How does this app make money? And why is it getting so much attention now even though the same idea's been done before?
Here's the Most Idiotic and Brilliant App Ever
101–110 of 122 posts
Re: Here's the Most Idiotic and Brilliant App Ever
#102Ok, the app's web service is rather prone to manipulation: You just need to HTTP GET the following URL: http://www.carrotpop.com/smth/php/save_result.php?id= &nickname= &country=&result= &latitude=0&longitude=0 * UID looks like an autoincrement ID * NICK is what you entered for the highscore * HEIGHT is the float value of the height in meters, i.e. "1.23" In the HTTP response, you get a data structure (not sure which…
Can I ask how you discovered the URL the app was making requests to?
Fiddler on your desktop machine - http://fiddler2.com/documentation/Configure-Fiddler/Tasks/Co...
Re: Here's the Most Idiotic and Brilliant App Ever
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps I didn't explain myself - I'm not saying the rule isn't transparent, I understand very well there's an actual rule. My complaint is that it's there at all. Although, what you said about warranties makes sense...however honestly that hasn't kept friends of mine from deliberately breaking their phones just to get new ones.
...then your friends are dishonest, and their dishonesty raises the price I have to pay when I buy a product from Apple. Did you criticize them when you found out they did that?
Sure. Not that it helped any. Interestingly, it's more my "untechnical" friends - exclusively those, actually. The technical ones are somewhat invested in technology news and wouldn't do that because they understand a lot more of the process. On the other hand, those that are dishonest in this way, in my experience, know nothing about the tech of Apple except that it's, well, new and shiny.
As for myself, my iPhone 4 is half-broken and I'm still eeking out whatever life I can get from it before I get the iPhone 6 in the Fall.
Re: Here's the Most Idiotic and Brilliant App Ever
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
When friends ask which smartphone to get, I often recommend the iPhone, despite being a long time Android user and fan. The reason is that Apple has a very generous straight replacement policy (at a fraction of the retail new price) even if you don't subscribe to any of their care plans. This is a world different from makers like HTC and Samsung who fully intend to double dip if you have an issue with your device, wh…
My other half dropped her phone recently and was utterly distraught. Neither of us realised just how insanely favourable the like for like replacement deal was, and were unsurprisingly hugely complimentary about Apple afterwards. I cannot overstate how helpful and efficient the staff were and the process was just so quick and simple. If (mildly idiotic) apps like this being banned are the price of that piece of mind?…
you sir are an idiot.
Re: Here's the Most Idiotic and Brilliant App Ever
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
My other half dropped her phone recently and was utterly distraught. Neither of us realised just how insanely favourable the like for like replacement deal was, and were unsurprisingly hugely complimentary about Apple afterwards. I cannot overstate how helpful and efficient the staff were and the process was just so quick and simple. If (mildly idiotic) apps like this being banned are the price of that piece of mind?…
Agreed. The screen my girlfriends iPad broke edge to edge, so I decided to bite the bullet and go pay to have it replaced. Took it to the Apple store, he looks at it for a second and runs into the back. Hands me a new one(refurb?) and (after verifying that I backed up already) says "You're all set! Have a good day". I was pleasantly surprised, and looked like an awesome boyfriend.
you sir are not an idiot, contrary to the guy you are replying to.
Re: Here's the Most Idiotic and Brilliant App Ever
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a camera design that uses exactly this method, unfortunately patented: http://www.slashgear.com/squinto-throwable-ball-camera-grant... Prior art, unfortunately also attempting a patent is at: http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera
Unless your phone includes "a substantially spherical housing suitable for being projected into an airborne trajectory", I think you're in the clear. http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...
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Re: Here's the Most Idiotic and Brilliant App Ever
#107I hope they have a standing connection to the server during the throw and detect ... disconnects. That way, they could detect crashes and give approximate credit for the height. I don't want to throw my phone high into the air, watch it go to pieces and not even get a high score.
No way! This is the price is right rule. Go over and you lose it all!
Re: Here's the Most Idiotic and Brilliant App Ever
#108Ok, the app's web service is rather prone to manipulation: You just need to HTTP GET the following URL: http://www.carrotpop.com/smth/php/save_result.php?id= &nickname= &country=&result= &latitude=0&longitude=0 * UID looks like an autoincrement ID * NICK is what you entered for the highscore * HEIGHT is the float value of the height in meters, i.e. "1.23" In the HTTP response, you get a data structure (not sure which…
How exactly do you prevent something like this? How do you ensure that the stats sent over the internet are coming from an actual approved client?
My instinct tells me the simplest solution would be security by obscurity - adding some validation token that the client generates by some obscure and hard to reverse engineer manner. Is there any better way to 'validate' your client?
Re: Here's the Most Idiotic and Brilliant App Ever
#109So a friend of mine interned at this small company nearly 3 years ago, and made this app over his summer: http://iphonehangtime.com
On my mobile device so couldn't really look through the comments to see if someone already mentioned hang time, but I'll just leave it here.
Re: Here's the Most Idiotic and Brilliant App Ever
#110Ok, the app's web service is rather prone to manipulation: You just need to HTTP GET the following URL: http://www.carrotpop.com/smth/php/save_result.php?id= &nickname= &country=&result= &latitude=0&longitude=0 * UID looks like an autoincrement ID * NICK is what you entered for the highscore * HEIGHT is the float value of the height in meters, i.e. "1.23" In the HTTP response, you get a data structure (not sure which…
How exactly do you prevent something like this? How do you ensure that the stats sent over the internet are coming from an actual approved client? My instinct tells me the simplest solution would be security by obscurity - adding some validation token that the client generates by some obscure and hard to reverse engineer manner. Is there any better way to 'validate' your client?
I had to deal with this before. Basically we combined several obscuring techniques:
Use SSL for the requests which makes it harder to sniff the API.
Add some sort of tamper token like you suggest.
Use a specific User Agent string and check for that.
Provide no error messages if any of the above fails.