Was it only the phone number that was used to auth, or some other info like phone id etc along it? No user password?
If it was just phone number, that's pretty stupid. But if you include some phone specific id aswell, it makes it a little more secure. Granted, some other app could generate the same id when installed, but with Apple's closed approach that is a little bit harder and you would need to get the both apps installed on same phone.
However that just shows that in some peoples mind extreme convenience goes further than good security.
as some users are reportedly being reminded when they get phone calls from the publishers of a free app they've downloaded from the App Store.
This was an interesting bit that wasn't explained anywhere in the article. What kind of phone calls they get? Asking for user feedback of the app, marketing other products (maybe on other platforms)? Late night drunk calls?
But for that matter, I've always though that phone apps have access to your number anyway. It just makes sense, same way that PC apps have access to your IP address and other personal data saved on the machine.
Not that it's that bad anyway. Many kind of software need better access to the information to function to function. Answering machine software needs access to the phone book to show who called, or to make custom rules.
I dont think that the issue is really that the phone number and other data are available, but more on abusing said info. With Apple's really closed approach and the app store, it would probably be a good idea to send info about the abuse to Apple directly. Technically the apps require access to information to function.
As a side note, most of us probably think that "real-time traffic monitoring application" refers to internet traffic. I looked it up and it's actually about road traffic, not about internet stuff:)
This is what's actually good in Windows Mobile. Anyone can write software for it and anyone can start a Store site for it. In this respect Windows and Windows Mobile are quite open architectures. All iPhone, Palm and Symbian are really restricted and closed architectures (Symbian requires you to get certificate for the app too), and getting your apps on the stores are a real bitch.
I find it more interesting if the gf doesn't herself play that much, so your whole life doesn't start to be just one thing. Of course it sometimes sucks to be sucked in to "boring" sounding places, but its a good change.
And when she does play something then, its more fun. I can take a beer and watch while she plays GTA Vice City. Or when she comes get me to bed at 4am after a long hours of Left4Dead, while watching me finishing the game all sleepy.
For that matter my father plays a lot too (and used to play when we we're kids too). Even so that calling to come to eat was sometimes done in WoW whispers:)
I bought DDR for just $20 and it still entertains me all these years later. Why spend hundreds of dollars when a single twenty will give just as much fun?
If I want to play exactly that game, another game isn't going to do it even if it's just as fun. This is the same reason a gamer wont be moving to Linux even when it has some good games working on it too. But it's not the game he wants to play.
Games aren't like food or a home which you pretty much need for living. If the games entertainment value is justified for the price for you, then buy it and play it. If not, be without and play something else. It's not required for your living. That's why whining about the prices is stupid and as long as market keeps buying with those prices, they will be that amount.
It's not foolish to pay for something you like and enjoy. Even less so because with DLC's and micropayments you've played the game already, know you like it and then pay for more content for your favorite game.
That's a total of 4 years and 8 months as of right now. That means that I've paid $14.95 a month for 56 months. That's $837.20.
Considering that's almost 5 years of entertainment and actually a good game, is that really so much. Like he notes, it comes down to $14.95 a month - pretty much every other hobby costs a lot more per month, while still providing less in back in terms of time spent.
Microtransactions and DLC's is a good way. If you like the game, you get more of what you like. It's not like you *have to* buy them. Patches in my opinion should be for game balancing or bug fixes - DLC's and expansions for things that add content to the game. However some companies, like Valve, release DLC's (TF2, Left4dead) for free on PC too.
Yep. They are actually zero-compressed files, but still inside multi-archived files. But the subtitle files are as separate. I can load a video file just fine on vlc, but I cant load subtitles in it unless I decompress and they have the same filename.
The one thing I'd like to have with players is good support for playing files off from compressed (rar/zip etc) files. And I mean good support, not just something that works like a stream, but where you can seek and do everything like you can do with actual files.
Other than the not so much interest in it, is there some actual reason this haven't been done good yet? VLC had some support for it in early days, and I understand it got better too. But it's still not the same. For example loading subtitles etc is impossible.
Please develop this aspect too, as many.. MANY people look and want it.
You do understand theres other kinds of power plants than just oil? Water power is really green, and nuclear power aswell (and the worries about that aren't really adjusted; theres nuclear reactons everywhere)
The article makes it sound like it would only be a car for the "elite", but I think the hybrid/electric car development also plays a big role in it. Considering how shitty hybrid car development is by far, its only good. And maybe now US can stop relying so much on oil too.
I'm quite surprised iPhone hasn't had MMS yet. It has been on phones since like 2003.
For that matter it'll never got popular. This is partly because operators overprice MMS and because it doesn't really serve that much purpose. Yeah I could send a pic with it, but meh. Could always show them via computer or otherwise too.
'Interoperability between carriers has always been an issue, and that's why MMS usage hasn't really taken off.'"
I doubt this is really the issue. Where I live MMS has been working greatly since the beginning between operators too. But it still hasn't taken off.
Welcome to 98. Not everyone runs Windows as admin, especially if its a shared computer (like in family). For that matter, its just aswell possible to run Linux as root to do your everyday things. This has been said countless of times already, but it's not the OS's fault; it's the users fault and how they're using their system. Linux is just as vulnerable to a stupid user than Windows is.
It does break intranet sites if they're specially being made to work with IE (which everyone uses on the company). You'd be surprised how much of corporate code is specially made the work with IE and it doesn't work well or at all with other browsers.
Yep, they could push it really hard to users, but what would be the point of that? They're already pushing Chrome on YouTube and other sites and its a better deal for them. Just visit YouTube with IE and you see the advertisement on bottom to test out Chrome browser.
The company is also investigating bugs filed with the Chrome team by Microsoft developers, who reported that Chrome Frame broke IE8's privacy mode.
Why am I not surprised this feature wasn't tested at Google?;)
But on an interesting note, this seems to be a direct attack against Microsoft by Google. Granted not that many users will probably install it (especially 'normal' users who just dont care), with this and Chrome OS it's clear that Google is going after MS.
Also, this is another avenue for Google to datamine everything about the internet. People dont usually think about it, but Google's analytics traffic code is all over the internet and probably 90% of the sites you visit is known to google. Another interesting thing is that Slashdot used to hide the tracking code under its own domain, so just blocking the analytics domain didn't work.
While I dont like some of the business practices by neither one, its hard to pick sides here. Atleast MS sells the products directly, while Google monetarizes them by ads. And by that very nature you lose lots of privacy.
Earlier there was also discussion that Chrome Frame is mostly provided for corporate users who are required to use IE and cant install other browsers. But how can they install this plugin then? It's normal exe and probably requires even more admin rights to get inside IE than just installing Chrome on your userbase. And other than that I dont see a point in wrapping another browser plugin to work inside browser. If people are knowledge about this plugin, they're knowledge about the actual Chrome browser too. And IE user experience and GUI sucks.
What's with the ridiculous reference to ants? If they had said this in a technical way, I might actually even understand what they mean. Now it's basically "ants travel inside your network". The article doesn't tell a lot more.
Obviously nothing is "traveling" inside your lan cable. So do they mean they have every machine in promiscuous lan that tries to seek what is traveling there? What kind of "scent" does it leave when it detects some threat and how are the other computers interact with that?
Stop doing some stupid nature references just for the hell of it, give technical details.
I think the indie game Braid was the first game to make this approach of time in games great. And if you develop the game good around that, it's great.
I loved Braid for the fact that even if I made a mistake, I would push the go back in time button instead of repeating quick-save/quick-load all the time when I fail. The levels could be made harder and more unforgiving too because you could always go back in time. And on its philosophy side it made me want to do the same thing for my past relationships, which is part of the story. Great game.
Actually I would like to see this in more games. Just go back in time instead of the quick-save/load bashing. It's a lot more fun too.
Re:I used to make this same exuse...
on
Why Games Cost $60
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· Score: 4, Insightful
It doesn't need to be either that or this. You can enjoy both worlds, just as long as you don't take gaming too long. I enjoy traveling, going out and hanging out with my girlfriend. On the other hand I enjoy sitting on computer, coding, gaming, writing on slashdot. As long as you balance them both good, it's great. Or even mix them; I like watching while my gf plays gta or some other games and drink a beer while she does so. And I like it when I play Left4Dead till 4am at night and she wakes up and comes sitting behind me to watch me finish it and convinces me to get to sleep then.
You dont need to choose either one, you can do both as long as you balance it.
Lets not get into this l4d2 discussion again, but I'm actually quite happy with them. There's a few DLC's coming for free in just 4 days, and they're improved the game a lot during its process. Introduced new gameplay modes and similar, thats not so usual. And the fact l4d is a great game and I've spent pointless hours on it.
It can be great thing for the community too. l4d2 takes a bit different approach and those updates really wouldn't fit the original game. With it's multiplayer system I'm sure you'll find people playing both games all the time too. l4d2 is so different from the original game that it's good they've made it another game - and the amount of time and fun I've got from L4D, I'm sure as hell gonna buy the second one too - and still play first one aswell.
Only in Germany however (and probably in UK soon). The another thing that brings the price up is localization to different languages for countries that still cant understand English. And since publishers usually package couple of countries at time, the countries that dont even get localization pay for them who do.
Slashdot Mirror
Was it only the phone number that was used to auth, or some other info like phone id etc along it? No user password?
If it was just phone number, that's pretty stupid. But if you include some phone specific id aswell, it makes it a little more secure. Granted, some other app could generate the same id when installed, but with Apple's closed approach that is a little bit harder and you would need to get the both apps installed on same phone.
However that just shows that in some peoples mind extreme convenience goes further than good security.
as some users are reportedly being reminded when they get phone calls from the publishers of a free app they've downloaded from the App Store.
This was an interesting bit that wasn't explained anywhere in the article. What kind of phone calls they get? Asking for user feedback of the app, marketing other products (maybe on other platforms)? Late night drunk calls?
But for that matter, I've always though that phone apps have access to your number anyway. It just makes sense, same way that PC apps have access to your IP address and other personal data saved on the machine.
Not that it's that bad anyway. Many kind of software need better access to the information to function to function. Answering machine software needs access to the phone book to show who called, or to make custom rules.
I dont think that the issue is really that the phone number and other data are available, but more on abusing said info. With Apple's really closed approach and the app store, it would probably be a good idea to send info about the abuse to Apple directly. Technically the apps require access to information to function.
As a side note, most of us probably think that "real-time traffic monitoring application" refers to internet traffic. I looked it up and it's actually about road traffic, not about internet stuff :)
The microtransaction-focused game, Gran Turismo HD: Classic will be the online-focused entrant into the GT-series
That's not Gran Turismo 5 tho, but Gran Turismo HD (which is cancelled already - the news is from 2006)
This is what's actually good in Windows Mobile. Anyone can write software for it and anyone can start a Store site for it. In this respect Windows and Windows Mobile are quite open architectures. All iPhone, Palm and Symbian are really restricted and closed architectures (Symbian requires you to get certificate for the app too), and getting your apps on the stores are a real bitch.
I find it more interesting if the gf doesn't herself play that much, so your whole life doesn't start to be just one thing. Of course it sometimes sucks to be sucked in to "boring" sounding places, but its a good change.
And when she does play something then, its more fun. I can take a beer and watch while she plays GTA Vice City. Or when she comes get me to bed at 4am after a long hours of Left4Dead, while watching me finishing the game all sleepy.
For that matter my father plays a lot too (and used to play when we we're kids too). Even so that calling to come to eat was sometimes done in WoW whispers :)
I bought DDR for just $20 and it still entertains me all these years later. Why spend hundreds of dollars when a single twenty will give just as much fun?
If I want to play exactly that game, another game isn't going to do it even if it's just as fun. This is the same reason a gamer wont be moving to Linux even when it has some good games working on it too. But it's not the game he wants to play.
Games aren't like food or a home which you pretty much need for living. If the games entertainment value is justified for the price for you, then buy it and play it. If not, be without and play something else. It's not required for your living. That's why whining about the prices is stupid and as long as market keeps buying with those prices, they will be that amount.
appearently if you want to buy all cars and all tracks, it will set you back several thousand dollars. Come on!
[citation needed]
It's not foolish to pay for something you like and enjoy. Even less so because with DLC's and micropayments you've played the game already, know you like it and then pay for more content for your favorite game.
That's a total of 4 years and 8 months as of right now. That means that I've paid $14.95 a month for 56 months. That's $837.20.
Considering that's almost 5 years of entertainment and actually a good game, is that really so much. Like he notes, it comes down to $14.95 a month - pretty much every other hobby costs a lot more per month, while still providing less in back in terms of time spent.
Microtransactions and DLC's is a good way. If you like the game, you get more of what you like. It's not like you *have to* buy them. Patches in my opinion should be for game balancing or bug fixes - DLC's and expansions for things that add content to the game. However some companies, like Valve, release DLC's (TF2, Left4dead) for free on PC too.
Yep. They are actually zero-compressed files, but still inside multi-archived files. But the subtitle files are as separate. I can load a video file just fine on vlc, but I cant load subtitles in it unless I decompress and they have the same filename.
The one thing I'd like to have with players is good support for playing files off from compressed (rar/zip etc) files. And I mean good support, not just something that works like a stream, but where you can seek and do everything like you can do with actual files.
Other than the not so much interest in it, is there some actual reason this haven't been done good yet? VLC had some support for it in early days, and I understand it got better too. But it's still not the same. For example loading subtitles etc is impossible.
Please develop this aspect too, as many.. MANY people look and want it.
You do understand theres other kinds of power plants than just oil? Water power is really green, and nuclear power aswell (and the worries about that aren't really adjusted; theres nuclear reactons everywhere)
The article makes it sound like it would only be a car for the "elite", but I think the hybrid/electric car development also plays a big role in it. Considering how shitty hybrid car development is by far, its only good. And maybe now US can stop relying so much on oil too.
I'm quite surprised iPhone hasn't had MMS yet. It has been on phones since like 2003.
For that matter it'll never got popular. This is partly because operators overprice MMS and because it doesn't really serve that much purpose. Yeah I could send a pic with it, but meh. Could always show them via computer or otherwise too.
'Interoperability between carriers has always been an issue, and that's why MMS usage hasn't really taken off.'"
I doubt this is really the issue. Where I live MMS has been working greatly since the beginning between operators too. But it still hasn't taken off.
Welcome to 98. Not everyone runs Windows as admin, especially if its a shared computer (like in family). For that matter, its just aswell possible to run Linux as root to do your everyday things. This has been said countless of times already, but it's not the OS's fault; it's the users fault and how they're using their system. Linux is just as vulnerable to a stupid user than Windows is.
It does break intranet sites if they're specially being made to work with IE (which everyone uses on the company). You'd be surprised how much of corporate code is specially made the work with IE and it doesn't work well or at all with other browsers.
Yep, they could push it really hard to users, but what would be the point of that? They're already pushing Chrome on YouTube and other sites and its a better deal for them. Just visit YouTube with IE and you see the advertisement on bottom to test out Chrome browser.
The company is also investigating bugs filed with the Chrome team by Microsoft developers, who reported that Chrome Frame broke IE8's privacy mode.
Why am I not surprised this feature wasn't tested at Google? ;)
But on an interesting note, this seems to be a direct attack against Microsoft by Google. Granted not that many users will probably install it (especially 'normal' users who just dont care), with this and Chrome OS it's clear that Google is going after MS.
Also, this is another avenue for Google to datamine everything about the internet. People dont usually think about it, but Google's analytics traffic code is all over the internet and probably 90% of the sites you visit is known to google. Another interesting thing is that Slashdot used to hide the tracking code under its own domain, so just blocking the analytics domain didn't work.
While I dont like some of the business practices by neither one, its hard to pick sides here. Atleast MS sells the products directly, while Google monetarizes them by ads. And by that very nature you lose lots of privacy.
Earlier there was also discussion that Chrome Frame is mostly provided for corporate users who are required to use IE and cant install other browsers. But how can they install this plugin then? It's normal exe and probably requires even more admin rights to get inside IE than just installing Chrome on your userbase. And other than that I dont see a point in wrapping another browser plugin to work inside browser. If people are knowledge about this plugin, they're knowledge about the actual Chrome browser too. And IE user experience and GUI sucks.
What's with the ridiculous reference to ants? If they had said this in a technical way, I might actually even understand what they mean. Now it's basically "ants travel inside your network". The article doesn't tell a lot more.
Obviously nothing is "traveling" inside your lan cable. So do they mean they have every machine in promiscuous lan that tries to seek what is traveling there? What kind of "scent" does it leave when it detects some threat and how are the other computers interact with that?
Stop doing some stupid nature references just for the hell of it, give technical details.
I'd know it'll get back to me, but i actually meant countless :) Damn no editing button.
I think the indie game Braid was the first game to make this approach of time in games great. And if you develop the game good around that, it's great.
I loved Braid for the fact that even if I made a mistake, I would push the go back in time button instead of repeating quick-save/quick-load all the time when I fail. The levels could be made harder and more unforgiving too because you could always go back in time. And on its philosophy side it made me want to do the same thing for my past relationships, which is part of the story. Great game.
Actually I would like to see this in more games. Just go back in time instead of the quick-save/load bashing. It's a lot more fun too.
It doesn't need to be either that or this. You can enjoy both worlds, just as long as you don't take gaming too long. I enjoy traveling, going out and hanging out with my girlfriend. On the other hand I enjoy sitting on computer, coding, gaming, writing on slashdot. As long as you balance them both good, it's great. Or even mix them; I like watching while my gf plays gta or some other games and drink a beer while she does so. And I like it when I play Left4Dead till 4am at night and she wakes up and comes sitting behind me to watch me finish it and convinces me to get to sleep then.
You dont need to choose either one, you can do both as long as you balance it.
Lets not get into this l4d2 discussion again, but I'm actually quite happy with them. There's a few DLC's coming for free in just 4 days, and they're improved the game a lot during its process. Introduced new gameplay modes and similar, thats not so usual. And the fact l4d is a great game and I've spent pointless hours on it.
It can be great thing for the community too. l4d2 takes a bit different approach and those updates really wouldn't fit the original game. With it's multiplayer system I'm sure you'll find people playing both games all the time too. l4d2 is so different from the original game that it's good they've made it another game - and the amount of time and fun I've got from L4D, I'm sure as hell gonna buy the second one too - and still play first one aswell.
Only in Germany however (and probably in UK soon). The another thing that brings the price up is localization to different languages for countries that still cant understand English. And since publishers usually package couple of countries at time, the countries that dont even get localization pay for them who do.
That's not Steam or Valve's fault however. Publishers wanted different prices between regions.