Slashdot Mirror

Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven’t really changed in any meaningful way over the years

Maybe the reason for this is the basic form works. The design of the wheel hasn't changed much in a 5 thousand years either. I wonder why.

I beg to differ. The basic design requirement of a wheel is that it's round and rolls, and I'll certainly grant you that this aspect of wheels hasn't changed. However, a rough-hewn wooden round, such as used in the simplest of carts, bears very little other resemblance to the three-spoked carbon-fiber performance bicycle wheels I see with some frequency on my morning bicycle commute. Sure, both are round and roll, but otherwise, there's thousands of years of difference between them.

So what are the design requirements for computer input? You could start by looking at the requirements of a keyboard and a mouse: 1) Must have all the keys required to input at least ASCII. 2) Must have some kind of pointer-device control, ideally with at least two buttons.

So sure, you can have your basic flat keyboard, and a basic mouse. Or you could have something quite different, like this, or this, or this, or this (what I'm actually using to type this message).

And that's not even looking into other possible input schemes, such as voice recognition, eye tracking, etc.

I applaud Valve's efforts to look into better ways of doing things. This kind of exploration is exactly what leads to new and better things.

Cheers,

Hold now, Assange is innocent. We've all heard him say so many, many times. He's not trying to use diplomacy to get the charges dropped - quite to the contrary, he wants to go back to Sweden! He just wants guarantees (regardless of whether or not giving them would be illegal) that he won't be extradited to the US, and then he'll happily go back to Sweden to clear his name. *That's* what he's negotiating for, not to get the case dropped. Come on, Julian, tell them!.

During the Telesur television interview, recorded earlier this week inside the embassy, Mr Assange said that he believes the situation "will be solved through diplomacy". He added: "The Swedish government could drop the case. I think this is the most likely scenario. Maybe after a thorough investigation of what happened they could drop the case. I think this will be solved in between six and 12 months. That's what I estimate."

Oh...

And then there is the judicial branch, which rolls over and asks the Feds to scratch its tummy at any mention of the State Secrets Doctrine.

There's a whole sordid history to the State Secrets Doctrine involving the deaths of three geeks in a military plane in the 50s and the Air Force covering up its negligence by claiming it would harm national security if an accident report was released. Decades later that accident report was declassified and showed nothing of any national security import -- just some lousy maintenance on the plane and failure to make manufacturer recommended upgrades. Had the widows been allowed to have it, they would have likely done well at trial. Anyway, keeping it secret enabled the Air Force to short change the widows by settling the case cheap.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/383/origin-story?act=2#play

Oh yeah, and Obama is the worst offender in applying the state secrets doctrine. Just search for obama state secrets doctrine --- the examples are ridiculously numerous for one who promised openness in government.

Grow your own meat without the cows in space. PDF, quick view.

sandboxing is just another layer of security, it isnt a silver bullet solution... in fact many times (like in chrome) is used as a excuse to not proper check things and do a more careless development (from the security point of view). all is well until someone finds a way to break out the sandbox (just look at the recent java security problems) and then you can use one of the many holes to hop jump the sandbox and reach the OS.
Firefox mostly dont have sandbox, but have many other proper security checks that other lack, and its secure because of then. Of course sandbox is yet another layer that should exist and they are slowly sandboxing key areas. Its harder because they want to support various OS at the same level where chrome have a full sandbox in windows but a lot weaker one in linux (see https://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxSandboxing and https://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxSUIDSandbox... things might be better when seccomp is enabled by default in chrome)

So yes, sandbox is good, but should not be trusted as the main security barrier in one application, other checks are always needed.

sandboxing is just another layer of security, it isnt a silver bullet solution... in fact many times (like in chrome) is used as a excuse to not proper check things and do a more careless development (from the security point of view). all is well until someone finds a way to break out the sandbox (just look at the recent java security problems) and then you can use one of the many holes to hop jump the sandbox and reach the OS.
Firefox mostly dont have sandbox, but have many other proper security checks that other lack, and its secure because of then. Of course sandbox is yet another layer that should exist and they are slowly sandboxing key areas. Its harder because they want to support various OS at the same level where chrome have a full sandbox in windows but a lot weaker one in linux (see https://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxSandboxing and https://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxSUIDSandbox... things might be better when seccomp is enabled by default in chrome)

So yes, sandbox is good, but should not be trusted as the main security barrier in one application, other checks are always needed.

That bug was found by Rafal Wojtczuk who is also an author of Qubes: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/qubes-devel/JIpZoQUP6dQ

Real men use wget. Or telnet.

TFTFY

How do you search for european patents?

I wondered about that, too. I don't get any EP results, even if I search for an EP number. For example the patents listed on some Espacenet query, do not return any results on google.

Pretty sure he was talking about using an iPad SSH client *on* the iPad, to open a terminal on the same iPad where you would use vim to code.

And the advantage of that over just using mobileterminal is? Either of those scenarios requires jailbreaking, so it's not as if using ssh magically removes that restriction, so I suspect he was not sshing back into his own machine, but instead into another machine.

Investing in one of THESE is a big help:

http://www.google.com/search?sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=%22DDos+Appliance%22&btnG=Search&gbv=1&sei=KYw7UI-4FsXs6wH3uIDoDw

Because DDoS/DoS CAN be stopped (Microsoft & Amazon are setup PERFECTLY vs. it in fact, read on below on that note)"

Protect Against SYN Attacks

FROM -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff648853.aspx

A SYN attack exploits a vulnerability in the TCP/IP connection establishment mechanism. To mount a SYN flood attack, an attacker uses a program to send a flood of TCP SYN requests to fill the pending connection queue on the server. This prevents other users from establishing network connections.

To protect the network against SYN attacks, follow these generalized steps, explained later in this document:

Enable SYN attack protection
Set SYN protection thresholds
Set additional protections
Enable SYN Attack Protection

The named value to enable SYN attack protection is located beneath the registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TcpIp\Parameters.

Value name: SynAttackProtect

Recommended value: 2

Valid values: 0, 1, 2

Description: Causes TCP to adjust retransmission of SYN-ACKS. When you configure this value the connection responses timeout more quickly in the event of a SYN attack. A SYN attack is triggered when the values of TcpMaxHalfOpen or TcpMaxHalfOpenRetried are exceeded.
Set SYN Protection Thresholds

The following values determine the thresholds for which SYN protection is triggered. All of the keys and values in this section are under the registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TcpIp\Parameters

These keys and values are:

Value name: TcpMaxPortsExhausted

Recommended value: 5

Valid values: 0?65535

Description: Specifies the threshold of TCP connection requests that must be exceeded before SYN flood protection is triggered.

Value name: TcpMaxHalfOpen

Recommended value data: 500

Valid values: 100?65535

Description: When SynAttackProtect is enabled, this value specifies the threshold of TCP connections in the SYN_RCVD state. When SynAttackProtect is exceeded, SYN flood protection is triggered.

Value name: TcpMaxHalfOpenRetried

Recommended value data: 400

Valid values: 80?65535

Description: When SynAttackProtect is enabled, this value specifies the threshold of TCP connections in the SYN_RCVD state for which at least one retransmission has been sent. When SynAttackProtect is exceeded, SYN flood protection is triggered.

Set Additional Protections

All the keys and values in this section are located under the registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TcpIp\Parameters. These keys and values are:

Value name: TcpMaxConnectResponseRetransmissions

Recommended value data: 2

Valid values: 0?255

Description: Controls how many times a SYN-ACK is retransmitted before canceling the attempt when responding to a SYN request.

Value name: TcpMaxDataRetransmissions

Recommended value data: 2

Valid values: 0?65535

Description: Specifies the number of times that TCP retransmits an individual data segment (not connection request segments) before aborting the connection.

Value name: EnablePMTUDiscovery

Recommended value data: 0

Valid values: 0, 1

Description: Setting this value to 1 (the default) forces TCP to discover the maximum transmission unit or largest packet size over the path to a remote host. An attacker can force packet fragmen

You mean Android, Inc? A bunch of arrogant assholes who, for years, refused to play along with the rest of the Linux community. Yes, Google bought them and no, they have nothing to do with the rest of the company; completely different attitude and culture.

De Icaza is just an MS shill, not sure why we waste time reading his useless rants.

--
I'm a professional asshole!

FTFY:

Yeah, and some teenager working on his hobby program late at night might actually want to send his code to other people, so that they can run it and possibly work with him.

You might jot down an idea on a tablet, but you aren't doing any real development. Just because you think what you do is real development doesn't mean it actually is.

Dude, take your head out of the sand. This is a full-fledged development environment for Android apps that runs on Android. What separates AIDE from developing an Android app on the desktop with Eclipse? Seriously. You can even sign and publish from within AIDE. It supports auto-complete, debugging, source control, you name it. Please tell me why using that with a mouse and a keyboard is not doing "real development".

Here is the actual discussion on G+ instead of an article that just quotes everything they say.

What? That's impossible! Nobody uses G+! All the running jokes and memes on the internet say it's a ghost town! How could there possibly be anything useful happening on G+?

Nope, that won't do at all. Convert the entire thing into 140-character-or-less blurbs and repost it to Twitter. There's a meme at stake here, people! One that we're still using for cheap laughs!

Have you tried Python in SL4A?

Developing apps on a tablet is a parlour trick that doesn't really matter.

I've never developed an app on Android from start to finish on my tablet but it's a little more than a parlor trick. I keep a few of my lesser important projects in Dropbox and on more than a few occasions felt inspired and whipped out my Galaxy Nexus or Xoom and got to work. The ability to then compile and install right there on the device is awesome in that scenario. The only thing holding something like AIDE isn't as capable as a traditional IDE is it hasn't been around long enough for the developers to have had time to include, debug, and ship all the expected features. There is no fundamental reason that given enough time, AIDE or something like it couldn't be a first class development tool for Android.

You do realize you just used the classic "works for me" completely worthless answer, yes? Well I have a B&W G3 and an AMD 6 core running Win 7 so OSX and Windows "works for me" so that means that ALL OSes must be just great, yes?

The problem is, and Torvalds can get pissy if he wants but it doesn't change reality, that with everything from the kernel on up constantly in a state of flux maintaining software and drivers for Linux costs waaay more money than it does for Windows and OSX so many simply won't bother. I mean how many drivers does Nvidia have to put up just to keep their GPUs running in Linux? Yet a WinXP driver written by them in 04 will run on XP now, their RTM Win 7 driver runs on 7 now, no need for Nvidia to futz with it.

If you would like some further reading I'd suggest this article by one of the RH devs that says the desktop is "suckage" and that Linux is paying for "mistakes made 10-20 years ago"...kinda like...well kinda exactly like what de Icaza said. Oh and if you'd like to see what is broken here is a list of over 200 problems with both software and drivers. Please note that this is the 2012 edition, I can provide a link to the original list and you can compare and see how many of those problems are over 3 years old now.

Oh they will. As soon as Tim Cook does this.

..but if they were serious enough about coding on a tablet, there are plenty of portable hardware keyboards that can be connected to it.

But really, the IDE apps mentioned don't seem to allow development of actual iOS apps on the device, unlike https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui&hl=en

As I said, I find his arguments pretty dubious. I'm just saying he's not pointing fingers. His responses to Thorvalds comments make this clear.

Here is the actual discussion on G+ instead of an article that just quotes everything they say.

Let's not forget the granddaddy of Apple's steal-and-sue approach, the look-and-feel lawsuits, where Apple tried the same sh*t:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corporation

Note that Xerox also had to sue Apple to get a declaratory judgment because Apple was threatening Xerox's licensees:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3538913398421433687&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr

The Serval Project on the Android Market.

Our focus is on providing useful services without any reliance on fixed infrastructure. Phone calls and text messaging via adhoc mesh, and even file distribution in the field.

Though you might find our next release more suitable than the version on the market. It's still in heavy development, but would also allow phone calls to be relayed to the PSTN via an asterisk PBX. We'd be happy to provide an alpha version and help you to get the most use out of it.

We're also working on a separate application that uses open street map data for situational awareness and collaborative mapping.

Remember what the press was saying when Samsung debuted the SIII?

The Samsung Galaxy S III: The First Smartphone Designed Entirely By Lawyers

And now Fruit wants to ban this lawyer-designed phone? Well smoke me a kipper, either the reality distortion field seems to cause lasting damage or they are communicating with St. Steve through an Ouija board. In any case it does not make sense. And they think they can gain what by doing this? Respect? Money? Time? What, exactly?

As far as I can see all they earn by going on a sueing spree is ridicule, contempt and hatred. For some reason many people seem to get almost religiously attached to their mobile gadgets, and Fruit now acts as if they are the Church of Scientology. Bad fruit. Soon anonymous will start staking out their sales churches.

Who's to blame?

Google.

Blackberry has had a solution to this problem for some time.
I have a Galaxy S3, but I miss the ability to have actual control over app permissions (ie. PDroid - which is a pain to get working on newer ROMs).
Between that, and the horrible calendar and dialer support in Android - I'm seriously considering a switch back; hell, Android only got encryption support in ICS.

If Blackberry had a decent browser, and more compelling devices, I probably never would have left.

Lest anyone think he is kidding, let's have a look at the permissions for each app.

Obama for America

RECEIVE DATA FROM INTERNET
Allows apps to accept cloud to device messages sent by the app's service. Using this service will incur data usage. Malicious apps could cause excess data usage.

That's money out of your pocket my friends. Typical Democrat.

Romney-Ryan

CONTROL VIBRATOR
Allows the app to control the vibrator.

So it should be obvious that the Register has good reason to be up in arms.

Lest anyone think he is kidding, let's have a look at the permissions for each app.

Obama for America

RECEIVE DATA FROM INTERNET
Allows apps to accept cloud to device messages sent by the app's service. Using this service will incur data usage. Malicious apps could cause excess data usage.

That's money out of your pocket my friends. Typical Democrat.

Romney-Ryan

CONTROL VIBRATOR
Allows the app to control the vibrator.

So it should be obvious that the Register has good reason to be up in arms.

PS how do you know the players PAID not PAYED fuckwit

How do I know? Well, because I have a grasp of the English language that you apparently lack?

You might want to invest in a dictionary... Or just, y'know, Google it, perhaps?

"Paid" functions as an adjective, "payed" as a verb.

Fuckwit.

In Norway, all banks use a common login-system called BankID (a joint-developed PKI solution).

It's nothing new that banks require insecure technology. Remember things like "this page only runs on IE"? Anyway, what you say is incorrect, I have an account with Storebrand and they only have a key generator dongle, not a smart card. I would also argue that moving an entire country to two-factor authentication is a net security *win*.

In Norway, all banks use a common login-system called BankID (a joint-developed PKI solution).

This solution requires Java to be installed at client.

It's quite hilarious.
This basically leaves a complete country vulnerable when these exploits go wild.

The latest upgrade of NortonMobile https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.symantec.mobilesecurity&hl=en does the same. Its enough to scare anybody who has even the slightest idea what it means. Anti-virus vendors working on behalf of the Law?

Locale was one of the 10 winners of the Android Developer Challenge

This contest had an application submission window of January 2, 2008 - April 14, 2008

So, it is prior art by virtue of it being written, released, and in public use a good 2 months prior to Apple submitting a description of an idea they had.

So I'd just be replacing my PC-with-one-OS with a PC-with-a-different-OS.

You'd be replacing your PC with a different PC that can't use common peripherals such as a flatbed scanner or a webcam. I've noticed that some employers are starting to require people to have a webcam on their home PC to get or keep a job. And until some counterpart to AIDE comes out, you'd be replacing your PC with something that can't even self-host its own developer tools.

Sure, here you go

Really? My 8 year old PC runs just fine on Win 7, as does my nearly 5 year old desktop and now 2 year old laptop. Whether you wish to accept it or not thing HAVE gotten better, more power efficiency , less waste heat, but you trot out some CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) that wasn't supported by the actual manufacturer and think that proves...what? that Linux devs really looove their dumpster diving?

Since you won't listen to me, how about listening to an actual Linux developer at Red hat no less, who says the desktop is "suckage" and in its death throes? Here you go friend or how about a list of over 200 serious breakages in Linux, complete with links to every. single. one. will that be enough? Here it is help thyself.

But keep right on deluding yourself into believing that supporting some old rare POS hardware that nobody owns nor cares about (including the OEM who has long abandoned it) makes your platform worthwhile, manwhile your OS is STILL stuck at 0.97 after 20 damned years of being given away. 20 years of being 100% free and that's the BEST you can do? If that doesn't smack you with a cluebat that Linux is going down the wrong path then frankly nothing short of Jesus descending from a cloud to smite Linus Torvalds will.

Did you try Google? Sony v. Tenenbaum; Capitol v. Thomas. Essentially, these were two record labels that skipped the cease-and-desist step and went straight to suing file sharers, and the labels won hundreds of thousands of dollars in statutory damages despite the file sharers not having made a profit.

Did you try Google? Sony v. Tenenbaum; Capitol v. Thomas. Essentially, these were two record labels that skipped the cease-and-desist step and went straight to suing file sharers, and the labels won hundreds of thousands of dollars in statutory damages despite the file sharers not having made a profit.

True story - I downloaded a game called "plumber pipes" or something like that, where you connected pipe pieces from one end to the other. It had "targeted" ads - they were all for pipes and plumbing equipment!

Root that puppy and install "Adfree Android" to block most ads from ever becoming an annoyance again.

Also check the site in my sig and you might be pleasantly surprised at how well your POS Android can run...

...and the coverage in the news. Here is a nice story on how people react on the verdict.

READ. MY. SIG.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.twofortyfouram.locale&hl=en

I bet those people who were at the Batman premier that were attacked by that gun wielding psycho are sure glad their phones weren't disabled so they could call the emergency services.

Jeez apple, I know thinking different is hip and all but....

Not to mention existing art

Do you even have a credible source to back that up?

http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/

http://www.google.com/search?q=illegal+immigrants+working+us+farms

responding to at least one gesture call, if issued, by scaling the view associated with the event object based on receiving the two or more input points in the form of the user input.

The forman, Velvin Hogan is, IMHO, a patent troll. His "invention" is a TiVo, with options for a few minor and obvious additions (removable storage!, how inventive). He filed for the patent 3 years after TiVo first shipped.

And that makes him a patent troll how? Did he sue TiVo, or anybody else? Do you even know that even "patent troll" has a meaning, and that you can't just throw it around when you feel like saying something negative about patents?

Ask him about a Windows problem. If he says "Have you tried turning it off and back on again", hire him.

Especially if he says so in an Irish accent. It helps if he's also tall and lanky.

:-P

First, you are not talking about operating systems but graphical user interfaces.

But to the point.

My personal opinion is that I love OS X look and simplicity. And I love(d) GNOME 2.x simplicity and pastel look.
But I can not stand neither of them in my computer as I want to do more than copy few files from USB-stick to desktop and use WWW-browser or listen music and watch videos.
(For me, even moving some files with Finder is pain in the ass unless they are right front of me.)

I want to love Metro (or what other name MS will choose for it, hopefully as good as "Metro") as it is what Unix is about, information front of you. Metro is doing something what I dreamed and designed 15 years ago (I even have hundreds of designs stored in closet), but still it is doing it wrong way, by disturbing user, by hiding elements, functions and making simple things too complex (Like easy way to open directory in Finder by simply pressing enter on it when browsing with arrow keys).

So far, only GUI what pleases me on desktop/laptop use is KDE. And especially KDE4 started to do it great.
The customization is the key. Please, just give user a pure and clear GUI and then easy way to _add_ features what they want (contrary to your saying, you want to _remove_ things, I think it should be that people can "opt-in" just by adding features what they need.) and then get the GUI look and work as they need and want, not as one designed in company sees it should work (they can do the very basic usability things, like you can not so easily by mistake delete file or rename directory etc).

But when it comes to tablet, smartphone and even netbook usage, I just love Android 4.0 on them. The style, it is very informative and widgets gives the possibility to have exactly the wanted specific information right under your finger with interactive function (what Live Tiles do not offer at all) and otherwise just the apps with the oldest and purest human understandable way. If you want to nail something, you take hammer and nail and you just hit it where wanted. If you want to cut something, you take saw and you just use it.
The original Unix idea, one tool for one task. It is just so wise and awesome, why even command line interface is so awesome when compared to GUI in many basic cases (like copying files, renaming, moving, archiving, emailing, encrypting etc).

Last few years the trend has been that files need to be queried trough search and automatic filtering systems. Like the computer would know right away what you need and want (I am pointing my finger to you KDE community with activities!). Just give very simple and fast search for files, like Google search web pages (as it is said, it is silly that we can find pages from Internet faster than files from others computer).
I love organized file hierarchic in manner where others can understand easily what is in directories and what file is about by its name.

But when it comes to actually quickly choose and group bunch of files and do something complex to them graphically, there seems not to be better tool than Automator in OS X (unless you count scripting for shell in all Unix systems).

So what Microsoft has done right? They made the GUI touchable with big enough buttons (tiles) what was reason why Windows 7 SUCKED for any tablet computer (I have used 27" touchscreen with Windows 7 and it just was terrible two weeks). And that they got the idea that information should be easy to get presented in wanted form.

BUT.....

Metro SUCKS!

Android is getting again something much better. Chameleon is coming launcher for Android (tablets only?) http://chameleon.teknision.com/ and it is exactly having what I have found most oldery (and young) people to need. To have information at one glance available for them, depending their task, location or time (one awesome app for Android is the Tasker https://play.goog

There are legitimate reasons to want to do this, and people are much more likely to be helpful when you're not asking how to exploit. With that in mind, the search set referer xmlhttprequest gives decent results. If you look through them, you'll see that it used to work in basically every browser by simply setting the header, but there are now various levels of protection depending on the browser, the calling code's domain, and where the request is going.

All in all, basing security on a header that was never secure is a dumb idea. Instead of redefining an old header, make a new one. This is security we're talking about, not opening a Word 97 document on Word 2008. If it's not secure, it should break, it shouldn't make a best effort.

...and the coverage in the news. Here is a nice story on how people react on the verdict.

What is the author smoking. California currently has $380 billion in devt and a 10.8% unemployment rate. I would call that far from being successful.

If I were the UK, I would not want to model anything after California