DJ Leto has finished a new techy mix for your overall enjoyment. If you like great music and fresh thinking, check out this mix!
Original photos by Luke Menzel and Christophe Libert.
Kinetic Complex
LanSchool threatens compsci.ca
LanSchool, publisher of “classroom management solutions”, has threatened to take legal action against Dan and Tony (founders of the massively popular compsci.ca), for publishing a review and proof-of-concept exploit for an old version of their software over two years ago.
When the exploit was discovered in early 2006, Dan (one of the founders of compsci.ca) promptly notified the developers of the LanSchool application. LanSchool disregarded his discovery, and told Dan that his school could take action against him in the form of suspension, detention, &c… As such, after a period of time, a review of LanSchool including a proof-of-concept exploit was published online at compsci.ca.
Fast forward to 2008, LanSchool has released a new version of their self-titled software; exploit fixed. However, they have now decided to take legal action against compsci.ca. Their claims and demands are as follows:
Claims
- “unauthorized use of its trade-mark” — even though they have no registered trademark in Canada.
- “unauthorized use of its logo” — using their logo to refer to the company should fall under fair use.
- “In other postings you offer detailed advice about how to use “LanSchooled” to breach the security inherent in our client’s software.” — but earlier in the document they stated “you identified and made LanSchool aware of a potential security flaw in LanSchool version 6.5 (which does not exist in the current version 7.1).”
- “you describe our client’s software as a “trojan horse type program that is used by many school boards in Ontario to spy on their students as well as controlling one or all computers in a given lab … LanSchool has many flaws in its design, and thus many security holes….”” — this would amount to defamation only if the statement was untrue. Though considering that LanSchool is designed to allow remote access to the system, to monitor and log activity, I feel like that is an accurate description. Furthermore LanSchool’s #1 FAQ question is :
My Anti-Virus software is reporting LanSchool as a virus, what should I do?
Suggesting that the LanSchool software indeed acts in a manner similar enough to a malicious program, to trigger some Anti-Virus applications. The flaws in the design were demonstrated by the proof-of-concept application in question, and were true at the time of publication.
- “It is evident that you have intentionally set out on a course to harm our client’s software and business.” — absolutely not. The original review explicitly states that “This page detials a proof of conspect expolite of the lanschool program. CompSci.ca and Hacker Dan do not support, condone or recomend the use of it in real life”. Once again, the company has been made aware of the issue well before the publication.
Demands
- Removal of the critical review of their software.
- Destruction of author’s intellectual property, in the form of the proof-of-concept application.
- Not making use of any of LanSchool’s software in the future.
LanSchool is clearly inhibiting free speech with their outrageous claims and demands, and they are trying to punish Tony and Dan for correctly going about disclosing a product vulnerability.
Support
Tony and Dan are trying to raise money for legal representation via donations, and in the event that LanSchool doesn’t proceed with legal action, the money will be donated to EFF.org — “the leading civil liberties group defending your rights in the digital world”. Even a comment of support on their blog post would help. You can donate and read more on the compsci.ca blog post.
Update: Thankfully the issue has been resolved amicably, you can read about the process on the compsci.ca wiki page.
Dear Rogers
Rogers,
Your new iPhone data plans are absolutely ridiculous. Virtually every other country offering the iPhone includes unlimited data at no extra premium. The fact that the data bandwidth offered for each iPhone plan is so low coupled with the latest 3G capabilities effectively renders the device useless. The estimated usage scenarios per plan are not realistic and do not factor in secondary data usage options (i.e. 3G applications, iTunes Store, &c…). Not to mention next to no minutes and SMS, and lack of a rollover minutes capability. It’s as if you are barely offering a service, and simply charging for iPhone ownership. You are locking Canadians in to what seem to be third world plans from nearly a decade ago. It’s not fair to your loyal customers who are being forced to pay these exorbitant prices.
It’s truly a sad day for Canadians and tech enthusiasts, knowing we have been abandoned by the one company that really could have made a difference.
Sincerely,
Gianni Chiappetta
Update: Rogers reply after the break, and yes they spelled my last name wrong.
Ruby RDoc Bookmarklet
Do you constantly find yourself googling to get to a specific Ruby core documentation page? Array? Enumerable? MatchData?
Now you can access all of these pages right from your bookmark toolbar with my handy bookmarklet.
Install
Just drag the link below to your bookmark toolbar.
Usage
Click the newly created link and type the class you’re looking for in the popup. It’ll even auto camelize your words, for example “match data” will be turned into “MatchData“.
Bookmarklet
Ruby RDoc
Give it a try!
New Features on GigPark
We just released the latest version of GigPark earlier this week, and we’ve packed it full of new features that make it easier than ever to use.
There is now a myriad of options available to share a request or recommendation, be it through Twitter, Facebook, email, your blog, &c..:
You can now easily thank people for their recommendations and leave specialised feedback for them:
You can also share requests and recommendations right from your GigPark feed:
These are only a few new features, can you spot anything else? Stay tuned for some amazing new ways to promote your service on GigPark.
