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Symbian Won

shkspr.mobi

141–150 of 290 posts

Re: Symbian Won

#141
post #126

> With the latest releases of Android and iOS, we’re back to where we started. Both now prompt you the first time an app asks for access. Both give you regular reminders of which apps may be snaffling your data. Both let you manage access and selectively deny apps. Every OS should do this, desktop OSes included. For the last 2 decades I've been using personal firewalls on Windows to do just this, now I use LittleSnit…

One thing I've been wishing for in the mobile OSes, is for them to copy web browsers, and offer a UI to change all these security/privacy permissions for an app quickly from the context of the app, rather than by going into Settings and navigating down to the app (which nobody ever bothers to do, and especially nobody ever bothers to do more than once —so you can't put stuff that'd be useful to change temporarily in…

> offer a UI to change all these security/privacy permissions for an app quickly from the context of the app

Isn't this exactly how Android does it? I long press the app icon, click app info. All permissions, data usage, battery usage, storage usage options and metrics are shown for the app.

Re: Symbian Won

#142
post #91

When I moved from the UK to the US in early 2006 I lost my Symbian-running 6680 Nokia, because it couldn't be ported over, it was locked to a UK network and they refused to unlock it. I loved Symbian at the time, losing it took me back to the dark ages. In the UK I'd had my Nokia 6680 with front and rear cameras, unlimited 3G, multi-tasking apps, a proper web browser, the ability to install apps, and even some crap a…

The Razr's had a camera... it might have been useless, but they did have one.

Re: Symbian Won

#143
post #8

> Both give you regular reminders of which apps may be snaffling your data. Both let you manage access and selectively deny apps. But that's cool with users. It's not annoying, it's more or less a one time thing, maybe a hint more if the app is a bit more unusual. The Symbian notifications? That's a "I hate you, user". Especially the secure connection. Why would it ever ask that? On the other hand, some of those warn…

>>> Especially the secure connection. Why would it ever ask that? For whatever reason, old Internet Explorers (9? 10? not sure..) do that too...

The really old ones didn't even have a "remember this choice" checkbox.

Re: Symbian Won

#144
post #88

> With the latest releases of Android and iOS, we’re back to where we started. Both now prompt you the first time an app asks for access. Both give you regular reminders of which apps may be snaffling your data. Both let you manage access and selectively deny apps. Every OS should do this, desktop OSes included. For the last 2 decades I've been using personal firewalls on Windows to do just this, now I use LittleSnit…

>if only iptables would allow to filter by the executable path and other process parameters The problem going down that route is that implementing this opens a huge can of worms. That stuff is easy to spoof, you have to account for thousands of edge cases. It's not for nothing that the answer to "can I know the full path of the binary that was used to spawn ?" is generally "it depends" or "it's complicated". And let'…

Errr... the general answer to "can I know the full path of the binary that was used to spawn ?" is "sure, just `readlink /proc//exe`".

Re: Symbian Won

#145
We don't want erase all data permission. We need only very specific permissions. We should have custom permissions that we can get certified/approved.

Like with browser extensions I don't want access to all pages and tabs. I want [say] access to the `href` attribute `value` of the `link` elements that have attribute `rel` that is `alternate` AND `type` that is either `application/rss+xml` OR `application/atom+xml`

To be described to the user as: "Permission to discover RSS and Atom feeds."

I pay 25 euro, I wait, the platform ppl sign of on it, I update the tool with the new permission.

Re: Symbian Won

#146
post #140

I used work for Symbian. The OS itself was great at the time (it's open sourced somewhere), and got security correct (I don't recall 'privacy' ever being an explicit goal) but it was an absolute bitch to develop for. It had its own dialect of C++ which looks nothing like modern C++, the learning curve was huge. It tried really hard to have an app ecosystem but it was nothing like what google and apple have today. Net…

I worked at Nokia starting in about 2004. Looking back on my career, one of the single greatest feelings of accomplishment was getting a Hello World application to run on Symbian/S60. I thought I knew C++ going in, but I wasn't prepared for two phase constructors and the 6 files you'd need to draw a simple list view on the screen. Felt amazing once it worked though!

I totally know what you mean - the sense of satisfaction and joy when you get even the most basic "end-to-end" functionality working in a new environment is hard to match.

Re: Symbian Won

#147
post #140

I used work for Symbian. The OS itself was great at the time (it's open sourced somewhere), and got security correct (I don't recall 'privacy' ever being an explicit goal) but it was an absolute bitch to develop for. It had its own dialect of C++ which looks nothing like modern C++, the learning curve was huge. It tried really hard to have an app ecosystem but it was nothing like what google and apple have today. Net…

I worked at Nokia starting in about 2004. Looking back on my career, one of the single greatest feelings of accomplishment was getting a Hello World application to run on Symbian/S60. I thought I knew C++ going in, but I wasn't prepared for two phase constructors and the 6 files you'd need to draw a simple list view on the screen. Felt amazing once it worked though!

Lol. At least you guys had actual phones to work with. Until we became Nokia all we had was a techview UI shell running on H2, or later, H4 boards that would boot an MMC card. Of course, when we became Nokia we got the flashing stations and access to Phoenix. Only a particular part of the company ever saw phones that were in development and you needed special access to get into that part of the building.

Re: Symbian Won

#148

I used work for Symbian. The OS itself was great at the time (it's open sourced somewhere), and got security correct (I don't recall 'privacy' ever being an explicit goal) but it was an absolute bitch to develop for. It had its own dialect of C++ which looks nothing like modern C++, the learning curve was huge. It tried really hard to have an app ecosystem but it was nothing like what google and apple have today. Net…

But when J2ME support was added, it became easy to develop apps. I used to develop J2ME apps as hobby, I made a game and took it for my first job interview. In that job I had to port a 30,000+ J2ME code app to Android in 2010. The company I worked for was even experimenting with NFC payments in Nokia Symbian phones in 2010!

Re: Symbian Won

#149

I used work for Symbian. The OS itself was great at the time (it's open sourced somewhere), and got security correct (I don't recall 'privacy' ever being an explicit goal) but it was an absolute bitch to develop for. It had its own dialect of C++ which looks nothing like modern C++, the learning curve was huge. It tried really hard to have an app ecosystem but it was nothing like what google and apple have today. Net…

I can't edit my comment, but the source code seems to be here: https://github.com/SymbianSource

I could never accept the coding standard for curly bracket positioning.

Re: Symbian Won

#150
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A personal firewall is nothing more or less than a layer-7 firewall which rules you can (somehow) manage as user you are logged in with, with a nice GUI. There is Open Snitch [1] (plus forks/patches) for Linux, if you're after such. [1] https://www.opensnitch.io

Editing the rules as a user with a GUI is the easy part. The more difficult parts are in details: - how do you recognize which applications the packets belongs to? Even if you would get pid in the rules engine (which you normally don't), how do you name it? /proc/$pid/cmdline can be manipulated at will by the process; then you need to recognize additional parameters when you are using applications that run other code…

/proc/.../exe exists.

ETA: and most Linux apps will just sit there blocking in the syscall, or at the very worst, retry/show an error/crash.

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