Monthly Archives: April 2009

[News] Short Movie “Always Summer” Premiere in Berlin

The Berlin underground movie maker Michael Ruf premiered with his new short movie “Always Summer” here in Berlin. After his movie has been played around the globe on almost uncountable festivals (Bogota Film Festival / Columbia, Derby City Film Festival Kentucky / U.S., Max Ophüls Filmfestival Saarbrücken / Germany, International Filmfestival Madurai / India and many more) it now premiered in Berlin’s Babylon cinema’s at the Rosa Luxemburg Platz.

The Movie

An improvisation theatre piece inspires the eloquently spoken Elisabeth to divulge a poignant story about Paul, a man from her past, to her granddaughter Simone. The story deeply moves Simone and she is certain – Elisabeth must see Paul again.

Simone’s attempt to bring the both of them together wrests an uncharacteristic lightness from the perishability of her own life and makes her a dreamer who is no longer able to take compromises for truths and who could not make a greater effort to embrace her own existence.

ALWAYS SUMMER is not only a quest for closeness – full of yearning, disappointments and moments of hope – but raises the question of what is possible when we really thrust ourselves into the beautiful chaos we call life.

What we say

Emotions are basic drives in our entire life and this is basically what this movie is about. It is about the fineness of social interaction between men and women. The actors show that life is a search for moments of mutual emotions, thus allowing to find themselves in a situation that helps us to become aware of reality. A never ending struggle for awareness through emotions.

Although this movie is not real you see how close to reality emotions are getting re-assembled and re-constructed. From our point of view: this movie is a must see for everyone who likes to get moved by movies.

Michael Ruf talking to Friedhelm Ptok – the german voice of Star Wars’ Imperator…

[MacOS] PearC Clone Supplier admonishs German Blogger

According to the MacNews.de, the Germany based PearC, besides Psystar the second supplier of Mac clones, admonished the operator of the german blog Caf’é Digital. Café Digital reported about legal concerns of selling ready made Mac clone hardware with pre-installed Mac OS.

For their report, Café Digital used a modified PearC logo and told certain facts, PearC obviously did not want to read in the public. Sadly there is no information about the now censored parts of the Café Digital article about PearC.

We strongly recommend not to use any ready made clone hardware. As all these clone manufacturers are using solutions developed by the InsanelyMac and Hackint0sh community. You may check our EPOS I. installation script – which is provided for educational and for solely non commercial purposes.

If you can not set up a clone Mac yourself, get yourself an original Mac. For most of our every day life’s purposes a (refurbished) Mac Book should be sufficient.

» PearC Germany
» Café Digital

» Apple Store Germany (refurbished units)…
» Apple Store U.S. (refurbished units)…
» Apple Store U.S. (clearance units)…
» Apple Store U.K. (refurbished units)…

[Pre] New Rumors about Palm Pre’s Release Date

On the SprintGurus.com forums Coal – one of the admins – seems to have had access to internal Sprint documents. Coal says there might be “2 release windows, one is around 6/7/09 – the other I cannot say much on”.

This could match rumors from EverythingPre.com, who have been informed by an anonymous guy that the first shipment of Palm Pre’s has left Hong Kong in route to the U.S.

As this is rumors all over, we’d better wait and see. Let’s not get into hysteria. The Palm Pre will come with a bang anyway.

The picture is courtesy of Palm.com

[MacOS] Modbook Tablet PC available in Germany

The german Apple retailer Gravis will bring Axiotron’s Modbook to Germany, starting May 2, 2009. According to their website the Modbook will cost about €2,250 (~U$3,000). Technically the Modbook is a modified white MacBook.

In contrast to Windows based convertibles the ModBook will not include a keyboard anymore. Anyway an external keyboard can be plugged via BlueTooth or USB.

This picture is courtesy of Gravis. Find more pictures on their website

[MacOS] BluRay eventually coming to the Mac?

Together with the newly seeded iPhone OS 3.0 a new iTunes 8.2 has been seeded to developers aswell. MacRumors now posted a screenshot that includes reference to BluRay support.

As Apple currently does not support BluRay this step is overdue anyway as Microsoft Windows user can play BluRay movies on their computers for the last three years.

If this is true this is good news. We dual booters won’t need to start Windows when willing to play an HD movie.

The picture is courtesy of MacRumors

[Windows] Windows 7 RC 1 and XPM Release Dates

According to the german Heise.de and Golem.de Microsoft will make Windows 7 RC 1 on May 5, 2009 available for download. A beta version of the Windows 7 to Windows XP compatibility feature called XPM (we reported) will be available on April 30, 2009.

XPM is in fact a complete Virtual Machine of Windows XP using a special version of Microsoft’s Virtual PC, thus making Windows 7 about 100% compatible to Windows XP.

Pictures are courtesy of Microsoft.com

[iPhone] iPhone OS 3.0 beta 4 seeded to Devs

Together with iTunes 8.2 beta a new iPhone OS 3.0 beta 4 has been made available to developers. There are no information about changes, but the Spotlight.app is reported to be faster and issues with a crashing Phone.app seem to have been solved.

As always: if you are no developer don’t install this beta, as you would need to download it from illegal places anyway. It is unstable and even if you were be able to jailbreak, you will not be able to unlock as this update also includes a baseband upgrade, that is currently not unlockable.

Don’t say we did not warn you!

[iPhone] Recommended Apps: vTuner Radio App

Our german fellow Holger Meyer strikes again. After his awarded ear training program Karajan (our report) he now founded a company and cooperates with vTuner from New York.

What is vTuner?

vTuner allows you to turn your iPod Touch or iPhone into a radio receiver. You can listen to more than 7,000 radio stations from all over the entire planet. You can choose frmo 50 genres, 120 countries and 50 languages and eventually set favourite.

Moreover you can get information about upcoming shows and shows currently playing. A really nice-to-have feature is the integrated webbrowser. It allows you to surf the net while listening to your chosen radio streams. You don’t need to leave vTuner.

What else?

Congrats from Berlin. This app is definitely a-must-have for all guys loving muzaq.

Where to get this app?

Get it on Apple’s official AppStore.

» Get on iTunes’ AppStore for €1.59…
» More information

Screenshots and Video

You may find some pictures and a nice demonstration video below:

[iPhone] EFF sues Apple for wrong DCMA notice

EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann has filed action for a declaratory judgment against Apple. In october 2008, on Odioworks’ BluWiki portal pages have been released that explained in detail how Apple uses encryption to tie iPods solely to iTunes and how Apple bars third party software like Songbird.

Although the writers in the wiki were not able to circumvent Apple’s encryption algorithm, in november 2008, Apple demanded immediate removing and of course Odioworks followed their demand.

Apple argues the algorithms that calculate hashs to tie iPods to iTunes are part of Apples FairPlay protection, thus falling under the DMCA, that disallows circumventing or public discussion about circumventing.

In the view of the EFF and other IT professionals this is not true as the calculated hash is only required to access the iTunesDB. In the means of the YMCA the iTunesDB encryption is not part of a copy protection. Therefore releasing information about circumventing the hash cannot be illegal. Moreover the DMCA explicitly allows decryption for the purpose of compatibility.


» Heise.de:
Bürgerrechtler klagen gegen Apple (german)…
» TheRegister.co.uk:
EFF accuses Apple of muzzling iPhone hobbyists

[Linux] Demo Exploits for Acrobat in the wild

According to SecurityFocus Adobe Acrobat Reader has been compromised by using a JavaScript buffer overflow.Demo exploits have already been located on the internet. It may only be a matter of time until this exploit gets used by the botnet guys. Pay attention which PDF documents you really need to open on the net.

Description

Acrobat Reader’s getAnnots() Javascript is vulnerable to remote code execution. Arbitrary code can be run with the user’s privileges, thus circumventing Acrobat Reader’s security system.

Affected Versions

Demo Exploits are in the wild for

  • Linux Acrobat Reader 8.14
  • Linux Acrobat Reader 9.1

Other operating system may also be affected.

Workaround

As there is no patch available by Adobe at this moment, uninstalling the Acrobat Reader seems to be the best choice. Third party PDF readers are available all over the net. Find one of them here.