Have Laptop Will Travel

Apple Develops Access Control Technology

Originally posted on February 8, 2007 @ 11:19 am

Apple CEO Steve Jobs may be calling for an end to digital rights management (DRM) but engineers at his company continue to develop data security technology.

This morning, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a new Apple patent application titled “Securing and controlling access to digital data,” which describes how motion tracked by an input device other than a keyboard.

A good example of this would be an iPhone touch-pad that could be used to emulate a combination lock to secure digital data.

While this is not strictly speaking DRM, the patent application nonetheless contemplates the technology’s use as a means of access control, which is after all the primary function of DRM.

Apparently other Apple patent applications have more explicitly detailed DRM-related research.

Apple’s “Secure software updates” patent application for example describes a method to update DRM software.

Not that there’s anything wrong with it. Data access controls have their uses.

Future iPhone owners will no doubt welcome having their data protected if they lose the device.

Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft

Originally posted on February 7, 2007 @ 8:52 am

Poking around the internet this morning, I came across a pretty good read on identity theft protection.

Being well armed with information about computer security and identity theft is just as necessary as having up-to-date software.

You should find out all you can to minimize your chances of becoming a victim of identity theft.

I’ve had friends and family members who were victims of identity theft and it turned their world upside down and took months and sometimes years to get it all fixed.

In the end, while technology can help protect all of us, the fight against identity theft must be fought with some common sense.

To find out some good tips on protecting your identity, check out the following article on Protecting Yourself Against Online Identity Theft.

Apple’s Steve Jobs Calls For DRM-Free Music

Originally posted on February 6, 2007 @ 3:45 pm

Steve Jobs posted a letter on Apple’s Web site today supporting the online sale of music without copyright protection software, saying DRM systems have failed to halt music piracy.

In the letter entitled “Thoughts On Music,” Steve Jobs blamed major record labels for the proliferation of digital rights management systems.

Without offering them DRM protection, an online music store would not be able to get a license to distribute tunes from the likes of Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI, which together distribute more than 70% of the world’s music, Jobs said.

By throwing Apple’s support behind DRM critics, Jobs is adding the weight of the owner of the largest online music store on the Web and the leader in the digital music player market.

Did you know that the Apple iPod accounts for more than three quarters of the players sold worldwide? Yeah, Apple has one huge chunk of music market share.

Jobs said the industry had three choices:

  1. Choose to continue with the current system where each of the major online store owners and manufacturers of players, Sony, Microsoft and Apple, have their own DRM that tie their music to their hardware.
  2. The companies could license their copyright protection systems to each other.
  3. Abolish Digital Rights Management entirely.

“This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat,” Jobs said.

“If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.”

Of course, rival players would in theory also be able to play iTunes music and vice versa, which would bring dramatic changes to the online market.

Rather than buy music and a player from one vendor, people could buy music anywhere on the Web for any player.

Be sure to check out Steve Jobs Thoughts on Music. It’s a worth while read for sure.

Buzzword: Web 2.0

Originally posted on February 3, 2007 @ 11:48 pm

So what is Web 2.0 exactly? You can either ask Tim O’Reilly or Michael Wesch.

Most, if not all of my fellow geek friends know who Tim O’Reilly is but tonight there is someone else I’d like you to meet and that person is Michael Wesch, an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University.

Michael Wesch has put together a very interesting video titled:

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us.

So there you have it, Web 2.0 in just under 5 minutes.

Thanks to Computer Science Canada for the heads up on this video.

WordPress 2.0.8 RC1

Originally posted on February 1, 2007 @ 7:30 pm

According to Mark Jaquith, development continues on WordPress 2.2 and 2.1.1, but that doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten about the 2.0.x users who haven’t upgraded to the latest 2.1 series.

As part of the ongoing commitment to support WordPress 2.0.x until 2010, Mark and the other WordPress development team members are readying the release of WordPress 2.0.8.

For those of you who are into bleeding edge software distributions, download WordPress 2.0.8 RC1 and kick the tires a bit and help be apart of testing of one of the best blogging and content management software packages available.

For my software geek friends and readers, here’s what to expect in WordPress 2.0.8 Release Candidate 1:

  • a security fix for wp_remote_fopen()
  • better compatibility with PHP 5.2
  • a fix for feed links when using a /%category%/ permalink structure
  • misc HTML validation fixes
  • misc obscure error fixes

I’m currently running WP 2.1 on Have Laptop Will Travel but still run 2.0.7 on some of my development blogs and sites while the kinks get worked out in the 2.1.x series.