TheWebAtom

Imagine the horror of Facebook releasing a phone app that works just like a telephone!

Maybe you're just being practical, realizing that a locked door is only as effective as the weakest pane of glass.

That's like me calling you a murderer because, hypothetically, you have the physical capability to do it.

No, I'm saying it's an API permission, not a TOS. It's a little hard to explain; but I'll give it a shot: The new Facebook Messenger app can be configured as the default handler for SMS messages. In the app's code, it would do something like this: import android.telephony.SmsManager; SmsManager facebookapp = new SmsManager(); That allows the app to interact with the SmsManager API. As soon as that is imported, Android will give the standard warning for SMS access. In the manifest, it looks like this: <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.SEND_SMS" /> A "This app can access and send SMS messages, which could incur a data charge" warning will now appear when you install this app. Even though it doesn't actually do either of those things. It's basically a warning saying "this app has access to the API which contains the SMS messaging code" The "This app can listen through your microphone and record calls" warning simply means that it uses some code from the Telephony API. The newest version of Facebook Messenger allows you place VOIP calls through the app; which would require a permission to use the microphone API. Of course, there's always a chance that Facebook is a front for government surveillance. But if that were the case, they probably wouldn't implicitly mention it in the manifest file. You'd also notice pretty major battery usage if the app suddenly started recording and transmitting the data from all its sensory interfaces.

They're permission warnings auto-generated from detected API calls, not a legally binding TOS. The whole article is farcial FUD. Not surprising considering it was written by a far-right conspiracy theorist.

I still use Microsoft Zune as my main media player.

15 years is a good run for any software project.

I have one of these. Oh well, now someone on the other side of the world knows there's someone in Australia who watches lots of Frasier re-reruns. Not quite sure how I'm going to continue onwards with my life now.

The signing up process is for developers who want to create a repository to host their open source project.

I prefer 'Temporary Files' over 'Temps,' purely because of possible ambiguity. 'Temps' is also the abbreviated form of 'temperature' and could be confusing to people who don't speak English as a first language.

I'm not sure what you're referring to Andavari? Edit: I think you're confusing GitHub's developer tools with GitHub's software hosting.

GitHub is a great alternative.

No indoor swimming pool? That's a bit of a deal breaker for me.

Multithreaded disk defragmentation is a dark art that should not be practiced.

Startup programs can reside in many places besides HKLM\...\Run. CCleaner can read from a number of different locations to determine what's scheduled to start. BleepingComputer have an excellent list of locations startup programs can exist.

Interestingly, Chrome was responsible for 38% of traffic (FF was 27.2%) and only 9 different versions. But I rarely hear people talk about too many Chrome updates. My conclusion? Firefox aren't pushing too many updates; they're just not making the update process seamless (and silent) enough.

This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion; but I really wish Firefox would be more aggressive in forcing updates. In the past 24 hours, one of my sites was visited by 112 different versions of Firefox. That's not even including non-Firefox Gecko browsers. From a web-dev perspective; that's a disaster. It's honestly easier to test site compatibility against the Internet Explorer beast. </rant>

I'm getting an error message that states:

I got the firmware update and haven't seen any issues. This is why I don't store anything on my devices.

MTA raises a valid point. I don't think it would be hugely prominent though. The computer's death would need to coincide with the owner losing access to their Microsoft account.

I don't see the concern. Currently Windows isn't encrypted which means everyone can access your files - including Microsoft. Now it is encrypted and only Microsoft can open it up. Perfect? No. But still 6,999,999,999 less people* who can open your stuff. **I'm defining "Microsoft" as a single person

That's really not how it works, Alan.

Personally I'd like to see if anyone I hold in esteem finds value in a product. Harvest away, Google.

I can confirm that CCleaner is correctly loading Firefox, Chrome and Safari cookies on Mac OS X 10.8.5.

Then install an extension that restores the missing feature. That's what extensions are, extra functionality that is superfluous for the majority of users, but essential to a specific use case.