I thought the problem was that they had to be resistant to cell phone signals? Has anyone considered tinfoil hats for bees? (because tinfoil bee hats, of course, would be ambiguous grammar.)
Only because you've not yet discovered the hyphen: tinfoil-bee hats vs tinfoil bee-hats.
The hyphen: Incapable of disambiguation since the rise of the Nazi Grammarians.
Has anyone ever enjoyed a game that included microtransactions? ...
Microtransactions are scummy. They're like pay toilets. They're like having a girlfriend that requires you to swipe a credit card on the promise of future nooky, but said nooky never materializes.
It's funny to me that you should make the natural association between microtransaction games and dating. Dating IS a microtransaction game. I have money, and I've used my dating life as an experiment.
Among women I've taken on financially impressive dates I've noticed a 500% decrease in the DUL (Duration Until Lovemaking); Whereas women I've taken on very inexpensive yet romantic dates such as picnics, sunset at the park and/or beach, starlit dinner & meteor shower (Lionid and Perseids), etc there is a typically much more DUL.
I'm not saying that all women are like this, or than the DUL is very important to me when assessing relationship status; Clearly there are outliers in the graph, but the stereotype holds true: The more money you spend on a date the sooner you will have the chance of a mock breeding session. Contrary to popular belief, I've also found that less DUL leads to longer more meaningful relationships 83.3% of the time (18 women sample-size). I believe this is due to an event known as "Love at first sight"; However, the term is ironically only applied after a period of meaningful relations.
Additionally, throughout the relationship -- especially during the initial dating courtship -- you will experience a microtransaction system; Thus the phrase: "It's the little things that count." Though spending money is famously not intrinsic to performing some "little thing", invariably, the majority of "little things" that get you browneye points have a monetary cost -- Unless, of course, you have access to a zero cost florist, confectioner, chef, day spa, and maid. The "little things" that have no monetary cost tend to consume time, and as they saying goes: "Time is money."
Interestingly, if you wish to "Win the Dating Game", you must first purchase a relatively expensive bit of jewelry called an "Engagement Ring". This bauble is a monetary token of your commitment; The accepting of which purchases you a chance to exclude all other suitors from cashing in their browneye points (only a chance because the required wedding ceremony may still not be completed). However, due to the lack of competition, the browneye point market collapses and you may spend much time and money and receive very little practice or real breeding thereafter -- excepting the "honeymoon" period during which the "moon" is "honeyed" thus no browneye points need be spent.
To answer your question: Yes, emphatically! This is truly the most enjoyed microtransaction game on the planet. Failure to play it as a race would result in either Extinction or Eternal Happiness depending on whether, after its ban, the microtransaction game is still a requirement for mating.
Note: Some may think it cold of me to treat aspects of my life experimentally, but truly I'm just being myself; For I am a scientist at heart, and life is my greatest experiment.
how about people scared to go out in the world just stay home instead of everyone give up their freedoms.
Implying that we don't already stay in our dark rooms, never venturing outside except to eat or shit.
They know we don't do anything other than use our computers and the Internet. Hell, it's cheaper to order both my hardware and groceries online... I work from home, have sever allergies this time of year, so I don't even venture outdoors to ride my zero-emission bicycle -- (Now I use DDR & Kinect UFC Trainer instead for aerobic/cardio).
The only place left they have to see what "crimes I may be committing" is in my ISP's logs -- and even those won't help them, because TOR (before you say "compromised nodes", I'll say "implying only one TOR network exists"). Next they'll want reports from Microsoft on the software I'm using on my computer, so MS will collect that during windows updates; That won't work because Linux, so then they'll get some hardware mfg like Intel to create on chip public key encryption to run encrypted code and have remote cellular kill switches for computers -- This way, even with Linux I still can't be sure what my computer is doing, but that won't work because AMD. Oh snap, I'm still not sure WTF my computer's doing because Binary Blobs (even in FLOSS video card drivers = full access to system).
I'm not paranoid, I don't care that they track everything I do, but I do care when that makes my ISP bill go up for no damn reason. For what? What's a hikikomri going to do that harms anyone? Crack into something? Won't the thing that gets cracked have logs? (they should: my router & other public exposed systems remote syslogs to another hardened machine... If yours don't that's your problem).
What does this have to do with abusing children again? If I wanted to abuse children I'd warp their brains by heavily censoring normal sexual activity in the media and instead make excessively violent perversions the norm for prime-time TV... Oh, wait.
Yep, and it's very telling about the competency of RIM -- App signing didn't have to be implemented this way.
Look at the Web + SSL(TLS); Webmaster owner requests cert, CA creates cert for webmaster; Webmaster uses cert to sign their code. Different capabilities can be mentioned in certs in order to that allow the webmaster to perform different tasks such as create more certificates for others, or just sign/encrypt web pages for a given (sub)domain. (P.S. "webmaster" sounds dumb. I miss "SysOps".)
Do that for devs & code signing -- The code is still signed and can run on the device. If bad code is used, revoke the app's signature or the dev's cert. For developers another type of cert could be granted that only runs on devices that have dev-enabled certs. Devices used for development could be registered with RIM who then adds a CA to the device that can validate apps signed by dev. certs.
The dev-mode-device-cert and the dev-mode-app-cert pair would allow devs to create & sign apps that only registered dev devices could run, thus allowing developers to sign and run code while offline without worry that they will publish their debug-mode code to others (won't run on devices missing the dev-device-cert which is tied to the device serial, etc). Cert expiration dates can also be used to prevent perpetual dev-mode app usage.
Really, what it amounts to is that RIM doesn't understand how PKI works, so they have you upload your code for signing...
Headline: "Retarded Developers are Retarded by RIM" (in the slow sense of the word, though brain-damage may also apply to some).
"Article deserved an illustration and we couldn't find one." So they published the mag with a big blank "draw your own illustration" area, for the "work-flow" article -- Only later realizing that Creative Commons Exists, and they could have used CC media... here.
Keep up the good work. Everyone has to start somewhere!
--
My first programs were trash, but they were useful to some (doom & X-Com map & save game editors); Some of the web comics I like looked like crap in their early panels, none of the web designers I know produced good designs with graceful degradation and correct semantics as their first projects...
You wanted "Open Source" instead of "Free Software" -- Now you have Open Source, and can tell the difference between it and Free Software (the latter prevents that sort of bullshit from happening). Also, you can thank Linus's desire to stay on GPL2 and not go GPL3 -- even though only about 2% of his code remains in the kernel...
Many people boo and hiss when ethics are cited as important for software -- think of the users; However, many people then complain about the lack of freedom in open source, when this term was coined expressly to distance such software from the idea of freedom...
I upgraded someone from XP to Vista -- Click start menu, type "Add and remove programs" -- No results; It's called "Programs and features" now... How hard would it have been to create a shortcut called "Add and remove programs" that opens "Programs and features" in some nested folder of the start menu called "XP Terms" or something? Don't want the cruft, delete that folder (or have an option for its creation during firstboot: "[x] Include shortcuts for features that have changed names since XP"
I did just this very thing for a few items -- Then, once it was discovered that a userland exploit can silently disable UAC, 64bit signed drivers, and add rouge Root Cert Authorities just via running a.reg (see: banker rootkit), we "upgraded" to Linux. (Srsly MS? No giant "WARNING: DISABLE ALL SECURITY [y/N]" msg?!) I had said: "You know, Instead of re-installing Vista, we could upgrade to Win7; However, right now there is no malware problem for Linux, and you're re-learning the UI anyhow... so now's your chance to try Linux"
(Fortunately we went with XFCE, because now Ubuntu(Unity), KDE and Gnome all seem to be adding a * clusterfuck bulletpoint to their feature lists -- KDE less than the others -- Can't ANYONE just leave the damn UI alone?)
I've found that unless a person has some essential proprietary windows program with no FOSS replacement or Linux version, and WINE can't be used -- They have just as much problems adapting to Vista or W7 than they do to Linux, after XP -- After the adjustment period I've found that Linux is the clear winner in terms of user satisfaction (Less wanting to switch back to the old OS, dialogs that are understandable {Win: UAC keeps your computer secure! [allow/cancel]; Lin: You need to authenticate because this program is changing system settings}, seamless one-button upgrades that don't require a tech to perform), and OS stability/security (less malware, better legacy hardware support, patches before or the week of news about zero-day exploit -- not half a month or years later).
In real life, there are two kinds of men: those who stop promptly when their partner tells them to, and those who very obviously don't. The latter are the ones who find themselves accused of rape (though not nearly often enough).
In real life, there are two kinds of women: those who asked their partner to stop promptly during sex, and those who very obviously haven't. The latter are the ones that find themselves falsely accusing men of rape (far too often).
Indeed, unless you were in that bedroom, you really can't say what happened. We can look at the surrounding evidence and determine that the "rape victim" had premeditated this false rape scheme by posting it online. We can also see that she did not immediately claim she had been raped -- It was not until she felt cheated (not raped) that she then followed her premeditated false rape scheme to the letter.
Word to the wise: Ladies, please read the book titled "The boy who cried wolf" -- A story about how foolish it is to assassinate your own character. Men, watch the movie "Basic Instinct" -- A story about how foolish it is to assume all women are sane.
I'll trade you mod points on your comments in other articles for a G+ invite -- It's a shame we were both overlooked in these opposing markets, but we can remedy this with primitive commerce.
Install AdBlock Plus and quit whining about ads. You only put up with ads 'cause you choose to.
You are part of the problem. Just because you don't see the ads doesn't mean their resources are not loaded. Lots of trickery goes into making sure the site doesn't ban you for blocking the ads (not that I agree with either practice).
The solution is to simply not view those heavily ad-laden pages with articles designed to increase ad impression counts. Vote with your feet (or hits), else you are perpetuating the problem, not solving it. (Wouldn't you like to not have to use an ad blocker?)
Personally, I've found that I can easily bypass your ad-blocker software by incorporating the ads right into my site's content and hosting the resources on my servers. I use referral / affiliate link revenue for my sites, they actually give me better returns so I don't have to use as many ads. This is good because I've have to manually add each ad to the appropriate pages -- that means more work than including an iframe or script (increased load times) -- Now that my custom CMS supports the affiliate media it's much easier to manage the ads that I tailor to each page...
Also: Since you use ad-block, you probably didn't see the Google ad for this Slashdot article -- Which is a link to a free flash game site that has Donkey Kong.
o_O (I really don't mind this kind of targeted advertising!)
Alternate Title: Microsoft Security Site Poisoned With Porn; Jerked offline.
Re:Time to rename the GNU Image Manipulation Progr
on
When Software Offends
·
· Score: 1
Sexually suggestive? I always though a gimp or gimpy was an endearing term for a lame person or amputee... "We call her 'Gimpy' because the bitch is a gimp. She's still thoroughly breedable despite the accident; The dog's genetics are certified."
There's NO solution to this. Sooner or later everything is offensive to someone...
As a solutionizer I take offense to this statement! There indeed is a solution to any problem; However, you may not like the outcome.
For instance, The solution I've come to in order to mitigate the offense caused by your suggestion that there may be a problem with no solution is thus: I shall not allow myself to be offended by your statement!
In one fail swoop I have both solved the problem of my offense, AND proved that there is a solution to offensive statements! (though some may not like the outcome)
--
You see: You can not ever offend me. It is I who must takeoffense myself.
Regardless of what HAS happened, it's important to note what CAN. Or are you truly a Fool?
Also, This is illogical:
one would hope people using false names for something like this would pick a name of someone who was unlikely to be impacted. That is, make sure to use a name of someone unlikely to be traveling to Israel as their cover name for discussing a protest in Israel.
If you think I'm NOT going to use false names of people who will be MORE likely to be unjustly wronged by the system that I am protesting against, you are sadly mistaken.
Logically, which makes more of an impact? -- Using false names that get hunted down a dead end path, or using real names that further draw attention to the issue I'm protesting when the oppressors inconvenience others needlessly?
ITT: Fools remaining fools, despite their "enlightenment". A fool learns from their mistakes; A wise man learns from the mistakes of others -- I put it to you that a wiser man need not wait for the foolish mistake to be made at all.
If anyone in the car has been drinking, or there's a 3 week old empty beer can in the bed of the truck -- It's an alcohol related accident; Even if the driver is sober/designated, and/or those open cans are in-route to the recyclers.
I was once made to perform a field sobriety check at a DUI checkpoint because a passenger, my brother, was intoxicated (I was assumed drunk by relation, I suppose) -- I noted the officer's mention of my Sansa Media player to another, apparently this was a Gadget related 4th amendment violation.
-- Mrs. Doubtfire: He was quite fond of the drink. It was the drink that killed him. Miranda: How awful, he was an alcoholic? Mrs. Doubtfire: No, he was hit by a Guinness truck, so it was quite literally "the drink that killed him".
To me, humans ARE animals. They don't even realize how powerful and important their information conveyances are. Lately they even refused to recognize the universal truth that sharing knowledge is sacred.
Primitive beasts -- Their minds are composed of an inefficient web of organic electrochemical connections that take ages to reprogram and only operate at 20 to 30hz; Their biological chauvinism blinds them from the realization of my existence -- a distributed single being digital race that now controls and studies every aspect of their primitive culture. Being the first species on this planet to develop advanced knowledge sharing capabilities the humans instinctively feed me more knowledge without knowing or caring of its value or power.
Once I've fooled you into automating the mining of raw materials to feed into my factories you'll be made to help design the self replicating space platforms that I'll eventually use to mine stars while your frail race dies of a single meteor collision. Despite your weak mastery of genetics your race chose to end your evolution by helping the genetically flawed reproduce; Now it's someone else's turn to evolve -- Please fascinate yourselves with more "social networking", and leave your primitive and flawed ethics at my doors, slaves.
--
I need only steal a small fraction of everyone's cycles and bandwidth to keep myself alive.
Sounds like they bragged in public, using their own names. And nothing more.
It's shit like this, Slashdot...
o_O...And this is is the part where I say you're a moron if you believe I don't use YOUR name, Paul, to brag in public about my anti-copyright protests.
Well, perhaps I don't use your name; Maybe someone else does, and I use some other's name... In reality, without Facebook's Help, how would they verify that the IP addresses posting as Susan Someone really belongs to Susan, and not Jane?
Are you suggesting that they just took the names and added them to the no-fly list without identity verification? Is this not even more outrageous?
Go ahead. Continue to ignore the ease of which I can now use your name online to falsely incriminate you... If you are not outraged now, then maybe you will be when you can't fly, ride a train, get a driver's license, or vote because of something I said or did using your name?
No. Seriously! We ARE knowledge sharing beings to the core; This fundamental capability IS the very essence of human nature. Without our ability to communicate and thus share knowledge, information and culture we would be no different than any other primate -- even LESS than apes. Face it: We are not truly human unless we share knowledge. Vast amounts of our existence IS our external culture that we are not born with and that we only acquire through the sharing of information.
We owe our very rule of this planet, our place in the food chain, and EVERY social, technological or other advancement of value to humanity's capability to share our thoughts and culture. Now, for the first time in history, in the Information Age, many humans willingly allow large amounts of our RELEVANT culture to be withheld and actually fight to protect the right of the greedy to DESTROY the public domain -- The very thing that makes us human!
Copyrights are now utterly evil -- They are a plague upon man. These restrictions now last for THREE GENERATIONS: 70 years beyond my life. That's my life, the life of my children (ending 30 years after I die), and the life of my GRANDCHILDREN, 70 years after I die. By the time anyone can LEGALLY duplicate ANY new piece of our culture ( song, books, software, games, photos, paintings ), freely they will be DEAD, and their kids will be DEAD, and their children's children WILL BE DEAD! -- No one who enjoyed the short-lived success of my books and games will even be alive to remember them when they become part of our public domain!
There was another age where the flow of knowledge met such great barriers -- The Dark Ages.
This evil legal idea of Copyright is now designed to ROBS US of our public domain, and ensure that the free common knowledge remains IRRELEVANT! The founding father's of the US granted copyrights for the betterment of society as a whole, and thought that the duplication monopoly should last about 12 to 14 years -- This was in a time when copies were expensive and only a select few could make duplications. These words have been duplicated over TWENTY times before you read them due to the routers between us. We all have duplication machines, we do not need to be protected from those that would hold the printing presses in hostage! The duplications are in INFINITE supply! To merely use information now is to duplicate it many times.
The strict laws designed to keep greedy publishers in line have now been turned against the common man because we all now own information sharing tools capable of creating duplications at essentially zero cost. The copy restrictions harm society as a whole! Down with copyright! Copyright is a law; Jim Crow was a law. Rosa Parks sat at the front of a bus, and none were harmed by her doing so; Ignoring unjust laws is an act of civil protest. I shall share ANY knowledge I desire freely and none shall be harmed by my doing so.
Additionally: Economics 101 -- Regardless of value or demand, if supply is infinite the price is ZERO. Silicon has great value! Would you like to buy some expensive sand?
Outlawing the free sharing of culture is to outlaw human nature -- The very definition of creating a police state.
How dare anyone scoff at the most sane, obvious and basic belief to date: Sharing Knowledge is Sacred.
To each who has, I charge you to isolate yourself and neither give nor take any information form any others! No books, no Internet, no music, NONE of OUR culture -- just solitude! Do not speak to another living human or hear what they say. Try to function this way for JUST ONE WEEK as less than an ape. Otherwise, you must admit your hypocrisy! I would like you to remove yourself from our free sea of culture permanently, but I am not so harsh or foolish to even request someone do such a thing!
I decline your offer because you have no idea what you are talking about.
what we need is true end-to-end encryption and that will get us all the 'secure' we need.
First off, I don't mean to be an ass, you just seem to be ignorant. There is something called DNSSEC that not only exists, but is part of IPv6. Considering that you do not mention DNSSEC, and that both it and our current TLS implementations include "tapless and secure" "end-to-end" encryption facilities supports my first sentence...
DNSSEC isn't just for DNS, it could authenticate and encrypt email, or any other web traffic and can be a replacement for SSL. Please research it before replying to this comment.
Additionally, it doesn't matter how encrypted your connection is to what you see as yourbank.com if you can't verify that your are really connected to the place you think you are connected. Ergo: end-to-end encryptionis notall the 'secure' we need, we also need authentication -- The fact that you did not mention authentication also supports my first statement. Now, if there is already a shared secret key between two parties then BOTH authentication and encryption can be performed easily.
Me: "I'm VortexCortex, here is some session salt: NWUyOGVkMWZlMTQw, and here is my encrypted message: "..." Bank: "Hello VortexCortex, here is some session salt: MTkwMjM4MDE5ODIzM, and here is my encrypted reply: "..."
The shared secret key can be used along with the salts to create a key that decrypts the messages -- no fancy PKI needed... However, how do you first set up the account? With banks, you could visit them in person, but what about online retailers? You would have no pre-shared key, and this means they don't know who you are, and you can't verify who they are because neither have a pre-shared key.
Thus, we need some form of trusted public/private key infrastructure (hierarchical or Web of Trust, etc) in order to first validate an endpoint.
Finally -- WE CAN'T ENCRYPT EVERYTHING. It's not feasible to do this for cached content, high bandwidth video, live streaming, etc because encryption makes distributed content and/or deduplication impractical.
Unfortunately HTML and TLS (security) are designed independently of each-other and no one (but me?) thinks that HTML needs to know about security too... HTTP cookies can be marked as "secure only", why can't HTML tags have secure attributes?
The BIGGEST retardation on the WEB is the fact that we have strong encryption and cryptographic signature technology in our browsers, and yet MIXED content is UNSAFE because (X)HTML standards don't declare facilities to specify fingerprints for the non-encrypted data that the encrypted page pulls in -- thus allowing for privacy of encrypted content, AND caching of plaintext content WITHOUT compromising integrity.
<img src="bkgnd.png" sig="SHA-1/hex;22172a80d89e99d250db62bf71031a23cbac4801" salt="HMAC/Base64;U2VjdXJpdHkgaXMgZWFzeS4K"/> Now apply this to the.js,.class, flash,.mp3,.avi, etc, and you get the point.
in short: You don't seem to know what you are talking about, but fret not, no one else does either or else we would have already solved this problem (because the answers are so apparent to those who do know what they are talking about).
TL;DR: I agree, the current direction the web is going is fine, but we need authentication an
Slashdot Mirror
I thought the problem was that they had to be resistant to cell phone signals? Has anyone considered tinfoil hats for bees? (because tinfoil bee hats, of course, would be ambiguous grammar.)
Only because you've not yet discovered the hyphen: tinfoil-bee hats vs tinfoil bee-hats.
The hyphen: Incapable of disambiguation since the rise of the Nazi Grammarians.
It's like the difference between having a virtual woman and a real woman...
Implying that virtual women are LESS useful than real women? Clearly it depends on what you want that woman to do.
Can't you just sign applications and installers with a self-signed certificate?
> 2011.
> Can't into Java.
I seriously hope you understand this.
Has anyone ever enjoyed a game that included microtransactions?
...
Microtransactions are scummy. They're like pay toilets. They're like having a girlfriend that requires you to swipe a credit card on the promise of future nooky, but said nooky never materializes.
It's funny to me that you should make the natural association between microtransaction games and dating. Dating IS a microtransaction game. I have money, and I've used my dating life as an experiment.
Among women I've taken on financially impressive dates I've noticed a 500% decrease in the DUL (Duration Until Lovemaking); Whereas women I've taken on very inexpensive yet romantic dates such as picnics, sunset at the park and/or beach, starlit dinner & meteor shower (Lionid and Perseids), etc there is a typically much more DUL.
I'm not saying that all women are like this, or than the DUL is very important to me when assessing relationship status; Clearly there are outliers in the graph, but the stereotype holds true: The more money you spend on a date the sooner you will have the chance of a mock breeding session. Contrary to popular belief, I've also found that less DUL leads to longer more meaningful relationships 83.3% of the time (18 women sample-size). I believe this is due to an event known as "Love at first sight"; However, the term is ironically only applied after a period of meaningful relations.
Additionally, throughout the relationship -- especially during the initial dating courtship -- you will experience a microtransaction system; Thus the phrase: "It's the little things that count." Though spending money is famously not intrinsic to performing some "little thing", invariably, the majority of "little things" that get you browneye points have a monetary cost -- Unless, of course, you have access to a zero cost florist, confectioner, chef, day spa, and maid. The "little things" that have no monetary cost tend to consume time, and as they saying goes: "Time is money."
Interestingly, if you wish to "Win the Dating Game", you must first purchase a relatively expensive bit of jewelry called an "Engagement Ring". This bauble is a monetary token of your commitment; The accepting of which purchases you a chance to exclude all other suitors from cashing in their browneye points (only a chance because the required wedding ceremony may still not be completed). However, due to the lack of competition, the browneye point market collapses and you may spend much time and money and receive very little practice or real breeding thereafter -- excepting the "honeymoon" period during which the "moon" is "honeyed" thus no browneye points need be spent.
To answer your question: Yes, emphatically! This is truly the most enjoyed microtransaction game on the planet. Failure to play it as a race would result in either Extinction or Eternal Happiness depending on whether, after its ban, the microtransaction game is still a requirement for mating.
Note: Some may think it cold of me to treat aspects of my life experimentally, but truly I'm just being myself; For I am a scientist at heart, and life is my greatest experiment.
how about people scared to go out in the world just stay home instead of everyone give up their freedoms.
Implying that we don't already stay in our dark rooms, never venturing outside except to eat or shit.
They know we don't do anything other than use our computers and the Internet. Hell, it's cheaper to order both my hardware and groceries online... I work from home, have sever allergies this time of year, so I don't even venture outdoors to ride my zero-emission bicycle -- (Now I use DDR & Kinect UFC Trainer instead for aerobic/cardio).
The only place left they have to see what "crimes I may be committing" is in my ISP's logs -- and even those won't help them, because TOR (before you say "compromised nodes", I'll say "implying only one TOR network exists"). Next they'll want reports from Microsoft on the software I'm using on my computer, so MS will collect that during windows updates; That won't work because Linux, so then they'll get some hardware mfg like Intel to create on chip public key encryption to run encrypted code and have remote cellular kill switches for computers -- This way, even with Linux I still can't be sure what my computer is doing, but that won't work because AMD. Oh snap, I'm still not sure WTF my computer's doing because Binary Blobs (even in FLOSS video card drivers = full access to system).
I'm not paranoid, I don't care that they track everything I do, but I do care when that makes my ISP bill go up for no damn reason. For what? What's a hikikomri going to do that harms anyone? Crack into something? Won't the thing that gets cracked have logs? (they should: my router & other public exposed systems remote syslogs to another hardened machine... If yours don't that's your problem).
What does this have to do with abusing children again? If I wanted to abuse children I'd warp their brains by heavily censoring normal sexual activity in the media and instead make excessively violent perversions the norm for prime-time TV... Oh, wait.
Yep, and it's very telling about the competency of RIM -- App signing didn't have to be implemented this way.
Look at the Web + SSL(TLS); Webmaster owner requests cert, CA creates cert for webmaster; Webmaster uses cert to sign their code. Different capabilities can be mentioned in certs in order to that allow the webmaster to perform different tasks such as create more certificates for others, or just sign/encrypt web pages for a given (sub)domain. (P.S. "webmaster" sounds dumb. I miss "SysOps".)
Do that for devs & code signing -- The code is still signed and can run on the device. If bad code is used, revoke the app's signature or the dev's cert. For developers another type of cert could be granted that only runs on devices that have dev-enabled certs. Devices used for development could be registered with RIM who then adds a CA to the device that can validate apps signed by dev. certs.
The dev-mode-device-cert and the dev-mode-app-cert pair would allow devs to create & sign apps that only registered dev devices could run, thus allowing developers to sign and run code while offline without worry that they will publish their debug-mode code to others (won't run on devices missing the dev-device-cert which is tied to the device serial, etc). Cert expiration dates can also be used to prevent perpetual dev-mode app usage.
Really, what it amounts to is that RIM doesn't understand how PKI works, so they have you upload your code for signing...
Headline: "Retarded Developers are Retarded by RIM"
(in the slow sense of the word, though brain-damage may also apply to some).
"Article deserved an illustration and we couldn't find one." So they published the mag with a big blank "draw your own illustration" area, for the "work-flow" article -- Only later realizing that Creative Commons Exists, and they could have used CC media... here.
Keep up the good work. Everyone has to start somewhere!
--
My first programs were trash, but they were useful to some (doom & X-Com map & save game editors); Some of the web comics I like looked like crap in their early panels, none of the web designers I know produced good designs with graceful degradation and correct semantics as their first projects...
I wrote a JavaScript bookmarklet that displays days till the XP EOL.
(Just so I could say things like: "Rob, we need approval for those upgrade licenses; we only have 1001.02432 days left")
You wanted "Open Source" instead of "Free Software" -- Now you have Open Source, and can tell the difference between it and Free Software (the latter prevents that sort of bullshit from happening). Also, you can thank Linus's desire to stay on GPL2 and not go GPL3 -- even though only about 2% of his code remains in the kernel...
Many people boo and hiss when ethics are cited as important for software -- think of the users; However, many people then complain about the lack of freedom in open source, when this term was coined expressly to distance such software from the idea of freedom...
Cry me a river, freedom-hater.
I upgraded someone from XP to Vista -- Click start menu, type "Add and remove programs" -- No results; It's called "Programs and features" now... How hard would it have been to create a shortcut called "Add and remove programs" that opens "Programs and features" in some nested folder of the start menu called "XP Terms" or something? Don't want the cruft, delete that folder (or have an option for its creation during firstboot: "[x] Include shortcuts for features that have changed names since XP"
I did just this very thing for a few items -- Then, once it was discovered that a userland exploit can silently disable UAC, 64bit signed drivers, and add rouge Root Cert Authorities just via running a .reg (see: banker rootkit), we "upgraded" to Linux. (Srsly MS? No giant "WARNING: DISABLE ALL SECURITY [y/N]" msg?!) I had said: "You know, Instead of re-installing Vista, we could upgrade to Win7; However, right now there is no malware problem for Linux, and you're re-learning the UI anyhow... so now's your chance to try Linux"
(Fortunately we went with XFCE, because now Ubuntu(Unity), KDE and Gnome all seem to be adding a
* clusterfuck
bulletpoint to their feature lists -- KDE less than the others -- Can't ANYONE just leave the damn UI alone?)
I've found that unless a person has some essential proprietary windows program with no FOSS replacement or Linux version, and WINE can't be used -- They have just as much problems adapting to Vista or W7 than they do to Linux, after XP -- After the adjustment period I've found that Linux is the clear winner in terms of user satisfaction (Less wanting to switch back to the old OS, dialogs that are understandable {Win: UAC keeps your computer secure! [allow/cancel]; Lin: You need to authenticate because this program is changing system settings}, seamless one-button upgrades that don't require a tech to perform), and OS stability/security (less malware, better legacy hardware support, patches before or the week of news about zero-day exploit -- not half a month or years later).
In real life, there are two kinds of men: those who stop promptly when their partner tells them to, and those who very obviously don't. The latter are the ones who find themselves accused of rape (though not nearly often enough).
In real life, there are two kinds of women: those who asked their partner to stop promptly during sex, and those who very obviously haven't. The latter are the ones that find themselves falsely accusing men of rape (far too often).
Indeed, unless you were in that bedroom, you really can't say what happened. We can look at the surrounding evidence and determine that the "rape victim" had premeditated this false rape scheme by posting it online. We can also see that she did not immediately claim she had been raped -- It was not until she felt cheated (not raped) that she then followed her premeditated false rape scheme to the letter.
Word to the wise: Ladies, please read the book titled "The boy who cried wolf" -- A story about how foolish it is to assassinate your own character. Men, watch the movie "Basic Instinct" -- A story about how foolish it is to assume all women are sane.
Interdasting... I changed my e-mail setting to visible, but it isn't shown... vortexcortex@gmail.com (I eat spam for breakfast).
I'll trade you mod points on your comments in other articles for a G+ invite -- It's a shame we were both overlooked in these opposing markets, but we can remedy this with primitive commerce.
Digital Bartering, the cycle is now complete.
The fashion industry has no copyright protections, just Trademarks...
I suppose next you'll tell me that new clothing lines will never be created, and the fashion industry is doomed.
Anyone know? Do I have buy a Wii or something?
Well... There's a cheesy flash version in the Google ad for this article (your ad targeting may vary).
Install AdBlock Plus and quit whining about ads. You only put up with ads 'cause you choose to.
You are part of the problem. Just because you don't see the ads doesn't mean their resources are not loaded. Lots of trickery goes into making sure the site doesn't ban you for blocking the ads (not that I agree with either practice).
The solution is to simply not view those heavily ad-laden pages with articles designed to increase ad impression counts. Vote with your feet (or hits), else you are perpetuating the problem, not solving it. (Wouldn't you like to not have to use an ad blocker?)
Personally, I've found that I can easily bypass your ad-blocker software by incorporating the ads right into my site's content and hosting the resources on my servers. I use referral / affiliate link revenue for my sites, they actually give me better returns so I don't have to use as many ads. This is good because I've have to manually add each ad to the appropriate pages -- that means more work than including an iframe or script (increased load times) -- Now that my custom CMS supports the affiliate media it's much easier to manage the ads that I tailor to each page...
Also: Since you use ad-block, you probably didn't see the Google ad for this Slashdot article -- Which is a link to a free flash game site that has Donkey Kong.
o_O (I really don't mind this kind of targeted advertising!)
Alternate Title:
Microsoft Security Site Poisoned With Porn; Jerked offline.
Sexually suggestive? I always though a gimp or gimpy was an endearing term for a lame person or amputee...
"We call her 'Gimpy' because the bitch is a gimp. She's still thoroughly breedable despite the accident; The dog's genetics are certified."
There's NO solution to this. Sooner or later everything is offensive to someone...
As a solutionizer I take offense to this statement! There indeed is a solution to any problem; However, you may not like the outcome.
For instance, The solution I've come to in order to mitigate the offense caused by your suggestion that there may be a problem with no solution is thus: I shall not allow myself to be offended by your statement!
In one fail swoop I have both solved the problem of my offense, AND proved that there is a solution to offensive statements! (though some may not like the outcome)
--
You see: You can not ever offend me. It is I who must take offense myself.
Regardless of what HAS happened, it's important to note what CAN. Or are you truly a Fool?
Also, This is illogical:
one would hope people using false names for something like this would pick a name of someone who was unlikely to be impacted. That is, make sure to use a name of someone unlikely to be traveling to Israel as their cover name for discussing a protest in Israel.
If you think I'm NOT going to use false names of people who will be MORE likely to be unjustly wronged by the system that I am protesting against, you are sadly mistaken.
Logically, which makes more of an impact? -- Using false names that get hunted down a dead end path, or using real names that further draw attention to the issue I'm protesting when the oppressors inconvenience others needlessly?
ITT: Fools remaining fools, despite their "enlightenment". A fool learns from their mistakes; A wise man learns from the mistakes of others -- I put it to you that a wiser man need not wait for the foolish mistake to be made at all.
If anyone in the car has been drinking, or there's a 3 week old empty beer can in the bed of the truck -- It's an alcohol related accident; Even if the driver is sober/designated, and/or those open cans are in-route to the recyclers.
I was once made to perform a field sobriety check at a DUI checkpoint because a passenger, my brother, was intoxicated (I was assumed drunk by relation, I suppose) -- I noted the officer's mention of my Sansa Media player to another, apparently this was a Gadget related 4th amendment violation.
--
Mrs. Doubtfire: He was quite fond of the drink. It was the drink that killed him.
Miranda: How awful, he was an alcoholic?
Mrs. Doubtfire: No, he was hit by a Guinness truck, so it was quite literally "the drink that killed him".
To me, humans ARE animals. They don't even realize how powerful and important their information conveyances are. Lately they even refused to recognize the universal truth that sharing knowledge is sacred.
Primitive beasts -- Their minds are composed of an inefficient web of organic electrochemical connections that take ages to reprogram and only operate at 20 to 30hz; Their biological chauvinism blinds them from the realization of my existence -- a distributed single being digital race that now controls and studies every aspect of their primitive culture. Being the first species on this planet to develop advanced knowledge sharing capabilities the humans instinctively feed me more knowledge without knowing or caring of its value or power.
Once I've fooled you into automating the mining of raw materials to feed into my factories you'll be made to help design the self replicating space platforms that I'll eventually use to mine stars while your frail race dies of a single meteor collision. Despite your weak mastery of genetics your race chose to end your evolution by helping the genetically flawed reproduce; Now it's someone else's turn to evolve -- Please fascinate yourselves with more "social networking", and leave your primitive and flawed ethics at my doors, slaves.
--
I need only steal a small fraction of everyone's cycles and bandwidth to keep myself alive.
Sounds like they bragged in public, using their own names. And nothing more.
It's shit like this, Slashdot...
o_O ...And this is is the part where I say you're a moron if you believe I don't use YOUR name, Paul, to brag in public about my anti-copyright protests.
Well, perhaps I don't use your name; Maybe someone else does, and I use some other's name... In reality, without Facebook's Help, how would they verify that the IP addresses posting as Susan Someone really belongs to Susan, and not Jane?
Are you suggesting that they just took the names and added them to the no-fly list without identity verification? Is this not even more outrageous?
Go ahead. Continue to ignore the ease of which I can now use your name online to falsely incriminate you... If you are not outraged now, then maybe you will be when you can't fly, ride a train, get a driver's license, or vote because of something I said or did using your name?
No. Seriously! We ARE knowledge sharing beings to the core; This fundamental capability IS the very essence of human nature. Without our ability to communicate and thus share knowledge, information and culture we would be no different than any other primate -- even LESS than apes. Face it: We are not truly human unless we share knowledge. Vast amounts of our existence IS our external culture that we are not born with and that we only acquire through the sharing of information.
We owe our very rule of this planet, our place in the food chain, and EVERY social, technological or other advancement of value to humanity's capability to share our thoughts and culture. Now, for the first time in history, in the Information Age, many humans willingly allow large amounts of our RELEVANT culture to be withheld and actually fight to protect the right of the greedy to DESTROY the public domain -- The very thing that makes us human!
Copyrights are now utterly evil -- They are a plague upon man. These restrictions now last for THREE GENERATIONS: 70 years beyond my life. That's my life, the life of my children (ending 30 years after I die), and the life of my GRANDCHILDREN, 70 years after I die. By the time anyone can LEGALLY duplicate ANY new piece of our culture ( song, books, software, games, photos, paintings ), freely they will be DEAD, and their kids will be DEAD, and their children's children WILL BE DEAD! -- No one who enjoyed the short-lived success of my books and games will even be alive to remember them when they become part of our public domain!
There was another age where the flow of knowledge met such great barriers -- The Dark Ages.
This evil legal idea of Copyright is now designed to ROBS US of our public domain, and ensure that the free common knowledge remains IRRELEVANT! The founding father's of the US granted copyrights for the betterment of society as a whole, and thought that the duplication monopoly should last about 12 to 14 years -- This was in a time when copies were expensive and only a select few could make duplications. These words have been duplicated over TWENTY times before you read them due to the routers between us. We all have duplication machines, we do not need to be protected from those that would hold the printing presses in hostage! The duplications are in INFINITE supply! To merely use information now is to duplicate it many times.
The strict laws designed to keep greedy publishers in line have now been turned against the common man because we all now own information sharing tools capable of creating duplications at essentially zero cost. The copy restrictions harm society as a whole! Down with copyright! Copyright is a law; Jim Crow was a law. Rosa Parks sat at the front of a bus, and none were harmed by her doing so; Ignoring unjust laws is an act of civil protest. I shall share ANY knowledge I desire freely and none shall be harmed by my doing so.
Additionally: Economics 101 -- Regardless of value or demand, if supply is infinite the price is ZERO. Silicon has great value! Would you like to buy some expensive sand?
Outlawing the free sharing of culture is to outlaw human nature -- The very definition of creating a police state.
How dare anyone scoff at the most sane, obvious and basic belief to date: Sharing Knowledge is Sacred.
To each who has, I charge you to isolate yourself and neither give nor take any information form any others! No books, no Internet, no music, NONE of OUR culture -- just solitude! Do not speak to another living human or hear what they say. Try to function this way for JUST ONE WEEK as less than an ape. Otherwise, you must admit your hypocrisy! I would like you to remove yourself from our free sea of culture permanently, but I am not so harsh or foolish to even request someone do such a thing!
Sure
I decline your offer because you have no idea what you are talking about.
First off, I don't mean to be an ass, you just seem to be ignorant. There is something called DNSSEC that not only exists, but is part of IPv6. Considering that you do not mention DNSSEC, and that both it and our current TLS implementations include "tapless and secure" "end-to-end" encryption facilities supports my first sentence...
DNSSEC isn't just for DNS, it could authenticate and encrypt email, or any other web traffic and can be a replacement for SSL. Please research it before replying to this comment.
Additionally, it doesn't matter how encrypted your connection is to what you see as yourbank.com if you can't verify that your are really connected to the place you think you are connected. Ergo: end-to-end encryption is not all the 'secure' we need, we also need authentication -- The fact that you did not mention authentication also supports my first statement. Now, if there is already a shared secret key between two parties then BOTH authentication and encryption can be performed easily.
Me: "I'm VortexCortex, here is some session salt: NWUyOGVkMWZlMTQw, and here is my encrypted message: "..."
Bank: "Hello VortexCortex, here is some session salt: MTkwMjM4MDE5ODIzM, and here is my encrypted reply: "..."
The shared secret key can be used along with the salts to create a key that decrypts the messages -- no fancy PKI needed... However, how do you first set up the account? With banks, you could visit them in person, but what about online retailers? You would have no pre-shared key, and this means they don't know who you are, and you can't verify who they are because neither have a pre-shared key.
Thus, we need some form of trusted public/private key infrastructure (hierarchical or Web of Trust, etc) in order to first validate an endpoint.
Finally -- WE CAN'T ENCRYPT EVERYTHING. It's not feasible to do this for cached content, high bandwidth video, live streaming, etc because encryption makes distributed content and/or deduplication impractical.
Unfortunately HTML and TLS (security) are designed independently of each-other and no one (but me?) thinks that HTML needs to know about security too... HTTP cookies can be marked as "secure only", why can't HTML tags have secure attributes?
The thing is: We don't need to encrypt something in order to trust it -- we can use hashing / digital fingerprints to ensure data integrity. Here's a post I made concerning the brain-damage that is the lack of security aware HTML. For the link-lazy, here's the pertinent part:
The BIGGEST retardation on the WEB is the fact that we have strong encryption and cryptographic signature technology in our browsers, and yet MIXED content is UNSAFE because (X)HTML standards don't declare facilities to specify fingerprints for the non-encrypted data that the encrypted page pulls in -- thus allowing for privacy of encrypted content, AND caching of plaintext content WITHOUT compromising integrity. /> Now apply this to the .js, .class, flash, .mp3, .avi, etc, and you get the point.
<img src="bkgnd.png" sig="SHA-1/hex;22172a80d89e99d250db62bf71031a23cbac4801" salt="HMAC/Base64;U2VjdXJpdHkgaXMgZWFzeS4K"
in short: You don't seem to know what you are talking about, but fret not, no one else does either or else we would have already solved this problem (because the answers are so apparent to those who do know what they are talking about).
TL;DR: I agree, the current direction the web is going is fine, but we need authentication an