GeekwithEnvy

Richard Vincenti Jr

Hacker Comex No Longer With Apple

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Nicholas Allegra (Comex), has sent out a tweet stating that he is no longer associated with Apple.

If you have ever jailbroken your iPhone or iPad then chances are you have used JailbreakMe,which was created by Allegra. Jailbreaking removes all of the security features that Apple puts in place for devices like the iPhone and iPad. Obviously, Apple was less that thrilled about this jailbreaking process and they continued to release updates to close these security holes.

Comex
Nicholas Allegra (Comex)

Allegra continued to find holes in the source code of Apple products and he did so with ease, this attracted the attention of Apple and they decided to bring him onboard in August of 2011 as an intern. Having a guy like this on your side is extremely valuable and who knows how much better Apple’s security is because of his efforts, but his time with Apple now appears to be over.

Allegra claims that he was let go partly because he didn’t respond to an e-mail from Apple asking him if he would like to extend his employment with them. Allegra later goes on to say that there were other reasons for not continuing to work with Apple.

Hopefully something can be worked out between Comex and Apple, I can’t imagine leaving behind so much talent.

 

How to Tell If You Are Taking Advantage of USB 3.0

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USB (Universal Serial bus), how did we live with out it?

gravisGamePad
Gravis GamePad

It’s probably a safe bet to say that most of the people who use USB technology have no idea what the world was like before it existed. Remember PS/2 and RS-232 connectors?It used to be a very different world when it came to how we connected devices to our computers.

Imagine having a different type of connector for each device you connect to your computer, that was reality in the early years of computers. I remember plugging in my Gravis Game Pad into the sound card, yes that’s not a typo, which had a midi/joystick port next to the 3.5mm jacks for microphone and audio out.

Fortunately for all of us, USB which was officially introduced in 1996, standardized the way we connect devices to our computers. We no longer had to worry about which device needed what port and which device would work on what type of hardware, everything became “universal”. The USB standard has undergone a few changes over it’s lifetime with each version slightly more stable and faster than the last.

USB1
USB 1.0

Transfer speeds for USB 1.0 are 1.5 Mbit/s and 12 Mbit/s

USB2
USB 2.0

Transfer speeds for USB 2.0 are 480 Mbit/s

USB 3.0

Transfer speeds for USB 3.0 can be up to 5 Gbit/s

Of course there are many other changes that go along with each USB release besides just transfer speeds. Changes to USB have also included power management and simultaneous two way transfer. The USB connector is really amazing, everything from keyboards to cell phones utilize this amazing interface and USB 3.0 is even better.

Now that we know how much faster USB 3.0 is compared to 2.0 (about 10 times faster) we need to know if were even using it. It may be difficult at first to tell which technology you’re using because USB 3.0 ports are backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and therefore look identical to their 2.0 counterpart . If you haven’t bought a new computer in last year or so you probably don’t have USB 3.0.

In some cases an indication that you may have USB 3.0 will be a blue colored USB port on the computer itself, but the best way to tell is to check your hardware configuration via your preferred OS.

Microsoft Windows

You can check your computers hardware on Windows machines by right clicking “My Computer”, then “Manage” and then “Device Manager”.

Locate USB and you should see “USB 3.0” somewhere in the hardware description.

Mac OSX

Similarly, in OSX you can click the Apple logo in the top left of the finder bar, click “About this Mac”, then “More Info” and then “System Report”.

So is it worth all of the fuss? Absolutely! I have a USB 3.0 external hard drive and data transfer speeds are incredibly fast compared to 2.0 models. Any device using 3.0 should perform significantly better.

Apple to Hold a Special Event

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Apple has set the date, on October 23rd they will hold a special event for making some major announcements.

Apple Logo

Many of us are expecting to see a mini version of the iPad (iPad mini) which should better align Apple to compete with Amazon and Google. It would make sense to see Apple offer a broad array of tablet solutions to bombard the market with different price points,sizes and features to try and grab prospective tablet owners who may be currently on-the-fence about which tablet to buy.

At this point no one really knows for sure exactly what else Apple has up it’s sleeve. Although it will be nice to confirm, we are hoping to see more than just an iPad mini.

I personally would like to see some updates for Mac desktop solutions like the Mac Mini which could use a bit more love. For now we can only speculate and we will just have to wait and see what comes out of the event, which will be held in San Jose, Calif. on October 23rd.

 

 

Origin Accidentally Gives Away Money

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Origin, an EA digital download client for games, was giving away $20 to users who participated in and completed a survey. However, it turns out that the code that was given out was a multiple use code and it wasn’t long before the code was being shared across the internet.

origin logo

Many users were quick to cash in and began to purchase titles from the store. Whether or not users who redeemed the code will be able to keep their purchases is unknown at this point.

This actually makes me think back to all the times I have taken online surveys and occasionally I take a few just because I’m feeling opinionated but like most of us I will take a survey just to see if there’s a reward for completing it, only to find that there’s a big pile of nothing waiting for me. What’s worse is that some of these surveys are really long, I mean like, you start wondering why you feel like your doing homework long.