Monday, September 10, 2007

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From The Times
September 10, 2007

Oprah’s $3m party and a blessing for Obama

Tom Baldwin in Washington

In return for their $2,300 (£1,133) admission fee, guests were forced to leave their cars in a car park eight miles away and climb on board buses, told they must wear flat shoes to protect the “sacred” lawns, then stripped of their mobile phones and cameras.

But such is the drawing power of Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama that there was little complaint when the queen of daytime TV hosted a $3 million (£1.5 million) fundraiser for her prince. About 1,500 guests were allowed to set their flat-soled feet on the grounds of Ms Winfrey’s 42-acre estate in Montecito, near Santa Barbara, California, on Saturday evening. Inside they dined on mini-hamburgers, chicken and corn on the cob while sitting on Obama-embroidered blankets.

Most of the donors — despite paying the maximum amount allowed under law to Mr Obama’s presidential campaign — were denied access to a VIP reception and dinner. They will have had at best only a fleeting handshake with these iconic black Americans, as well as the chance of spotting celebrities such as Sidney Poitier, Tyler Perry and Stevie Wonder.

Ms Winfrey even warned guests to be on their best behaviour after being invited to her “special, sacred, spiritual” $50 million mansion.

George Bush’s revival in 2000 after languishing up to ten points behind Al Gore in the polls was attributed widely to the “Oprah bounce” of an appearance on her show. But now she says that Mr Obama is the only presidential candidate she will showcase.

Admitting that she never expected to be endorsing a presidential campaign, she added: “When you have been called, no one can stand in the way of destiny.” Her involvement could even extend to appearing on the campaign stump with Mr Obama or making TV adverts backing him. “My money isn’t going to make any difference. My support of him is probably worth more than any cheque that I could write,” she said recently.

For Mr Obama there are also risks. Appearing alongside such a huge star could lead to him being outshone, while reinforcing a criticism that his campaign has a little too much glitter and not enough weight.

According to a recent Gallup poll, Ms Winfrey is considered the second-most-influential woman in the US. The only trouble is that occupying first place is Mr Obama’s main rival for the Democratic presidential nomination: Hillary Clinton.


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Doctor Links a Man’s Illness to a Microwave Popcorn Habit - New York Times

September 5, 2007

Doctor Links a Man’s Illness to a Microwave Popcorn Habit

A fondness for microwave buttered popcorn may have led a 53-year-old Colorado man to develop a serious lung condition that until now has been found only in people working in popcorn plants.

Lung specialists and even a top industry official say the case, the first of its kind, raises serious concerns about the safety of microwave butter-flavored popcorn.

“We’ve all been working on the workplace safety side of this, but the potential for consumer exposure is very concerning,” said John B. Hallagan, general counsel for the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association of the United States, a trade association of companies that make butter flavorings for popcorn producers. “Are there other cases out there? There could be.”

A spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration said that the agency was considering the case as part of a review of the safety of diacetyl, which adds the buttery taste to many microwave popcorns, including Orville Redenbacher and Act II.

Producers of microwave popcorn said their products were safe.

“We’re incredibly interested in learning more about this case. However, we are confident that our product is safe for consumers’ normal everyday use in the home,” said Stephanie Childs, a spokeswoman for ConAgra Foods, the nation’s largest maker of microwave popcorn.

Ms. Childs said ConAgra planned to remove diacetyl from its microwave popcorn products “in the near future.”

Pop Weaver, another large microwave popcorn producer, has already taken diacetyl out of its popcorn bags “because of consumer concerns” but not because the company believes the chemical is unsafe for consumers, said Cathy Yingling, a company spokeswoman.

The case will most likely accelerate calls on Capitol Hill for the Bush administration to crack down on the use of diacetyl. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been criticized as doing little to protect workers in popcorn plants despite years of studying the issue.

“The government is not doing anything,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who leads a subcommittee with jurisdiction over the food and drug agency’s budget.

Exposure to synthetic butter in food production and flavoring plants has been linked to hundreds of cases of workers whose lungs have been damaged or destroyed. Diacetyl is found naturally in milk, cheese, butter and other products.

Heated diacetyl becomes a vapor and, when inhaled over a long period of time, seems to lead the small airways in the lungs to become swollen and scarred. Sufferers can breathe in deeply, but they have difficulty exhaling. The severe form of the disease is called bronchiolitis obliterans or “popcorn workers’ lung,” which can be fatal.

Dr. Cecile Rose, director of the occupational disease clinical programs at National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, said that she first saw the Colorado man in February after another doctor could not figure out what was causing his distress. Dr. Rose described the case in a recent letter to government agencies.

A furniture salesman, the man was becoming increasingly short of breath. He had never smoked and was overweight. His illness had been diagnosed as hypersensitivity pneumonitis, an inflammation of the lungs usually caused by chronic exposure to bacteria, mold or dust. Farmers and bird enthusiasts are frequent sufferers.

But nothing in the Colorado man’s history suggested that he was breathing in excessive amounts of mold or bird droppings, Dr. Rose said. She has consulted to flavorings manufacturers for years about “popcorn workers’ lung,” and said that something about the man’s tests appeared similar to those of the workers.

“I said to him, ‘This is a very weird question, but bear with me. But are you around a lot of popcorn?’ ” Dr. Rose asked. “His jaw dropped and he said, ‘How could you possibly know that about me? I am Mr. Popcorn. I love popcorn.’ ”

The man told Dr. Rose that he had eaten microwave popcorn at least twice a day for more than 10 years.

“When he broke open the bags, after the steam came out, he would often inhale the fragrance because he liked it so much,” Dr. Rose said. “That’s heated diacetyl, which we know from the workers’ studies is the highest risk.”

Dr. Rose measured levels of diacetyl in the man’s home after he made popcorn and found levels of the chemical were similar to those in microwave popcorn plants. She asked the man to stop eating microwave popcorn.

“He was really upset that he couldn’t have it anymore,” Dr. Rose said. “But he complied.”

Six months later, the man has lost 50 pounds and his lung function has not only stopped deteriorating but has actually improved slightly, Dr. Rose said.

“This is not a definitive causal link, but it raises a lot of questions and supports the recommendation that more work needs to be done,” Dr. Rose said.




Infoshop News - GUTS Calls for Immediate Ban of Police Tasers in Guelph

GUTS Calls for Immediate Ban of Police Tasers in Guelph

Thursday, September 06 2007 @ 01:46 PM PDT
Contributed by: Anonymous
Views: 38
The Guelph Union of Tenants and Supporters is calling for an immediate ban on Tasers being issued to city Police.

Currently only Supervisors and the Tactical Squad are issued Tasers. The Police Chief has called for Tasers to be issued to every front-line officer. There are several recent reports of inappropriate and excessive use of Tasers in Guelph.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
GUTS Calls for Immediate Ban of Police Tasers in Guelph

September 6, 2007 (Guelph, ON)

The Guelph Union of Tenants and Supporters is calling for an immediate ban on Tasers being issued to city Police.

Currently only Supervisors and the Tactical Squad are issued Tasers. The Police Chief has called for Tasers to be issued to every front-line officer. There are several recent reports of inappropriate and excessive use of Tasers in Guelph.

GUTS supports the recent findings of Amnesty International. The group has recently published a report titled "Canada, Inappropriate and Excessive use of tasers."

Amnesty states that the Taser is supposed to be an alternative to deadly force yet is consistently used too early in the use of force model. Also Amnesty states "None of the studies carried out in Canada into the use of tasers meet Amnesty International's criteria for an independent, impartial and comprehensive inquiry into their use and effects.."

On July 25, 2007 a Guelph man was tasered by police, because he was suspected of being intoxicated and acting irrationally. The General Warnings put out by Taser, states that “... drug intoxication or chronic drug abuse, and/or over-exertion from physical struggle may result in serious injury or death.” Despite the lack of an immediate risk of death being posed to the officers involved, they chose to taser this man. The Guelph Police are in contravention of both International Law and the General Warnings put out by the manufacturer.

On the night of April 15, 2005 the Guelph Police arrested a woman for public intoxication. Following a strip search, she was placed in an interrogation room. When she refused to stand up, she was tasered by the Guelph Police. Tasers in combination with the influence of alcohol can be fatal. Moreover, since she was sitting down, the woman clearly was no physical threat to the officers.

These two cases highlight that the manner in which the Taser is being used in Guelph, and more broadly Canada, is in contravention of the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials and the Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by law Enforcement Officials. GUTS believes that under international law, the manner in which Tasers are being used in our community would fall into the category of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

It is GUTS' position that the leadership and highly trained units in the Guelph Police do not have the training nor inclination to correctly use tasers. Clearly the culture of policing in Guelph is not conducive to proper use of tasers and they should be banned until proper training is given, proper research is conducted, and proper accountability measures are in place.

-30-

For more information:

Canada: Inappropriate and Excessive Use of Tasers
http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?lang=e&id=ENGAMR200022007

Taser International: Law Enforcement Warnings
http://www.taser.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/Controlled%20Documents/Warnings/LG-INST-LEWARN-001%20REV%20L%20Law%20Enforcement%20Warnings.pdf


Human-animal embryo study wins approval | Science | The Guardian

Human-animal embryo study wins approval

Mixing cells and eggs to be allowed in search for new medical treatments

  • Ian Sample, science correspondent
  • The Guardian
  • Tuesday September 4 2007

Plans to allow British scientists to create human-animal embryos are expected to be approved tomorrow by the government's fertility regulator. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority published its long-awaited public consultation on the controversial research yesterday, revealing that a majority of people were "at ease" with scientists creating the hybrid embryos.

Researchers want to create hybrid embryos by merging human cells with animal eggs, in the hope they will be able to extract valuable embryonic stem cells from them. The cells form the basic building blocks of the body and are expected to pave the way for revolutionary therapies for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and even spinal cord injuries.

The consultation papers were released ahead of the authority's final decision on the matter, which will mark the end of almost a year of intense lobbying by scientists and a fervent campaign by organisations opposed to research involving embryonic stem cells.

Using animal eggs will allow researchers to push ahead unhindered by the shortage of human eggs. Under existing laws, the embryos must be destroyed after 14 days when they are no bigger than a pinhead, and cannot be implanted into the womb.

Opponents of the research and some religious groups say the work blurs the distinction between humans and animals, and creates embryos that are destined to be destroyed when stem cells are extracted from them.

Two research groups based at King's College London and Newcastle University have already applied to the HFEA to create animal-human embryos, but their applications have been on hold since November last year amid confusion over whether the authority was legally able to issue licences.

If the authority approves the research, the applications will go forward to a committee, with a decision on both due within three months.

Professor Ian Wilmut, whose team cloned Dolly the sheep, is waiting for the HFEA's decision before applying to create hybrid embryos to study motor neurone disease with Professor Chris Shaw at the Institute of Psychiatry in London.

The consultation, a £150,000, three-month mix of opinion polls, public meetings and debates, found participants were initially cautious of merging animal and human material, but became more positive. "When further factual information was provided and further discussion took place, the majority of participants became more at ease with the idea," the HFEA's report says.

Most support was expressed for the creation of so-called cytoplasmic hybrid embryos, in which a human cell is inserted into an empty animal egg. Other hybrid embryos, such as those created by fertilising an animal egg with human sperm, or vice versa, were less well supported.

In December, the government sparked a revolt by scientists, patient groups and medical researchers when it published a white paper containing proposals to outlaw almost all research into animal-human embryos. The research has since been backed by Nobel prizewinners, the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the Commons science and technology committee, and the government's chief science adviser, Sir David King.

In May, the government withdrew its opposition in a draft fertility bill and now seeks to outlaw only embryos created by mixing sperm and eggs from humans and animals. The bill will be put before parliament before the end of the year.

Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, said: "The HFEA's consultation reveals welcome recognition of the potential of this research, [with] 61% of the general public agreeing with the creation of human-animal embryos, if it may help understand diseases, with only a quarter opposed to this research."

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From The Sunday Times
September 2, 2007

Pentagon ‘three-day blitz’ plan for Iran

Sarah Baxter, Washington

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.

President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late”.

One Washington source said the “temperature was rising” inside the administration. Bush was “sending a message to a number of audiences”, he said – to the Iranians and to members of the United Nations security council who are trying to weaken a tough third resolution on sanctions against Iran for flouting a UN ban on uranium enrichment.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week reported “significant” cooperation with Iran over its nuclear programme and said that uranium enrichment had slowed. Tehran has promised to answer most questions from the agency by November, but Washington fears it is stalling to prevent further sanctions. Iran continues to maintain it is merely developing civilian nuclear power.

Bush is committed for now to the diplomatic route but thinks Iran is moving towards acquiring a nuclear weapon. According to one well placed source, Washington believes it would be prudent to use rapid, overwhelming force, should military action become necessary.

Israel, which has warned it will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, has made its own preparations for airstrikes and is said to be ready to attack if the Americans back down.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which uncovered the existence of Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, said the IAEA was being strung along. “A number of nuclear sites have not even been visited by the IAEA,” he said. “They’re giving a clean bill of health to a regime that is known to have practised deception.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, irritated the Bush administration last week by vowing to fill a “power vacuum” in Iraq. But Washington believes Iran is already fighting a proxy war with the Americans in Iraq.

The Institute for the Study of War last week released a report by Kimberly Kagan that explicitly uses the term “proxy war” and claims that with the Sunni insurgency and Al-Qaeda in Iraq “increasingly under control”, Iranian intervention is the “next major problem the coalition must tackle”.

Bush noted that the number of attacks on US bases and troops by Iranian-supplied munitions had increased in recent months – “despite pledges by Iran to help stabilise the security situation in Iraq”.

It explains, in part, his lack of faith in diplomacy with the Iranians. But Debat believes the Pentagon’s plans for military action involve the use of so much force that they are unlikely to be used and would seriously stretch resources in Afghanistan and Iraq.


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Social network sites tempt investors | Tech&Sci | Technology | Reuters.com


FayObserver.com - Current Article Page

Published on Wednesday, August 29, 2007


Embarq Internet service restored

By Nancy McCleary
Staff writer
ADVERTISEMENT

Embarq Internet service was restored just before noon Tuesday after it was disrupted by equipment failure.

“Everybody should be up and running,” said Tom Matthews, a company spokesman.

The hardware failure happened during routine maintenance in the Rocky Mount area between midnight and 6 a.m. Tuesday, Matthews said.

The equipment that was affected is used to handle the distribution of high-speed Internet service, Matthews said.

Most of those affected were in central North Carolina, he said. Some customers in Fayetteville reported they were without Internet service.

Matthews did not have a specific number of affected customers.

“It’s one of those things,” he said. “It won’t necessarily affect everyone at the same time.”

Although service was restored, Matthews said some customers may experience slower than normal Internet access.

“There will be some speed degradation for awhile longer,” Matthews said.

Staff writer Nancy McCleary can be reached at mcclearyn@fayobserver.com or 486-3568.


Article | Reuters

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Infectious diseases spreading faster than ever: UN

Thu Aug 23, 2007 12:40PM EDT

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA (Reuters) - Infectious diseases are emerging more quickly and spreading faster around the globe than ever and becoming increasingly difficult to treat, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

With billions of people moving around the planet every year, the U.N. agency said in its annual World Health Report: "An outbreak or epidemic in one part of the world is only a few hours away from becoming an imminent threat somewhere else."

WHO director-general Margaret Chan said mass travel could facilitate the rapid spread of infectious diseases.

"No country can shield itself from invasion by a pathogen incubating in an airline passenger or an insect hiding in a cargo hold," Chan told reporters.

The U.N. agency warned that there was a good possibility of another major scourge like AIDS, SARS or Ebola fever with the potential of killing millions appearing in the coming years.

"Infectious diseases are now spreading geographically much faster than at any time in history," the WHO said.

It said it was vital to keep watch for new threats like the emergence in 2003 of SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which spread from China to 30 countries and killed 800 people.

"It would be extremely naive and complacent to assume that there will not be another disease like AIDS, another Ebola, or another SARS, sooner or later," the report warned.

Since the 1970s, the WHO said, new threats have been identified at an "unprecedented rate" of one or more every year, meaning that nearly 40 diseases exist today which were unknown just over a generation ago.

Over the last five years alone, WHO experts had verified more than 1,100 epidemics of different diseases.

It was therefore vital for countries to share information on outbreaks so risks can be assessed and mitigated, Chan said.

MONITORING VITAL

The report called for renewed efforts to monitor, prevent and control epidemic-prone illnesses such as cholera, yellow fever and meningococcal diseases.

International assistance may be required to help health workers in poorer countries identify and contain outbreaks of emerging viral diseases such as Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fever, the WHO said.

It warned global efforts to control infectious diseases had been "seriously jeopardized" by widespread drug resistance, a consequence of poor medical treatment and misuse of antibiotics.

This is a particular problem with tuberculosis. Extensively drug-resistant (XDR-TB) strains of the contagious respiratory ailment have emerged worldwide.

Although the H5N1 bird flu virus has not mutated into a form that passes easily between humans, as many scientists had feared, the next influenza pandemic was "likely to be of an avian variety" and could affect some 1.5 billion people.

Chan noted that the last influenza pandemic was in 1968 and had killed about 1 million people. "We have learned from previous pandemics that even the mildest pandemic causes too many premature deaths. We don't want to see that," she said.

She urged countries affected by human cases of bird flu, including Indonesia, to continue sharing virus samples, deemed crucial to tracking the virus and to developing a pandemic vaccine.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva)

© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

Reuters journalists are subject to the Reuters Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.


Print Story: Time Travel Machine Outlined on Yahoo! News

Time Travel Machine Outlined

Charles Q. Choi
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.comMon Aug 20, 11:55 AM ET

A new concept for a time machine could possibly enable distant future generations to travel into the past, research now suggests.

Unlike past ideas for time machines, this new concept does not require exotic, theoretical forms of matter. Still, this new idea requires technology far more advanced than anything existing today, and major questions remain as to whether any time machine would ever prove stable enough to enable actual travel back in time.

Time machine researchers often investigate gravity, which essentially arises when matter bends space and time. Time travel research is based on bending space-time so far that time lines actually turn back on themselves to form a loop, technically known as a "closed time-like curve."

"We know that bending does happen all the time, but we want the bending to be strong enough and to take a special form where the lines of time make closed loops," said theoretical physicist Amos Ori at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. "We are trying to find out if it is possible to manipulate space-time to develop in such a way."

Many scientists are skeptical as to whether or not time travel is possible. For instance, time machines often are thought to need an exotic form of matter with so-called "negative energy density." Such exotic matter has bizarre properties, including moving in the opposite direction of normal matter when pushed. Such matter could theoretically exist, but if it did, it might be present only in quantities too small for the construction of a time machine.

Ori's latest research suggests time machines are possible without exotic matter, eliminating a barrier to time travel. His work begins with a donut-shaped hole enveloped within a sphere of normal matter.

"We're talking about these closed loops of time, and the simplest kind of closed loops are circles, which is why we have this ring-shaped hole," Ori explained.

Inside this donut-shaped vacuum, space-time could get bent upon itself using focused gravitational fields to form a closed time-like curve. To go back in time, a traveler would race around inside the donut, going further back into the past with each lap.

"The machine is space-time itself," Ori said. "If we were to create an area with a warp like this in space that would enable time lines to close on themselves, it might enable future generations to return to visit our time."

Ori emphasized one significant limitation of this time machine—"it can't be used to travel to a time before the time machine was constructed." His findings are detailed in the Aug. 3 issue of the journal Physical Review D.

A number of obstacles remain, however. The gravitational fields required to make such a closed time-like curve would have to be very strong, "on the order of what you might find close to a black hole," Ori told LiveScience. "We don't have any way of creating such strong gravitational fields today, and we certainly have no way of manipulating any such gravitational fields."

Even if time machines were technically feasible, the gravitational fields involved need to be manipulated in very specific, accurate ways, and Ori said his calculations suggest any time machine could be very unstable, meaning "the tiniest deviations might keep one from working. We need to explore the problem of stability of time machines further."

Theoretical physicist Ken Olum of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., who did not participate in this study, was skeptical concerning how this new model claimed to sidestep prior theoretical objections to time travel.

Still, Olum noted, "It's important if it's right—that there really is some kind of loophole. So this should be scrutinized very closely." The point of such work, he added, was to "expand the bounds of what's possible, what kind of things we can have and what kinds of things we cannot have."

Top 10 Time Travel Tales You Can't Travel Back in Time, Scientists Say Video: Can You Time Travel? Original Story: Time Travel Machine Outlined

Visit LiveScience.com for more daily news, views and scientific inquiry with an original, provocative point of view. LiveScience reports amazing, real world breakthroughs, made simple and stimulating for people on the go. Check out our collection of Science, Animal and Dinosaur Pictures, Science Videos, Hot Topics, Trivia, Top 10s, Voting, Amazing Images, Reader Favorites, and more. Get cool gadgets at the new LiveScience Store, sign up for our free daily email newsletter and check out our RSS feeds today!

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Finding JTAG on the iPhone
--First, an iPhone. Of the sshed and jailbroken variety. Also, kill commcenter by moving the LaunchDaemon plist out of the directory.
--Some trusty case opener tools(read: guitar picks) Read one of the many tutorials available online for taking apart your phone.
--A soldering iron. This should've cost you more than $10.
--Fine pitch wire. I used magnet wire salvaged from a little motor.
--An unlock switch. The bigger and more badass, the better. Or if you are cheap, wire cutters :-)
--A red bull. This requires concentration, something I don't have without Red Bull.

Finding JTAG on the iPhone

Step 1


First, I would like to say thanks again to gray, iProof, dinopio, lazyc0der, anonymous, the dev team, nightwatch, and everyone who donated. Without them, there would be no unlock today, and I surely wouldn't be up at 8AM.
Second, you may brick your iPhone using this tutorial. YOU ARE WARNED.
Okay on to the actual step. Remove the black part, the three screws, and the aluminum case. Disconnect the wire connecting the phone to the case. Do not remove anything else. Comment on these posts if you are with me so far. Once we get a good number of comments I'll move on.



Finding JTAG on the iPhone

Step 2


Also remove the metal cover over the comm board. This is all the disassembly you have to do. If you feel like being safe, desolder the battery red lead. I didn't :)



Finding JTAG on the iPhone

Step 3


The red line is covering the A17 trace. In order to trick the chip into thinking the flash is erased in the correct section, you will need to pull this high. Scrape away at the trace with something like a multimeter probe. Then solder a very thin wire to it. Be very careful. Only scrape away at that solder mask above that one trace. YOU DO NOT WANT TO BREAK THE TRACE. This is the hardest step in the whole process; the rest is cake. Also solder a wire to the 1.8v line. Connect to wire coming from the trace and the wire coming from the 1.8v to your unlock switch. Be careful, you only get one chance to do this right. Thanks again to Nick Chernyy for the picture.



Finding JTAG on the iPhone

Step 7

So here is the first tool release, iEraser. This erases the current firmware on your modem. Don't worry, you can always put it back with bbupdater. Here how the bootrom check works; it reads from 0xA0000030 0xA000A5A0 0xA0015C58 0xA0017370 and all these addresses must read as blank, or 0xFFFFFFFF. When you erase flash, it becoms 0xFFFFFFFF. But you can't erase those locations, because they are in the bootloader. So thats where the testpoint comes in. Pulling A17 high hardware OR's the address bus with 0x00040000(offset one because data bus is 16 bit) So the bootrom instead checks locations 0xA0040030 0xA004A5A0 0xA0045C58 0xA0047370, which are in the main firmware and can be erased. Pretty genius :)
To use this tool, you need the secpack from your modems version. The erase of this section is protected. Check the modem version in Settings->About. It'll either be 3.12(1.0) or 3.14(1.0.1 and 1.0.2). You need the ramdisk which cooresponds to your version. Then go into "/usr/local/standalone/firmware" and get the ICE*.fls file. Extract 0x1a4-0x9a4 and save it in a file called secpack and place it in the same directory as the ieraser tool. Run ieraser. This should erase the modem firmware and leave you one more step on your way to unlocking.

Posted by George Hotz at 1:17 PM 20 comments

A Little Motivation


This is the world's second (outside super secret apple vault) unlocked iPhone.

Posted by George Hotz at 12:37 PM 5 comments

Step 6

Now, with the switch off, your baseband should be working perfectly. Here you should take a NOR dump of your phone. The dev team's NORDumper is a great way to do this. This is good to have in case something goes wrong. You can extract the firmware from this as well, which we'll get to later.

Posted by George Hotz at 12:09 PM 5 comments

Step 5

If it passed the checks in step 4, congratulate yourself. You are a pro solderer. Go eat lunch. If not, don't worry yet. I must've thought I bricked my phone 100 times. First of all, to power up your phone you don't need to reconnect the case with the power button. Just connect it with USB, it'll power itself up. Secondly, don't waste time compiling minicom. Download the binary here, and termcap here.

Posted by George Hotz at 11:31 AM 9 comments

Step 4

Ok, time to test what you just soldered. First use the continuity check on a multimeter to make sure the wires aren't shorting to ground or to each other. Make sure your switch is in the off position. Power up your iPhone. Hopefully it didn't smoke :) Now go into minicom to tty.baseband and send a few commands, AT a few times will do. It should respond OK. Now flip your switch, the baseband should stop responding. Even when you flip it back, the baseband still shouldn't respond. Be sure your switch is off, then open another ssh and run "bbupdater -v" You can get bbupdater off the ramdisk. This should reset the baseband, and minicom should start working again. If it did this, your soldering is most likely good, and you are ready to actually start unlocking your phone!!!



Finding JTAG on the iPhone

Postmortem

So if you follow these steps, you should have an unlocked iPhone. I'm sorry about how hard they are to follow, but someone will get them to work, and simplify them, and simplify them more. Hopefully a software unlock will be found in the near future.
I'm sorry to say I won't be in the iPhone scene anymore. I leave for college in two days, and I have so much to do. We still have a good amount, about a grand, of donation money left. We definitely need to buy jpetrie a new iPhone. He donated the original phone that made all this possible. I'll even unlock the new phone for him. With the money left over, if anyone wants it back, drop me a line. I wish I had time right now to unlock iPhones for people, but even with this method it'll take me two hours per phone, and I'm leaving so soon. I will continue to post to this blog, and I will continue to work with the iPhone, but not on a software unlock. I am pretty much useless there. I plan on setting up a ssh box into my test iPhone for gray to play around with. In these posts/files is basically everything I know. I have a few cool ideas for things I want to do with the phone, like a cell phone tower based gps. I will detail everything on this blog.
Using this exploit is should be very easy to permanently mod your phone to run unsigned code. Just write 0xFFFFFFF to the locations the bootrom checks. I don't believe they are used. Also, if anyone finds a way to erase the bootloader from software, this becomes a software unlock.
I really wish I had more time to detail all of this, and one day I will. You will always be able to reach me at geohot at gmail. This has been a great community and has been a great trip. I hope I was a positive influence on the community. Thanks so much everyone, I have learned so much. Coming into this project I didn't know that cell phones used at commands, or that there was a distinction between kernel/user space. I had once in my life looked at ida before this, and found it too confusing. I still can't reverse well, but this is definitely something I want to learn. Thanks again everyone.

Posted by George Hotz at 3:15 PM 53 comments

Step 10: The Last One

minicom into /dev/tty.baseband. If you already used up your attempt counter, the phone should already be unlocked. If not just run 'AT+CLCK="PN",0,"00000000". That will unlock the phone for sure. Run 'AT+CLCK="PN",2'. It should finally return 0!!!
Your phone is now unlocked. Exit minicom and copy the CommCenter plist back to its place. Reboot. iASign. And enjoy your unlocked iPhone.

Posted by George Hotz at 3:10 PM 39 comments

Step 9

The final tool is iUnlocker. This tool uploads a small program, "testcode.bb", to the baseband using the bootrom exploit. This program needs to be in a dir with "nor", the file you obtained in the last step. You need to have the switch on when running this program. This will download and run the code in "testcode.bb" Then the program will stop and ask to to turn off the switch. Do so. You type any character then hit enter. The nor download starts right away. When the counter reaches 0x2E4000, it is done. Run "bbupdater -v". Hopefully it will return the xgendata. If is does, the nor upload was successful.

Posted by George Hotz at 3:00 PM 3 comments

Step 8

Now its time to patch the firmware. Thanks to gray for finding these patches, this required some very complicated reversing. First, you need to extract the firmware from your nor dump. The range you need is 0x20000-0x304000. Save this file as "nor". The patches you need to apply are as follows. These are offsets from the begininning of the file to saved as "nor". Choose your version, and patch.
3.12: (213740): 04 00 a0 e1 -> 00 00 a0 e3
3.14: (215148): 04 00 a0 e1 -> 00 00 a0 e3
Resave the file nor, you'll need it soon...



Finding JTAG on the iPhone

Some Comments on the Method

This method is very similar to the method used to unlock the Siemens phones with the S-Gold2 chipset. The S-Gold2 has a bootrom which allows you to download a bit of unsigned code. This code is run if certain flash addresses are blank. Using a little hardware trick, which I'll explain later, we make them appear blank. Then once we have unsigned code running on the baseband, we can download a modified firmware, with the unlock patched in, to the nor flash. The signature checks only cover this region while it is being downloaded the first time. Once the code is on the NOR we can do whatever we want. So patch out the PN lock; Voila, unlocked iPhone.



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