone Activation Server v1.0″ (zip archive).

The point of Johansen’s coding exercise, as he explains it, is that there are many potential iPhone purchasers who do not want to enter into a 2-year contract with AT&T, but do want to use the device for WiFi, web, email, video, music, calendar, contact management, and other features — basically, treat it like a bomb-ass iPod, forget about the phone part.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog and other sites have pointed out that it is also possible to activate iPhone using a prepaid plan with AT&T, then cancel the plan: Link.

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Right, now if only these bloody corporates will get their act together and muster up something for us poor South Africans…  No doubt MTN, Vodacom, Cell C and Virgin Mobile must be busting ass trying to catch the deal for exclusive iPhone coverage in South Africa… Hurry up guys… I want that phone!

Technorati Tags: iPhone, Apple, AT&T, Hack

Bigger than that.

Heaven doesn’t lie in the spoils of war but in how and why you fought the battle.

Sacrifice

How the fuck can you understand sacrifice when you’re viewing it from a warm bed with a filled up belly.

There is only one ATM in Afghanistan

Around 7,000 Americans die every year as a result of a doctors’ bad handwriting.
Ref: Harper’s (US)

44 million people visit a Starbucks coffee shop every week.
Ref: Financial Times (Asia)

There is only one ATM in Afghanistan.
Ref: Prospect (UK)

The amount of money raised by the RED campaign to fight AIDs, TB and Malaria is around US $18 million. In contrast the amount spent by Apple, Gap and Motorola to promote their association with the campaign is estimated to be over US $100 million.
Ref: Time (US)

5% of Californians are currently searching for a meaningless physical relationship.
Ref: Forbes (US)

The suicide rate among English cricketers is more than double the national average.
Ref: The Spectator (UK)

From Now and Next

Technorati Tags: Stats, CAlifornians, Suicide rate, cricketers, ATM, Afghanistan, Starbucks, Doctor, Handwriting

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