About a year ago I was with a friend in our local branch of PC World (part of the Dixons group) looking at plasma TVs. We were assisted by a really charming and knowledgable assistant, who I must admit appeared slightly better-dressed and older than most in the store. He must have spent at least 30 minutes with us, explaining the pros and cons of LCD vs plasma, and the best deals available. An excellent impression.

Turns out it was John Browett making one of his regular store visits

Good news for Apple if this guy is essentially the antithesis of the company he used to head.

What’s interesting is that the sophistication of the attack is immaterial to the fact that they achieved a significant security disclosure. You don’t have to be a sophisticated hacker to perpetrate meaningful hacks, you just have to be more sophisticated than the target of your attack.

This is what makes the Anonymous movement so fascinating to me. In Anonymous culture, being “dox’d” is a big deal. That’s kind of end-game stuff for hackers. Once you’re outed, you’re out. Coincidentally, the same rules apply for espionage.

What makes this doubly interesting is that Anonymous is made up of young, tech-savvy individuals. The establishment (government, large corporations, etc) increasingly rely on tools that are created, or at least well understood, by their attackers.

The photographs in “Unintended Consequences” come from camera equipped devices in Apple Computer [sic] stores. On a daily basis people are leaving their portraits behind on iPhones, iPads and iPods. Customers are disregarding their own discretion and abandoning these photographs. Since these images are anonymous the participants can represent themselves however they chose to without scrutiny.

Great interpretation of these found images. Pace’s exhibition runs February 6-10 at the Cora Stafford Gallery in Denton, Texas.

The new agreement explained that Apple never planned to confine the distribution of non-.iBooks content, and the EULA clarified users are allowed to distribute .iBooks formatted documents elsewhere—they just cannot charge elsewhere.

This is in line with what was expected all along. Still, it’s good that they clarified the license agreement. As for the update, however…

The updated license agreement is a free 140 MB download through the App Store.

They really need to sort that out. Ridiculous.

In a statement given to AllThingsD, Apple confirmed that the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and 3G/UMTS-based iPads should be returning to the shelves of its German online store in a matter of hours.

“All iPad and iPhone models will be back on sale through Apple’s online store in Germany shortly,” an Apple spokeswoman told AllThingsD. “Apple appealed this ruling because Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms, despite having declared it an industry standard patent seven years ago.”

Following the fall launch of its wildly popular iPhone 4S last year, Apple reportedly plans to return to its summer launch schedule and unveil the next-generation iPhone 5 during its annual Worldwide Developer Conference in June. DigiTimes relayed the claim, which cited a Daiwa Securities analyst when it first appeared in Chinese-language newspaper Commercial Times on Thursday.

To paraphrase Dana Gould, it’s like a photo of a drawing of a hologram—three layers of nothing.

There’s an old saying that eternal love lasts for two years. Apparently, that also applies to Peek’s bare bones email and Twitter devices, which launched in 2008 and 2009 respectively. We’ve received emails from users anxious that their handsets — all running on T-Mo’s network — stopped working on January 30th, despite them having paid up to $299 for “lifelong service.”

The devices were clearly not going to be a success, and there’s simply no way that they could have provided lifelong service. Despite this, the few customers that Peek did have are now left with a totally useless device, instead of a mostly useless one.

Again, Blue’s attempt at redefinition of the term notwithstanding, the term “Booth Babe” has always been used to refer to scantily clad women used to lure people into a trade show booth. I’ve never heard anyone ever claim anything different. Until now.

While King doesn’t quote the revision Violet Blue added to her crass article on ZDNet, it shows a clearly idiotic attempt at back-pedalling:

“Booth babe” is a job description. Some people (none of whom are booth babes) seem to think the term indicates a gendered insult.

It isn’t an insult—it’s just a pejorative, demeaning description of what many consider to be a blatant attempt at sexualised marketing where it isn’t even relevant. It’s an Apple-related trade show, not AVN.

I have no problem with booth babes and women that want to be sexy in tech […]

She’s a developer, not a “booth babe”. Why is this so difficult?

[…] – unless they don’t know anything about their products or are unapproachable. The problem I have is with booth babe culture is the way men treat them, and the way men see and define booth babes.

You saw, defined and treated a non-booth babe in the way that you claim to despise.

This article is impressionistic, and not review or investigative.

As King put it in his article, someone on Twitter who wasn’t even at Macworld was able to find out who she is.

As it happens, the woman described in the beginning of this article was one many thought was a hired model in a sea of hired models.

Many? Again, as King points out, you were the only one.

She was, in fact, the unhappiest looking female company rep at Macworld. After that, how you view booth babes is up to you.

She isn’t a booth babe.