Kyt Dotson
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Carrier IQ-gate Redux: The Wolf in the Smartphone
Over the past few weeks, there’s been something of a brouhaha brewing over the discovery of a diagnostic app embedded in almost all modern smartphones used by carriers to determine what’s gone wrong with a phone. The app is called Carrier IQ and when it first came to light, its obfuscated nature and inability in ...
Symantec Confirms Adobe Reader Zero-day Exploits Used Against Defense Contractors
Yesterday, a zero-day exploit in the Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat software had been discovered and revealed to be extant in the wild. After being updated on this problem, Adobe released a public security advisory and announced that fixes were arriving soon. Meanwhile, defense contractors and companies have caught phishing attempts circulating using maliciously coded ...
Xbox LIVE Coming to an iPhone Near You, Microsoft Launches Official iOS App
Xbox LIVE continues to get more mobile as they move into the world of iOS devices with the unveiling of an app that will run on any device running iOS 4.3 or higher (including iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.) This launch, congruent to the newly released Microsoft Xbox LIVE experience update with their new dashboard, ...
Critical Adobe Reader Zero-day Vulnerability Seen in the Wild
Yesterday, researchers at the Lockheed Martin Computer Incident Response Team (CRT) and members of the Defense Security Information Exchange informed Adobe that their products were being exploited by hackers. The exploit affects all versions of Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat 9.x and higher, including Adobe Reader X and Adobe Acrobat X (10.1.1) for Windows, Macintosh, ...
Despite Setbacks Nexon Sets $1.2 billion IPO for Dec. 14
With the upcoming Zynga IPO—and the subsequent roller-coaster ride of scheduling, rescheduling, and then getting raked through the mud—the massively-multiplayer gaming front almost feels like it’s a little bleak but for the drama of late. So it’s with some new news that we look at Nexon, a free-to-play MMO game company with several titles under ...
The Strange History of SMS as Text Messaging Turns 19
As communication protocols go, SMS (or Short Message Service) hails from a Nordic birthplace, the same land that brought us Nokia, the once (and hopefully future) king of mobile. The protocol has a deep past from its most nascent and infant steps to its eventual maturity in the form that we see today. According to ...
Microsoft Debuts New Xbox 360 Experience: Energizes TV-Viewing, Social Gaming, Kinect Voice Control
Microsoft has fastened the armor on the Xbox, donned their helmet, and grabbed their jousting lance, and thrust their ever-popular console into the arena where it’s certain to dominate as the entertainment-center of the living room. Not only does the Xbox connect a network over 35 million people across the world—not to mention all the ...
Mars Rover Curiosity Equipped with Laser Death Ray for Science!
In 247 days, about the beginning of next year’s autumn, NASA’s newest robotic observer, Curiosity, will land on Martian soil. Any science fiction reader who has studied astronomy and followed humanity’s ever expanding interest in the sky and of our neighboring planets, will probably have read things like the Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury and ...
Verizon Xbox LIVE FiOS TV Lackluster on Broadcast Content
It looks like Verizon has taken a leap towards making their FiOS TV service a reality via Xbox LIVE thus sealing the dominance of the Xbox as an Internet TV platform and a major player in the set-top-box market. The Verizon app is expected to hit Xbox LIVE along with the upcoming update to the ...
Augmented Reality Chipsets from Intel Integrated by Total Immersion
The field of augmented reality is becoming an important part of the mobile ecology. Enabling tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices to “see” and overlay reality with meta-information. Total Immersion, an outfit who write software to enable developers to take advantage of this meta-information revolution recently announced that they’re working with Intel on integrating hardware ...