As with most stories like this, the BBC headline and subhead make no mention of the fact that this exploit only affects iPhones that have already been massively compromised by their owners.

The BBC article is good, though, explaining in paragraphs 3-6 that the problem only affects morons:

The worm attacks "jail-broken" phones - a modification which enables the user to run non-Apple approved software on their handset.

The handsets at risk also have SSH (secure shell) installed.

Many people use SSH so other programs can remotely connect to an iPhone and, among other things, transfer files. It comes with a default password, "alpine" which should be changed.

Users who have installed SSH and not changed the password are especially at risk.

So, if you've jailbroken your iPhone, installed SSH, and left the root password set to the widely known default, you're vulnerable. And stupid.

The folks behind it claim to be a Danish NGO (that's socialist for "nonprofit") that published a children's book titled It Hurts When Dad Beats Mum.

Thanks to Slog Tipper Mary!

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

The folks behind it claim to be a Danish NGO (that's socialist for "nonprofit") that published a children's book titled It Hurts When Dad Beats Mum.

Thanks to Slog Tipper Mary!

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

The folks behind it claim to be a Danish NGO (that's socialist for "nonprofit") that published a children's book titled It Hurts When Dad Beats Mum.

Thanks to Slog Tipper Mary!

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

This video was posted to YouTube by Brad Slavin. Here's his description:

The Blackeyed Peas compel the employees at the Microsoft Store in Mission Viejo, California to break out in dance, let their hair down and have some fun. This is an amazing store, the employees seem really excited and engaged, almost happy to be at work. My favorite parts are when people walking in the mall come inside the store, join in the dancing and have some fun. The amazing thing is that people are in the store for hours, they love interacting with the software and learning about new technology.

His website is titled "Subtle Persuasions" and subtitled "Marketing, Persuasion, Technology, Life — Finding Balance." (Let that settle in for a minute.) He has an unusual number of posts about Microsoft stores and how totally, totally, totally awesome they are. Why, he almost seems like a real person! Not at all like a shill, right? He's just honestly amazed at how much the employees and customers love this store!

Really, I'm not anti-Microsoft, I'm just anti-crap, and this is complete crap. Somebody help them.

The first bulletin board system (BBS) was developed during a blizzard in Chicago in 1978.

There is nothing else there. Why a blizzard? Did the blizzard help with the creation of the online bulletin board somehow? Yesterday I didn't know anything about this, and today I find it fascinating.

Has anyone written an Harold Robbinsesque Carpetbaggers-style epic trashy novel of the invention of the internet? Because I would be all over that book. It's got it all: the U.S. military, fabulous wealth, the sudden loss of fabulous wealth, and D&D nerds. Throw a little sex in there and you've just written a bestseller.

It turns out that while AT&T might have spotty coverage, Verizon is actively fleecing the hell out of people.* David Pogue explains...

Starting next week, Verizon will double the early-termination fee for smartphones. That is, if you get a BlackBerry, Android or similar phone from Verizon, and you decide to switch phones before your two-year contract is up, you'll be socked with a $350 penalty (it used to be $175).

That's pretty bad, but this is much worse: Verizon has designed many of their phones to have easy-to-hit-by-accident buttons that connect you to the Internet using their "Get It Now" or other stupid services, and they charge you $1.99 for pushing that button, even if you cancel the action immediately.

Better yet, if you call to have them block your account from accessing online data, those buttons return a message from the Internet saying you can't receive data, and they charge you $1.99 for that error message too.

Whatever carrier you're on, check your bills. These guys are merciless.

*I'm not saying AT&T is NOT actively fleecing the hell out of people—they very well might be—but I haven't found examples as egregious as these from Verizon.** And AT&T quickly got on board with Pogue's "Take Back the Beep" campaign, so they at least understand the value of good customer relations a little. Verizon was the ONLY carrier that didn't respond to that campaign.

**AT&T did charge me $39.95 once to apply a 10% discount to my account. Charging me for a discount was pretty ballsy, I thought.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced that it is working with airports across the country as well as Boingo Wireless, Advanced Wireless Group, Airport Marketing Income and others to provide free Wi-Fi as a holiday gift now through January 15, 2010. The gift currently includes 47 airports, including Las Vegas, San Jose, Boston, Baltimore, Burbank, Houston, Indianapolis, Seattle, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, St. Louis and Charlotte. Additionally, as a result of this project, Burbank and Seattle airports will begin offering airport-wide free Wi-Fi indefinitely.

Well, gee, that's sure nice of them. Note to other multi-billion-dollar multinational corporations: If you're going to have an evil empire, at least be nice about it.

via daring fireball

Well, Google is now providing a new service that lets you see what's happening on all of their other services. It's called Google Dashboard, and it summarizes all the stuff you're storing on Google's servers and gives you access to various settings.

It can be a little unnerving to see all this info laid out on one page, but the intention is good—Google is making it easy to find what they're storing about you, and easy to change your settings if it gets too creepy.

Participation is mandatory.

*Yes, I know, knock frantically on wood! But I'm calling it for McGinn. See you at the War Room!

As far as I can tell, the only important thing about this announcement (and the Kindle and the nook and and Peek's other, e-mail only devices, too) is the fact that you can get lifetime cell service to a device and the device itself for two or three hundred bucks. We need more of that kind of cheap connectivity, not more of these weird, single-use-only devices.

Alex is the first Google Android-based e-book device to provide full Internet browsing over Wi-Fi or mobile networks such as 3G, EVDO/CDMA and GSM. With its dual-screen, multi-access capability, it provides the entire Web universe as a handy reference library, prompting users to delve into its vast information base to complement, clarify or enhance what they are reading. Alex is the first truly mobile wireless e-book device that gives users their own personalized library on the go, whenever and wherever they need it.

The Nook is also Android-based and it has a dual-screen with e-ink above and a touchscreen below. However, the Nook doesn't have full internet access. Whether Barnes & Noble is found to be guilty of copying the Alex design or not, if you're thinking about buying the Nook, I suggest you check out Alex instead.

A northeastern Pennsylvania priest has been removed from his duties after church officials say he accidentally displayed inappropriate pictures from his computer before Sunday Mass. The Diocese of Scranton said the Rev. Edward Lyman was using his computer on Oct. 25 to project an informational DVD about the annual diocesan fundraiser when four photos were displayed. They featured what church officials describe as "minimally attired adult males."

Minimally attired adult males—those are my favorite kind! But the minimally attired male, seen above (click on image for a larger version), is not—so far as I know—one of adult males whose picture was displayed before mass at St. Anthony's in Scranton. His picture was taken at a gay nightclub in Rome, though, so it felt like an appropriate illustration. More shots from the Gorgeous Party at Rome's Alpheus at Homo-Neurotic.

In other comics news, Salman Rushdie is thinking about writing a comic book.

For tax purposes, Microsoft reports that it’s earned its estimated $143 billion in software licensing revenue in Nevada, where there is no licensing tax. However, for legal purposes, Microsoft executes its licensing contracts so they are governed by and rely on the protections of Washington law and its courts (some regional contracts are governed by the laws in Ireland or China).

When necessary, as in the case Microsoft Licensing GP v. TSR Silicon Resources, which lasted two years, Microsoft uses the resources of Washington courts to enforce its licensing contracts. It does this while simultaneously dodging the taxes it would normally pay for engaging in the software licensing business in Washington - the same taxes that fund the courts.

Reifman's analysis continues, hitting on things like The doctrine of Nexus, The Step Doctrine, and Alter Ego Theory, which are all a bit over my head and frankly sound like Scientology terms.

Any Slog legal eagles out there care to comment? Is this legit? Because from what I understand, Washington could really use a billion dollars right about now.

Anyway: AFP says that Bing has signed a deal with Twitter and Facebook to include information from both of those services in their search results, in real time. The deal is non-exclusive, so Google could play catch-up whenever it wants, but the point is that Google would be playing catchup to Bing, which is maybe the first time that's ever happened.

Google's Eric Schmidt has famously underestimated Twitter for quite a while now. As I said in my piece on Twitter a while back, the thing that Twitter now provides that Google doesn't is a laser-sharp focus into what people are thinking about right now. Even Google is starting to look painfully slow in comparison.

Engadget has a little more news about it: It does have an e-ink screen above and an iPhone-like touch-screen below. It also will allegedly cost $259. It will allow you to "lend books to friends," which the Kindle decidedly does not allow you to do. But it remains to be seen whether this is a Zune-like social feature that is heavy with weird stipulations.

By the end of this year, according to the Times article, it's estimated that the number of people who own e-books will double. I know that independent booksellers are getting very close to including e-book sales, too. I've heard that a couple independent bookstores in town will start selling e-book readers for that purpose pretty soon.

1. Millions and millions of Chinese men swamp Sweden's ISPs, slowing the whole country's Internet service to a crawl.
2. Someone buys the domain chakopaul.com (Chako Paul was the made-up name of the made-up girl-on-girl metropolis), puts a crappy site up, and sells t-shirts for $30.

The original Chinese article, as dug up by Shanghaiist.

In Sweden, there is a place that is respectful of women’s love, but with a rule that men cannot enter. This is Chako Paul City. The town holds around 25,000 women, all from around Europe. If men transgress into the forbidden city, they will be beaten half to death. The citizens of Chako Paul are mostly engaged in the forest industry, because of such many of the women wear thick belts full of woodworking equipment. Some go into nearby cities to work and return to Chako Paul by night. Chako Paul’s tourism industry is increasingly prosperous, with hotels and restaurants everywhere that cater specifically to women around the world.

Thanks to Slog tipper Sarah

Try this search query, for example.

The thing is, there are only 35 results. If Google were actually indexing GV voicemails, there would be zillions of them, right?

So what's the real story?

Well, it's still not 100% clear, and I'm sure a more emphatic statement from Google will be coming very soon, but on the Google Voice support board, a Google employee explains (poorly) that these are voicemails that people have posted to the web voluntarily, and so Google indexed them, as is their habit. He also says they've changed the system so these will not be indexed in the future without explicit permission from the embedding site's owner.

Since the initial idea behind posting a voicemail, was precisely to share it with others, we did not restrict crawling of those messages that users post on the web, but we can certainly understand that users would want to make them public on their sites but not necessarily searchable directly outside of their own website. We made a change to prevent those to be crawled so only the site owner can decide to index them.

Stand down. Nothing to see here.

The LA Times reports that all Finns will have a legal right to 1-megabit web access come next July. The promise to raise this (pretty slow) requirement to 100-megabits (really fast) by the end of 2015.

Look for the U.S. to follow suit... never.