Still, to have them actually name OpenOffice as a competitor says something about what they fear. To go all Harry Potter we could say this is the dreaded all powerful villian marking the one that has the power to defeat it.
Think how many mentions of the GPL, Linux, Apache, Mozilla, and now OpenOffice we've heard from Microsoft and you can get the idea that they are marking these things as dangerous to their existence. Like young Harry they keep trying to destroy these things.. as they've easily destroyed so many others.. and yet they find themselves unable to do so this time.
Okay, I admit I read children's books! Maybe we should write Hairy Coder and the Order of the Penguin.
The good thing about opensource is that it's difficult to assimilate or squash. There is no competitor to buy out or put out of business. No wonder Microsoft hates opensource so much. They hate GPL most of all because it's a license that doesn't let them [legally] steal your code while giving nothing back.
They couldn't take plain text? I actually laughed at one job recruiter that was impressed because my resume looked like it was typed out on a typewriter (to her). It was plain text she printed in a fixed width font. She thought it some special trick to make it look that way.
Like umm it's a resume. Do you really need fancy fonts and stuff? If I really want mine to stand out like a troll doll I'll print it on scratch n'sniff neon pink paper.
I'm still wondering why one of the Resume XML standards doesn't become popular. They'd greatly ease life for recruiters and those applying.
Did you ever see Ma&Pa Kettle actually use Access? I'm familiar with Oracle, Mysql, Postgres, etc and I find Access a pain to use and others I know with similar experience usually agree. It always gives me a headache quickly. I've seen less experienced users spend weeks trying to make minor things work properly. Is Access really something we want to copy? I've thought of making a Access-like wrapper to MySQL but never really thought it'd be useful.
MySQL is usually about the right mix of features and ease for me. I can whip up a fair sized database and supporting functions giving it a nice xml-rpc interface in a couple hours time.
With the large number of freely available pre-designed apps available as opensource I wonder if there is much needed in the way of [non-techie] user created db driven apps.
Why don't browsers do this?
on
Passport to Nowhere
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Why do we need something like passport? Shouldn't browsers provide this functionality. Or instead of username password combos why can't we authenticate using a single secret key that the user need only remember? Hash the secret key and a seed from the website. Send the hash to the sites to authenticate the user.
Example:
User's Passphrase: My dog is brown.
User's hash: 87c5630aaae21c773ea493aab54022b2
Site's domain: kavlon.org
Site's Passphase: Red Rover, Red Rover.
Site's hash: b4d1fe9cf7b3860a50ec7f21a2c09bb3
Combined hash: kavlon.org87c5630aaae21c773ea493aab54022b2b4d1fe9c f7b3860a50ec7f21a2c09bb3
Unique hash: e833a1237ac1afcaeed8f91139dc8e53
So neither the user nor the site admin need know their hash.. just their passphrase. The site never needs to know the user's private passphrase or hash. The only code the site needs to know is the unique hash which is specific to just that site. Using a one way hash (this used md5's) it's impossible to brute force calculate the value of either passphrase or hash (although obviously the site's hash is public). Because the combined hash uses the site's domain and the browser verifies that domain there is no way for another site to trick the browser into giving it the unique hash for another site.
With something like this the user only need to remember a single pass phrase and they could type it just once per session on any browser with any website. No doubt there are problems with it but it could be improved and then I think it'd be easier than something like Passport.
I made a cute lil wooden case for a mini-itx system. It was pretty nice. One of the benefits of how cool they run. I thought it would be nice for an office computer given it was tasteful looking, small, and almost completely silent. To bad where I live now I haven't got access to a workshop. I had several offers to buy the cases from me for resale.
Google is an excellent example of a good website. Another would be Yahoo's classic look. They switched it a couple years ago so that it's crammed full of crap in the interface. Made it much harder to use so I mostly just don't bother anymore. In old web design books though it was one of the most oft mentioned examples of a highly usable site.
Slashdot, IMO, has a little bit to noisy of interface. The main functionality is clear but many of the extras take experience and patience to get to. Most anything that appears on the left hand menu needs to be reworked I think. That menu alone is okay but combined with the large amount of actual content on the page it gets lost in the noise. I think most new users probably don't even notice it.
No. I don't really care about legal. I own the discs so if they want to take me to court then let them. They'll be making public asses of themselves to be attacking a consumer that buys many thousands of dollars of products from them and does nothing more evil than making backups and changing the media the movies are on. Even if I lost it'd be a great example for those trying to battle the DMCA and similar laws to use as proof of those laws being misused.
I'm picky. I really don't like transcoding very much. It's okay for copies I pass out for friends but for myself I want the full DVD quality and features. If anything I want higher quality video and sound, not less.
For copies to let your kids use though that'd be a good solution.
Yeh, I haven't been interested in DVD burners because the discs don't hold enough to store most movies. If these drives will work with Linux I'll be buying at least one as soon as they are available.
I own hundreds of DVDs (legal copies) and would appreciate being able to make backups that I could actually play in my DVD player. Up to now I've been ripping them to a PC which is plugged into my tv. That works well but isn't very portable if I want to take a copy to a friends house. It really sucks if you take an original $50 DVD to a friends and it gets lost or damaged. Shouldn't happen but it seems to do so anyway. The dangers of moving anything out of the house.. a much bigger area to look for it when it's lost.
Now if they just made these drives do that cool picture etching in the disc surface this would be the coolest thing out. I loved that cd burner. It'd be cool to be able to etch the top of the disc that way.
Have one of these http://alienware.com/system_pages/area-51m.aspx sent to an American friend and have them send it to you? Cheaper than flying to the US I'm sure.
Strange. I'll ask some Mac friends if it works for them. I don't do anything unusual with cookies (that I can think of) so no idea why it wouldn't stay. Do cookies usually work for you?
Opera is actually the browser I have the most trouble with. I find that on different OSs it renders pages differently (with the same version of Opera) which really drives me nuts. The Solaris version seems to be the worst I've tried. Of course not having an actual Solaris box handy I have to work by the screenshots others send me.
On my own site I'm less concerned about browsers besides Mozilla & Lynx than I am on professional projects. I don't feel much need to cater to users I'm not getting paid to worry about.
If it were a professional site I'd probably use the darker scheme by default but as it's my personal place to rant and such I figured I'd use my choice color scheme as the default. It's the only chance I get to force my horrible tastes on the world.;)
Flash has a place but it's grossly misused IMO. I think it should be used more as an image format and less for replacing HTML/XML. What we could really use I think might be something like CSS for telling a browser how to convert HTML/XML elements into Flash or SVG. So if you looked at the site in a non-Flash browser it'd look fine but if you had Flash it'd show all the bells and whistles.. with little effort on the part of the developer. You should even be able to apply different stylesheets as to be able to select a different Flash look to the same site. IMO that'd integrate Flash with the web so that it had no harmful side effects.
I don't care (much) if a site works for a certain speed of connection but it should work for users that are blind or using text-only interfaces. Obviously excluding uses of Flash for pure artistic purposes. ie every painting shouldn't be done as a book instead just because some people are blind.
IE6 had several major improvements to CSS support over older versions of IE. Whenever that was released. I still get enough people trying to use IE4 that I guess I think of IE6 as recent.
Myself I don't really care if they ever release a new version of IE because I never use it for anything other than testing sites for IE compatibility.
There are multiple stylesheets to pick from. I happen to like the bright but I include a couple dull looking options for people that haven't been online so long they require painfully high contrasting colors in order to see.;)
You should try stylesheets. Browsers that can't use them are uneffected by them and they can really clean up your HTML which actually result in a smaller download for your users.
I can't stand crap like Java or Flash on a site. Javascript is bad enough. If you want a bunch of extra fluff then use a custom client. All that crap just gets in the way for us people trying to get real work done.
Besides, it's rarely plugins that are the issue between browsers. In my experience Mozilla runs Java, Javascript, Flash, etc as well or better than IE. The only problems I have with them come from boneheaded websites that check the browser and then refuse to allow any none IE browser to access the site. How clueless is that.
Other than those things I don't know what you mean by rich content. HTML is HTML in any browser.
I code to the standards first and then verify it looks right with both IE and Mozilla (and Opera, and Lynx, and Konquerer). If something doesn't work with both I either remove it, tweak it until it's right, or use something like XSLT to generate the proper HTML for the given browser. It's more effort but it generally results in better code all around. If it's just CSS that is the problem I just have the site choose the desired stylesheet based on the browser used or let the user choose their own stylesheet from a list.
IE's CSS support has gotten better in recent releases but it's still not on par with Mozilla's support. For most things though it seems good enough to just use standard HTML/CSS without any IEisms. IE still isn't very PNG friendly though which is an ongoing annoyance for me.
Overall though it's not really a problem to just code to the standard. Coding to IE is problematic because it's a standard that changes with each release.
Without ads we might *gasp* have to resort to using more targeted, smaller, non-commercial websites. Amazing as that sounds it is possible. I'd say that 90% or more of what I look at online is on such sites. Google being the main exception. I might be willing to pay to use Google. Thus far I've yet to find any other website worth paying to use. Discussion forums and news articles just aren't worth paying for because any dope can set up a discussion forum and two any dope can write articles. Yes, such sites may be less polished but without the competition of the big sites I think they'd become more polished.
Removable faceplates on many products.. such as cell phones. This was done to allow easy hacking of the products look. Ring tones, downloadable games, etc were all done so normal customers could hack their cellphones without needing to be hacker gods. Get an N-Gage. They actively encourage writing of new programs for the unit and sharing them.
That's exactly the kind of consumer friendly hacking the article was talking about.
Or we could get to the all time favorite hackable consumer electronic device.. the PC. Hell no, nobody has one of those things. They must be a fad. Hackability is exactly why the PC market has done so well. Would you buy a PC you couldn't put your choice of software on?
Or outside of electronics.. the car. Look how popular car mods are? Or even homes. Would you buy a home you couldn't make changes to?
Slashdot Mirror
Still, to have them actually name OpenOffice as a competitor says something about what they fear. To go all Harry Potter we could say this is the dreaded all powerful villian marking the one that has the power to defeat it.
Think how many mentions of the GPL, Linux, Apache, Mozilla, and now OpenOffice we've heard from Microsoft and you can get the idea that they are marking these things as dangerous to their existence. Like young Harry they keep trying to destroy these things.. as they've easily destroyed so many others.. and yet they find themselves unable to do so this time.
Okay, I admit I read children's books! Maybe we should write Hairy Coder and the Order of the Penguin.
The good thing about opensource is that it's difficult to assimilate or squash. There is no competitor to buy out or put out of business. No wonder Microsoft hates opensource so much. They hate GPL most of all because it's a license that doesn't let them [legally] steal your code while giving nothing back.
Interesting. I would think it'd ne pretty easy to import PS/PDF as images at least. Render to images and import those images.
They couldn't take plain text? I actually laughed at one job recruiter that was impressed because my resume looked like it was typed out on a typewriter (to her). It was plain text she printed in a fixed width font. She thought it some special trick to make it look that way.
Like umm it's a resume. Do you really need fancy fonts and stuff? If I really want mine to stand out like a troll doll I'll print it on scratch n'sniff neon pink paper.
I'm still wondering why one of the Resume XML standards doesn't become popular. They'd greatly ease life for recruiters and those applying.
Did you ever see Ma&Pa Kettle actually use Access? I'm familiar with Oracle, Mysql, Postgres, etc and I find Access a pain to use and others I know with similar experience usually agree. It always gives me a headache quickly. I've seen less experienced users spend weeks trying to make minor things work properly. Is Access really something we want to copy? I've thought of making a Access-like wrapper to MySQL but never really thought it'd be useful.
MySQL is usually about the right mix of features and ease for me. I can whip up a fair sized database and supporting functions giving it a nice xml-rpc interface in a couple hours time.
With the large number of freely available pre-designed apps available as opensource I wonder if there is much needed in the way of [non-techie] user created db driven apps.
Why do we need something like passport? Shouldn't browsers provide this functionality. Or instead of username password combos why can't we authenticate using a single secret key that the user need only remember? Hash the secret key and a seed from the website. Send the hash to the sites to authenticate the user.
c f7b3860a50ec7f21a2c09bb3
Example:
User's Passphrase: My dog is brown.
User's hash: 87c5630aaae21c773ea493aab54022b2
Site's domain: kavlon.org
Site's Passphase: Red Rover, Red Rover.
Site's hash: b4d1fe9cf7b3860a50ec7f21a2c09bb3
Combined hash: kavlon.org87c5630aaae21c773ea493aab54022b2b4d1fe9
Unique hash: e833a1237ac1afcaeed8f91139dc8e53
So neither the user nor the site admin need know their hash.. just their passphrase. The site never needs to know the user's private passphrase or hash. The only code the site needs to know is the unique hash which is specific to just that site. Using a one way hash (this used md5's) it's impossible to brute force calculate the value of either passphrase or hash (although obviously the site's hash is public). Because the combined hash uses the site's domain and the browser verifies that domain there is no way for another site to trick the browser into giving it the unique hash for another site.
With something like this the user only need to remember a single pass phrase and they could type it just once per session on any browser with any website. No doubt there are problems with it but it could be improved and then I think it'd be easier than something like Passport.
I made a cute lil wooden case for a mini-itx system. It was pretty nice. One of the benefits of how cool they run. I thought it would be nice for an office computer given it was tasteful looking, small, and almost completely silent. To bad where I live now I haven't got access to a workshop. I had several offers to buy the cases from me for resale.
Exactly. Eventually they'll work but I won't buy one until they do.
Google is an excellent example of a good website. Another would be Yahoo's classic look. They switched it a couple years ago so that it's crammed full of crap in the interface. Made it much harder to use so I mostly just don't bother anymore. In old web design books though it was one of the most oft mentioned examples of a highly usable site.
Slashdot, IMO, has a little bit to noisy of interface. The main functionality is clear but many of the extras take experience and patience to get to. Most anything that appears on the left hand menu needs to be reworked I think. That menu alone is okay but combined with the large amount of actual content on the page it gets lost in the noise. I think most new users probably don't even notice it.
No. I don't really care about legal. I own the discs so if they want to take me to court then let them. They'll be making public asses of themselves to be attacking a consumer that buys many thousands of dollars of products from them and does nothing more evil than making backups and changing the media the movies are on. Even if I lost it'd be a great example for those trying to battle the DMCA and similar laws to use as proof of those laws being misused.
I'm picky. I really don't like transcoding very much. It's okay for copies I pass out for friends but for myself I want the full DVD quality and features. If anything I want higher quality video and sound, not less.
For copies to let your kids use though that'd be a good solution.
Yeh, I haven't been interested in DVD burners because the discs don't hold enough to store most movies. If these drives will work with Linux I'll be buying at least one as soon as they are available.
I own hundreds of DVDs (legal copies) and would appreciate being able to make backups that I could actually play in my DVD player. Up to now I've been ripping them to a PC which is plugged into my tv. That works well but isn't very portable if I want to take a copy to a friends house. It really sucks if you take an original $50 DVD to a friends and it gets lost or damaged. Shouldn't happen but it seems to do so anyway. The dangers of moving anything out of the house.. a much bigger area to look for it when it's lost.
Now if they just made these drives do that cool picture etching in the disc surface this would be the coolest thing out. I loved that cd burner. It'd be cool to be able to etch the top of the disc that way.
Have one of these http://alienware.com/system_pages/area-51m.aspx sent to an American friend and have them send it to you? Cheaper than flying to the US I'm sure.
Strange. I'll ask some Mac friends if it works for them. I don't do anything unusual with cookies (that I can think of) so no idea why it wouldn't stay. Do cookies usually work for you?
Opera is actually the browser I have the most trouble with. I find that on different OSs it renders pages differently (with the same version of Opera) which really drives me nuts. The Solaris version seems to be the worst I've tried. Of course not having an actual Solaris box handy I have to work by the screenshots others send me.
On my own site I'm less concerned about browsers besides Mozilla & Lynx than I am on professional projects. I don't feel much need to cater to users I'm not getting paid to worry about.
If it were a professional site I'd probably use the darker scheme by default but as it's my personal place to rant and such I figured I'd use my choice color scheme as the default. It's the only chance I get to force my horrible tastes on the world. ;)
Safari is a problem for a lot of us to develop to because we lack Macs. Is it still based mostly on Konquerer?
Flash has a place but it's grossly misused IMO. I think it should be used more as an image format and less for replacing HTML/XML. What we could really use I think might be something like CSS for telling a browser how to convert HTML/XML elements into Flash or SVG. So if you looked at the site in a non-Flash browser it'd look fine but if you had Flash it'd show all the bells and whistles.. with little effort on the part of the developer. You should even be able to apply different stylesheets as to be able to select a different Flash look to the same site. IMO that'd integrate Flash with the web so that it had no harmful side effects.
I don't care (much) if a site works for a certain speed of connection but it should work for users that are blind or using text-only interfaces. Obviously excluding uses of Flash for pure artistic purposes. ie every painting shouldn't be done as a book instead just because some people are blind.
IE6 had several major improvements to CSS support over older versions of IE. Whenever that was released. I still get enough people trying to use IE4 that I guess I think of IE6 as recent.
Myself I don't really care if they ever release a new version of IE because I never use it for anything other than testing sites for IE compatibility.
There are multiple stylesheets to pick from. I happen to like the bright but I include a couple dull looking options for people that haven't been online so long they require painfully high contrasting colors in order to see. ;)
Look under the Home.. Configure menu.
You should try stylesheets. Browsers that can't use them are uneffected by them and they can really clean up your HTML which actually result in a smaller download for your users.
I can't stand crap like Java or Flash on a site. Javascript is bad enough. If you want a bunch of extra fluff then use a custom client. All that crap just gets in the way for us people trying to get real work done.
Besides, it's rarely plugins that are the issue between browsers. In my experience Mozilla runs Java, Javascript, Flash, etc as well or better than IE. The only problems I have with them come from boneheaded websites that check the browser and then refuse to allow any none IE browser to access the site. How clueless is that.
Other than those things I don't know what you mean by rich content. HTML is HTML in any browser.
I code to the standards first and then verify it looks right with both IE and Mozilla (and Opera, and Lynx, and Konquerer). If something doesn't work with both I either remove it, tweak it until it's right, or use something like XSLT to generate the proper HTML for the given browser. It's more effort but it generally results in better code all around. If it's just CSS that is the problem I just have the site choose the desired stylesheet based on the browser used or let the user choose their own stylesheet from a list.
IE's CSS support has gotten better in recent releases but it's still not on par with Mozilla's support. For most things though it seems good enough to just use standard HTML/CSS without any IEisms. IE still isn't very PNG friendly though which is an ongoing annoyance for me.
Overall though it's not really a problem to just code to the standard. Coding to IE is problematic because it's a standard that changes with each release.
Without ads we might *gasp* have to resort to using more targeted, smaller, non-commercial websites. Amazing as that sounds it is possible. I'd say that 90% or more of what I look at online is on such sites. Google being the main exception. I might be willing to pay to use Google. Thus far I've yet to find any other website worth paying to use. Discussion forums and news articles just aren't worth paying for because any dope can set up a discussion forum and two any dope can write articles. Yes, such sites may be less polished but without the competition of the big sites I think they'd become more polished.
Removable faceplates on many products.. such as cell phones. This was done to allow easy hacking of the products look. Ring tones, downloadable games, etc were all done so normal customers could hack their cellphones without needing to be hacker gods. Get an N-Gage. They actively encourage writing of new programs for the unit and sharing them.
That's exactly the kind of consumer friendly hacking the article was talking about.
Or we could get to the all time favorite hackable consumer electronic device.. the PC. Hell no, nobody has one of those things. They must be a fad. Hackability is exactly why the PC market has done so well. Would you buy a PC you couldn't put your choice of software on?
Or outside of electronics.. the car. Look how popular car mods are? Or even homes. Would you buy a home you couldn't make changes to?