Author: Rick

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Rejuvenate Original iPhone with Whited00r

No Apps

The original iPhone can only be updated to run version 3.1.3 of iOS. This means that the vast majority of apps in the iTunes App Store can not be loaded onto the original iPhone. It would be nice if Apple allowed developers to keep old versions in the App Store for people with old devices. But since they don’t, it’s great that you can jailbreak the phone to allow many apps to run.

Jailbreak Steps

I followed these instructions from iPhoneBlogr. This not only jailbroke the phone. It also unlocked the phone so that it could be used on non-AT&T carriers, especially useful if I want to use the phone when traveling abroad.

Then I restored the phone in iTunes using Whited00r 5.1.

Whited00r gives you a new app store with a links to older working versions of Skype, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Conclusion

Performing the jailbreak can be a little scary for some people. But if you have your iPhone 2G or original iPod Touch in the closet or ready to go in the trash, give this a try. They are still good devices if you make the Whited00r updates.

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Spam Scam

This will be my last post. I’m retiring since I won “some huge amount of United States Dollars” in the lotto. How did I win when I’ve never played the lotto? It’s easily explained in this email I got today. I just need to send the Lieutenant General or General all my personal information. I literally can’t believe my luck.

I am Lieutenant General Peter A. Blay (Chief of the Defense Staff (Ghana). I am mailing you in respect, of the present development going on here in my country GHANA.

I decided to contact you, after much investigation which was carried out by the Bureau of National Investigation (BNI) and the Ghana Police Service, to make sure our country is free of these fraudulent activities,which is going on here in Africa and for our country to bear a good name.

The Airport Authority detected some trunk boxes after been scanned the authorities detected that the boxes contains funds on your name and email that has been tempered on, they were been smuggled into the country by foreign Personnel who were on transit from London.

These men were trying to enter the country with the trunk boxes, when the airport authority detected that these boxes contains, some huge amount of United State Dollars. After much investigation we found out that these men were among those men, spoiling the good name of Africa.

They opened up to us that, they actually work with a Lotto company before their dismissal and used the opportunity to perpetuate their crimes, they told us that the funds inside the boxes was won by you, but now they planned to turn back on you and decided to take the money all to themselves out of the country. We later found out on the investigation that was carried that, these men are truly members of a well established organization to act on their criminal activities.

As I write you this mail now, the three(3) men that were caught are now in the custody of the Ghana Police Service over here in our country Ghana,while we are trying to track the others left, because they have proved to us that they belong to one organization.

That is why we have to reach you by your mail address and name that was tagged the boxes, so we can make the arrangement on the transfer of the funds to your designation.

Your urgent response will be very much appreciated as soon as you have received this email.

Thank you for your kind attention, for us to make sure our beloved country Ghana, bears a good name.

Please in your reply include your
A: FULL NAMES
B: ADDRESS
C: DIRECT CONTACT PHONE NUMBER
D: SCANNED COPY OF YOUR INTERNATIONAL PASSPORT OR ANY RELEVANT IDENTIFICATION PASSPORT.

As this information will be required, by the authorities in Ghana to draft the new change of ownership in your name as the rightful owner of the funds in our custody and also to verify the information given to us because the documentations covering the boxes have been tampered on.

Regards,
General Peter A. Blay

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First Real Malware for Mac

Flashback

Flashback is the first malware (malicious software or virus) for the Mac that people should worry about. It can infect computers through a vulnerability in Java. It’s estimated that 600,000 Macs have been infected, about 1% of Macs in use. Flashback collects personal information such as bank and login information. To see if your Mac is already infected, follow the instructions from Macworld.

Unlike with Windows PCs, this phenomena is new to Macs. The closest previous infection I remember was when a torrent version of Apple iWork ’09 contained a trojan. But that just impacted people who downloaded the pirated torrent. Flashback is far worse since someone can get it by just visiting a website.

Protection

It’s easy to protect yourself against malware and viruses on a Mac. There is no need to buy anti-virus software which doesn’t really help much on a Mac. Instead, take these steps that deal with the exploits of Java and Flash.

1. Perform Software Update

Apple’s updates automatically patch Java and remove Flashback. Open System Preferences and go to Software Update, Check Now.

2. Disable Java in any web browser you use

Safari
Go to the menu item:
Preferences -> Security -> Web Content
Uncheck Enable Java

Chrome
Go to the URL:
chrome://plugins/
Click Disable for Java

Firefox
Go to the menu item:
Tools -> Add-ons
Click on Plugins and click Disable for the Java Applet Plug-in

3. Install a Flash Blocker

My favorite is ClickToFlash, the Safari Extension which gives you access to Flash content if you click on the Flash window. This has the additional benefit of hiding annoying Flash ads.

Another tool I use is FlashFrozen, available for $0.99 through the Mac App Store. This handles all Flash running on your computer. It is especially useful for Mac laptops which can have their batteries quickly run down by errant Flash sites.

 

UPDATE: Oracle (the owners of Java) have released their own Java updates now. If you have Java installed on your system, you should get the latest Java SE Development Kit from here:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk-7u4-downloads-1591156.html
After installing, go to Utilities – Java Preference. From there, drag the latest Java to the top. As of this writing, that is Java SE 7. Uncheck the older Java versions. The next time you start a program that uses Java, it will now use the newer Oracle Java that has the latest security patches.

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Seagate Momentus Hybrid Hard Drive

I recently upgraded the client’s old laptop hard drive laptop to a hybrid drive from Seagate:
Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB

Hybrid

What’s special about it? It’s got 8GB of solid state drive. That makes its speed somewhere between a standard hard drive an SSD. The drive intelligently moves commonly used files to the solid state portion. The hard drive handles all that on its own, appearing to the computer as just one drive.

With the original hard drive in this 5 year old Mac, it booted up in 55 seconds. With the new drive it booted up in 43 seconds. But after three boots, it had moved the boot files to the SSD and was booting up in 24 seconds. It felt much faster for common tasks and commonly used programs.

If you need a large fast drive, this Seagate is a great compromise. SSDs at 750GB are prohibitively expensive. And standard hard drives are much slower.

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Why People Torrent

Cartoon from The Oatmeal depicting why people torrent content illegally.

It’s clear why people torrent. But it took me a while to figure out why HBO does not offer HBO GO, their internet video streaming service, as a stand-alone option outside of cable, even for a high fee like $40/month. HBO’s co-president Eric Kessler said that they would never offer HBO GO for sale to non-cable subscribers.

The reason is that HBO is owned by Time Warner Cable. They want to keep the existing cable TV model going. Time Warner doesn’t want to become a “dumb pipe” for TV programming streamed from others.

An independent HBO would clearly find that it makes business sense to offer HBO GO for sale and bypass the cable/satellite providers. So Time Warner created a content/distribution cabal that unfortunately limits the options to consumers. Comcast purchased NBC for the same reason.

See Freepress’s ownership charts showing all the vertically integrated media organizations.