101001010101

Sort of. But you have to keep X11 running on another vt. Stopping and restarting X many times in a session is a different story. At least for me.

And even in the case I keep X11 running on another vt, I've found that when using no wm, or a simple one like evilwm, switching back and forth from console (on one vt) to X11 (on another vt) many times does not work well. Eventually it fails.

This is on {Net,Free,Open}BSD.

I don't think that Plan9 has vt's as such. It's more like what the article envisions, with graphics capabilities seemingly woven into the terminal. But you're pretty much stuck in an X11 type environment. Plan9 experts correct me if I'm wrong.

I've always found this "context switch" from console to graphics is like a one-way street. You're not really expected to keep shutting down the graphics and going back to the console. At least I've never found anyone who does that.

Thanks. I've learnt the lesson now. I can understand why that's a good rule.

Am I the only one who thinks these titles are too often unoriginal, suggestive and often conclusive? And sometimes the conclusions in the title are not even supported in the article.

It's not just HN. It's everywhere on the web.

I just don't get it.

There we go again. Sense of humour is penalised on HN.

An astounding conclusion!

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

And I'd guess they still charge a fee for that, too. :)

Right. The way I see it, CarrierIQ gives carriers the kind of information that Apple could, in theory, gather quite easily. Maybe that was the idea behind CIQ? Just taking a wild guess.

At least you have an agreement with your carrier. Alas, you have none with CIQ. Even though you're using their software.

Ah. Cheers.

It would be interesting to see their agreements with the carriers.

Presumably the carriers could request any data, not simply diagnostics.

It certainly sounds like CIQ is prepared to deliver whatever a carrier might ask for: CIQ's rootkit can capture everything.

It says they don't authorise carriers to install it. But do carriers need authorisation? If the consumer never knows it's there, is there any risk to the carrier? To put it another way, what are the consequences if one installs something that is "not authorised"?

They mention the Blackberry Enterprise Server admin. Who would that normally be?

All due respect, Apple should not need to use CarrierIQ.

They are a hardware company that sells the hardware it makes direct to consumer. They are perfectly positioned and quite capable of writing their own "rootkits".

Of course, when they do everything possible to prevent you from "rooting" the phone you purchase from them it's a tad more difficult to check for such things.

For the average non-technical iPhone customer it would seem next to impossible.