orangeek's blog

My Company (the $one_of_the_biggest_Consulting/Auditing_Company) used to say to us employees

" Our biggest asset here is you guys ", meaning that in a Consulting company the real asset is human, the people are working there and their knowledge and efforts.

As you know in the last days Lehman Brothers fell down: the assets of the former Bank have been bought by Barclays Bank for 1,7 billions USD. 

From that amount, 1.5 billions are for the Data Centers.

[ via Slashdot ]

Are you wondering why your useful iPhone application has been rejected by Apple?

Thanks to Joy of Tech, here below you can see the official flowchart used by Apple to accept/reject applications in its AppStore.

Analyzing it you could exploit the process itself and get your application accepted!

 

:)

Yet another point so you can understand what I meant when I complained about the iPhone

[ via Gizmodo ]

PCMagazine just published his collection of the top 10 greatest hacks of all time.

My favorites is the internet-connected Coke machine (1991), created by the guys of Carnegie Mellon University (the very same guys who invented the smiley :) ).

 

That machine was connected to the PDP-10 server of the university and, running a custom software, all the nerds of the university could login to the server and see how many coke were available in the machine and if they were cold or not.

The guys at Adobe had a good idea: put online the DearAdobe website where everyone can complain about Adobe products.

They even publish the top 100 complaints.

So far, my favorite is the (as now) number 15.

" Could you make Adobe Reader start up slower? I'd like to have enough time to go get a sandwich before I read a one page document "

And I do know what this user is talking about: on my laptop with Vista (provided by my company) Adobe Reader takes ages to run.

Lurking on the top100 page, seems also that many people hate:

• Adobe Updater (old style, heavy on resources, starts when you start an Adobe application so when you actually want  to use that software, requires you to close almost every application, browser included, and takes automatically focus over other applications)
• the high prices
• the lack of consistency between Adobe applications
• the poor performance even on modern hardware (someone points out that Adobe Reader is using more RAM that Supreme Commander LoL :)
• ...

What do you think?

A quick integration after commenting on JKOnTheRun:
Two question arised:
1. even if Nokia will preinstall this software on their device, what'll be the issue for a thief to reinstall a clean firmware on your stolen phone?
2. (most important) this software doesn't appear to be opensource. Would you trust such hidden and spy software on your device, if not opensource? How can you be sure what it's doing in the background? A service I really like, mostly because is opensource, is Adeona, an opensource platform to track your laptop, especially useful when some bastard steals it.
--

Via NYTimes I have known about "Maverick Secure Mobile", a software created by Maverick Mobile Solutions, aimed to protect your stolen cell phone.

Once installed, the software stays hidden in your phone and the thief can't know if it's installed or not. When the bastard will change your SIM card for his own, the software will do his job.

It'll encrypt all your data (phonebook, agenda, pictures, videos, ...), it'll phone home sending texts to another number, track the location, initiating a call letting you eavesdrop on the thief and playing as a loud siren troughout the speakers.

The easiest way (for a thief) is to install a stock firmware on the phone and get rid of this software but the good news is that the company is dealing with Nokia to pre-install that software from the factor.

I'm still not sure how you could be sure - if you have that software preinstalled on your device - that it'll not phone home (aka Nokia, or someone else) even if not stolen.