Here’s my patch

Disclaimer: I know what LaTeX is, maybe it’s good for more elegant typesetting of math. I am looking to take rapid notes, largely english in content, and not have to compile into other document formats TeX can’t even have a nested list of more than 4 levels, so I scrapped that idea within 5 minutes. I am going to look into using MathML when my note taking requires more flexibility. Also, I prefer a familiar markup paradigm (that of HTML/XML etc, rather than the archaic TeX one) With all due respect to Knuth, of course.

The author explains that URLs and URNs are both subclasses of URIs. Something I already understood. Although, I had not thought hard enough about this to realize that if I’m saying URI, that makes my statement ambiguous, as I could mean URL or URN, and if what I’m referring to, couldn’t possibly be a URN, then URL would be the best term to use.

VentureBeat now reports that:
“The developer of the wallpaper apps goes by the names Jackeey Wallpaper and Iceskysl. He confirmed via email that his apps had been restored. He said Google told him, ‘Our investigation has concluded that there is no obvious malicious code in your apps, though the implementation accesses data that it doesn’t need to.’”

http://mobile.venturebeat.com/2010/08/04/google-android-wallpaper-apps-safe/

Beverly parents should think about the big picture, rather than their individual situations. Although one family may frown upon having to buy another laptop, there are families that cannot afford laptops at all. Beverly High School will allow students to lease a laptop from the school district for twenty-five dollars a month, according to Salem News. This would mean that even the poorest high school students will have access to laptops. With an estimated median household income of $68,623 in 2008 (according to city-data.com) Beverly, is not exactly a poor town. Although every town has a few low income families. For families that cannot afford a laptop, it is very likely that twenty-five dollars a month is within their reach. Even if a family could not afford the twenty five dollars, a student would only have to mow one lawn per month to afford it. Students will also have an option to buy the laptops after three years. Even if a student was to simply lease a laptop for four years, the total cost would only be $1200. As we all know, laptops depreciate in value quite rapidly.

Beverly wants to modernize their school district, and they have my support. According to Salem News, providing each of 1200 students at Beverly High with a laptop would cost over one million dollars. One would conclude from this that each year new students entered the ceiling price for supplying new laptops to the school would be $250,000. Allowing the parents to instead lease to own, or just buy their own laptops, is the only solution with such steep prices. Students will also have more respect for their laptops if they own them, rather than the school district. Parents shouldn’t be complaining, after all the high school education is free. I think they can pay for something.

The school district’s position on technology is 100% mac. I assure you, I am entirely OS neutral. I currently own an AMD dual core with Windows 7 and a Dell with Arch Linux. I have used Apple computers before though, and they are of the highest possible quality.

The most important thing, is for the school district to standardize on one platform, and they have. As we all know, novice computer users are prone to mishaps, like viruses and data loss. Standardizing on one platform would allow the school district to offer technical support at the lowest possible cost, which is included in the twenty-five dollar a month lease. They have chosen Apple, and that is their decision. Apple is a solid platform, and will serve all the students well. To put it coarsely, whether it’s Coke or Pepsi doesn’t matter. Let’s just make sure everyone has a soda.

At the end of the day, the point of this is to eliminate factors that could be deterrents to the performance of students. By ensuring they have a solid working computer at a very reasonable price, that goal is accomplished.

You might have seen this article on Venture Beat. While it is completely true possible that millions downloaded a malicious wallpaper application that steals your personal information. What Venture Beat fails to mention in all of their articles about Android security, is that users are informed verbosely at the time of installation, of exactly what data the app they are installing is going to access.

Lookout, the purveyors of a frivolous Android security application, are out to misrepresent facts to the public in order to promote their product, which gathered similar statistics using the same exact methods as the applications they are condemning. Analytics help developers to produce software. They tell us who’s using our software, and where they are. This can help us make decisions about whether to have our software translated into other languages, just to name one benefit. Furthermore, it is up to the user to decide whether he or she wants to install an application.

The bottom line on this one is that users click OK. Well we may or may not be able to trust users to read the screen before they click OK, it is not appropriate to paint this as an Android security flaw. What it really is, is a human security flaw. Therefore the hype is invalid, as this fact about the human condition has been known by almost every living being for hundreds of years. Got anything new and interesting to say now, Lookout? Didn’t think so.

Lets not forget what was presented at DEF CON yesterday. There was even an article in Reuters about it.

Now before you read that and get all scared about Android security, let me shed some light on what was actually handed out on DVD to DEF CON attendees. To the uninitiated, a rootkit, is a software module that can be loaded by an operating system to give an attacker remote access. Their application, gives an attacker a remote shell (connection to control your phone completely) when the phone receives a call from a trigger number. A phone number that the software listens for. At this point you’re probably scared. You are wondering if this is on your phone right now. This is where Reuters and other news sources stopped reporting, because people love scary news. I’m not here to entertain you though, I’m here to tell you the truth.

For the majority of Android users, this has no adverse implications whatsoever. Because the root kit needs to be installed in the kernel, the user would need to have root access to their phone. This is something the overwhelming majority of Android smart phone users do not have.

For users of rooted Android phones, no worries either. Most of us use cyanogenmod, and when an app we use tries to obtain superuser permissions, we are prompted with an “su request” dialog that we have to authorize. So if a cyanogenmod user was to install an application containing the root kit in question, he would still have to click “OK, screw me!”. I suppose the root kit could easily be hidden inside a tethering app or something, so we should all remain vigilant. Of course this threat has always existed and every open source enthusiast knew about it, so again, nothing new here.

In conclusion, the point here is that the user would have to consent to installing the root kit. Again, this means it’s not an Android security issue. It’s a security issue in the human condition. As I mentioned before, we all know about this flaw already.The researchers at TrustWave can write a root kit for Android. It means nothing since there is no way to install it without exploiting a human being. This means that it is not an issue with the security of Android mobile devices, but an issue with the competence of the user of the phone. What they are talking about doing is no different than any other scam that could be perpetrated against a human being. Not an Android specific issue.

The main difference is with this method, you get to parameterize tabs. It’s as simple as making a few Activities or Views in XML and calling makeTabs() on them in your Activity that extends SCTabActivity. This came out of my need for a way to make an application with several, several, tabs rapidly.

The code is on my github as a gist: SCTabActivity for android

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