"One of the students interviewed for the story suggested that lifting mugs from sensing mats could double as a voting system during karaoke competitions."
That's a great idea! Let's use the same method for presidential elections too. It'd probably even be more secure than those silly voting machines and at the very least, much more entertaining.
Now that I think about it, having the candidates sing karaoke as part of their platform might be a good idea too:)
Seriously. It's annoying. I've tried it all: post-its, using the same password, using a "root" password with a number added to the end. Unique passwords for each site using the domain and a number, storing passwords in handheld devices and looking them up manually and various password managers.
I finally ended up with my preferred solution, which gives me a seemingly random string of characters for every site that I visit. These strings are a hash value generated by combining the domain name of the site, another private salt value and a master password as the final salt value. With this method, I only have to remember one complex password.
This doesn't work for sites that require you to change your password often (since the domain stays the same). But given that I only need a couple of those, another alternative works fine.
The major downside (one could argue, flaw) in this is that if someone were to have your master password, they'd potentially (assuming they knew the logic and hidden salt values behind the hash) have the ability to access ALL of your accounts you had used the system for.
Obviously, for this reason you must be careful in selecting a long, complex and unique password while avoiding the temptation to write it down on a post-it note:D
"Software already follows a service model. Most software packages you pay a yearly use fee."
Uh, not any software I am using.
What you describe sounds interesting on paper and could potentially work well in the corporate environment, but there are simply too many issues that need quality resolutions for it to become viable. And even if resolved, it still absolutely sucks for the average consumer.
Aside from being forced to pay for a service that I may only occassionally, or never use, there's dealing with the software chosen by the ISP. If you want to use an alternative, you're going to have to essentially pay additional for that choice.
In my experience, nothing is free. Somewhere, somehow the cost will get passed to consumers. So the cost of the "ISP freebies" you mention will really just be rolled into an already overinflated connectivity bill.
And forgive me for laughing at your statement that current technology can do all of what you say right. When it comes to the internet as a platform in general, the current state is FAR from being a acceptable for you what you desribe, for a variety of reasons:
bandwidth (time for app resources to download, editing large documents online)
latency
speed/resources (waiting for Flash/Java apps to download and run, footprint requirements now include the browser, plus the runtime environment on top of the document requirements)
connection requirement
interface (GUI, usernames/passwords, etc).
Finally, there's the issue of privacy, security, control and legality. Performing any kind of document editing over the wire that wasn't already intended for public eyes and/or maintaining a library of content online is downright scary. And if it were done via the SSL of today (assuming someone doesn't find a flaw in that anytime soon), it'd probably be painfully slow on top of that.
I mentioned control and legality -- and this is a big one -- once you upload your content to these ASPs, who has control over the digital data? Certainly not the user of the service. Do you really thing the terms of service for each ASP will:
Not allow them to do what they want with your content, and...
Hold them unaccountable for any damages or losses to your content?
No thanks. Count me out. I'd rather use outdated software that I already licensed and installed on my local desktop thank you very much.
When technology has caught up in 10-15 years, perhaps it'll be a viable option. But even then, some of the not-easily-resolved challenges I've mentioned will still exist.
Every time someone mentions brute-force attacks against encrypted data, all I can think of is the growing number of computers that part of remote controlled botnets.
I imagine that brute-force encryption attacks by anyone with a direct or indirect connection to a 20,000+ node net are alarmingly easy.
I might be mistaken here, but I don't think people stating the game as "easy" is that cut and dry.
Wind Waker was easy, sure. It also could be completed in a fairly short time period. I think back to Majora's Mask where it took me months of playtime here and there to solve due to the constant time travel. I think the combination of the two factors -- easy AND fast --are what people are referring to when they say it was "easy."
A prime example is the case of "the other world" that exists in a good number of the other Zelda games. Where a gloriously long adventure has been divided evenly by two different worlds.
In the case of Wind Waker, the "alternate world" was basically a room or two in the castle and a single dirt road outside leading to a dungeon where the final battle took place -- a far cry from the light and dark worlds of previous adventures.
I'm sure I'm not the only one that wished they could have gone and explored the rest of Hyrule (especially in cel-shaded world) instead of it being barricaded off like some poorly put together landscape.
Your statements are spot on, but unfortunately the require a level of common-sense and maturity that the majority of gamers don't possess.
I also absolutely loved Wind Waker as I have loved every single Zelda game to date.
The diversion from a realistic look actually made the game MORE enjoyable for me for a number of reasons:
My mind let actions and events that would look odd in real life more palatable because they were happening in a stylized environment.
The richness of the animation detail FAR surpassed *anything* anyone has seen in a Zelda game (or most other games for that matter). The smoke animation, fabric animation, lighting and environment such as water and sky effects. Link's facial expression. Simply beautiful.
What really amazes me is that people are so hung up on the look of the game that they totally miss the real disappointment in Wind Waker -- that it was one of the most quick and simple-to-beat Zelda games.
It my opinion, it was much too short. With the richness and scale (HUGE!) of the environment, I really wanted more adventure and more opportunities to explore and find secrets scattered througout.
I'm hoping that Twilight Princess won't suffer the same fate. Even if so, I'm sure it will be an enjoyable diversion from real life regardless;)
I have it on good authority that this official report was a significant piece of evidence in determining which syndication method had indeed been adopted as the industry standard.
I'm probably averaging about 2 phishing e-mail spam a day at the moment.
Most of them are sitting on sites referenced with IP addresses, but occassionally there will be domains from obviously hacked sites -- the most recent one was a lawfirm's site hosting a PayPal scam which I found amusing.
That particular site was written about ad nauseam, but lack of support for Mac wasn't it's major problem. The site was simply a pain to use, as has been noted in written form at least once.
I think you're taking your knowledge for granted. The mouse is doing the wrong thing because you are familiar with it and know that it is. Someone inexperienced might think it's doing the right thing and struggle forward.
And no fair -- you can't tell people to "switch to the other button/finger" when you're not around;)
Though it really doesn't matter. Double-clicking is as un-intuitive as right-clicking. My point was that discounting the argument just because you are more skilled is naive.
You're definitely right with the terminology issue though. I always use "click two times really fast with your pointer finger" and that seems to work.
Sacrificing that for an annoying keyboard-mouse combination click in order to make things slightly simpler for the absolute beginners only serves to frustrate me.
See... this is exactly the attitude I was talking about. You and the rest of us geeks aren't the only people in the world who use computers, and to be successful, Apple has to decide what hardware will be more friendly to the largest audience -- and judging from the people I see in the Apple store, we are definitely not it.
Instead, they ship with the simple and provide the "upgrade" to those of us who want/need it.
I prefer the "annoying keyboard-mouse" combination click as you put it. But I don't use a mouse - I use a Wacom pen/tablet and my other hand is always resting above the control key on the keyboard anyway.
I'll give you that - double-clicking does take some dexterity.
But I'll also say that in my opinion --based on observing my 6-year-old niece -- double-clicking with an Apple rocker-style single button mouse is much easier than double-clicking with a single finger on a multi-button mouse (wow... say that five times fast)
I suppose you're right. But the lower-end mice are the ones that always ship with the computer and I'd wager what most non-geek people end up using.
Interesting though - I'll have to look at the mice on display next time I'm at the store. Out of the mice I have (three HP mice, a Wacom cordless, a little Macally mouse and another cheap $10 laptop mouse) every one of them is symmetrical.
In my personal experience, it appears that most non-geek people "turn off" their brains when computing and subconciously decide that they won't exert any (and I mean ANY) effort to figure out a problem.
There are fundamental differences between using a mouse and driving a car, and using a keyboard and putting on shoes that I think are also woth mentioning:
People are usually trained (at some basic level) to drive a car.
Turning off your brain and/or not exerting any effort while driving will probably result in an accident.
The keys on the keyboard are labeled with symbols that most of us have been exposed to since grade school.
Keyboard confusion does exist. Specifically with the modifier keys like "control", "alt", "command", "windows."
Try to explain these to an inexperienced user and you'll get as much of a blank stare as when talking about the difference between left and right mouse buttons.
Putting shoes on the wrong feet gives tactile, intuititive feedback - they feel funny. The mouse has no way of communicating when you're doing something other than what you meant to do. Add to that the fact that mice are quite often perfectly symmetrical, unlike your shoes.
It amazes me (okay, not really) that there are so many holier-than-thou attitudes here disregarding the 'two mouse buttons are too confusing' argument. I guess they fail to realize that the world is full of people, and not everyone is as knowledgeable, skilled, smart, dexterous or experienced as themselves.
Many people here would do a lot for their awareness of this reality by reading The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman.
This is great stuff:) Not to sound alarmist, but what makes it really ugly is the fact that this gives new meaning to the term phishing.
Many, many people have a huge false sense of security when it comes to cell phones (and phones in general for that matter), thinking that what they say won't and/or can't be intercepted by anyone. I've witnessed people giving out credit cards, social security numbers and other personal information over their cell phone numerous times. If it's really this easy to grab conversations from the air, i's just more fuel to the identity theft fire.
After all, this implies that you can do some easy scamming by just go a highly populated area and phishing away. Of course, it might be hard to explain to passerbys just what that big tube-like thing you're holding is for:)
Actroid-mc.wmv is a standing gal in typical racing girl garb:O
Actroid-info.wmv is a kisok-based gal giving information to passing guests.
Actroid-hi.rm is the sitting one that has been featured in the articles.
Actroid-der.wmv is another standing android (though they show that she is obviously bolted to the floor), and is the longest and probably the most natural looking.
Was wondering when this was going to appear on Slashdot.
When I first saw this on another site, I did a bit of surfing around and found the Kokoro-Dreams site that has a few pictures and (more importantly) videos of the ladies in action.
All but one of these is in WMV format and the other is a Real Media file. I would have Coral-Cached this whole site, but they've implemented some nasty referer checking and it won't work.
So instead, I Cached the individual video files for your enjoyment:
That will just be three more randomly generated data bits that I'll have to add to my alternate identity generation script because phishers will merely start adding those same questions to their forms.
The ONLY way phishing will stop is when it no longer yields a return, and that is likely to never happen. At the very least, we can lessen the damage by populating the sites in my known phishing sites RSS feed with bogus, but real-looking data. Feel free to send me any phishing sites you receive.
I'd actually like to put together a Firefox plugin to make this more automated. If anyone is willing to help, feel free to contact me.
Yes, this is a bit of vigilanteism, but show me one GOOD alternative (and don't say laws or enforcement) that works and I'll gladly take the feed and script down:)
Slashdot Mirror
From posting nearly every day to not posting since May
Now that I think about it, having the candidates sing karaoke as part of their platform might be a good idea too
Seriously. It's annoying. I've tried it all: post-its, using the same password, using a "root" password with a number added to the end. Unique passwords for each site using the domain and a number, storing passwords in handheld devices and looking them up manually and various password managers.
I finally ended up with my preferred solution, which gives me a seemingly random string of characters for every site that I visit. These strings are a hash value generated by combining the domain name of the site, another private salt value and a master password as the final salt value. With this method, I only have to remember one complex password.
This doesn't work for sites that require you to change your password often (since the domain stays the same). But given that I only need a couple of those, another alternative works fine.
The major downside (one could argue, flaw) in this is that if someone were to have your master password, they'd potentially (assuming they knew the logic and hidden salt values behind the hash) have the ability to access ALL of your accounts you had used the system for.
Obviously, for this reason you must be careful in selecting a long, complex and unique password while avoiding the temptation to write it down on a post-it note
What you describe sounds interesting on paper and could potentially work well in the corporate environment, but there are simply too many issues that need quality resolutions for it to become viable. And even if resolved, it still absolutely sucks for the average consumer.
Aside from being forced to pay for a service that I may only occassionally, or never use, there's dealing with the software chosen by the ISP. If you want to use an alternative, you're going to have to essentially pay additional for that choice.
In my experience, nothing is free. Somewhere, somehow the cost will get passed to consumers. So the cost of the "ISP freebies" you mention will really just be rolled into an already overinflated connectivity bill.
And forgive me for laughing at your statement that current technology can do all of what you say right. When it comes to the internet as a platform in general, the current state is FAR from being a acceptable for you what you desribe, for a variety of reasons:
Finally, there's the issue of privacy, security, control and legality. Performing any kind of document editing over the wire that wasn't already intended for public eyes and/or maintaining a library of content online is downright scary. And if it were done via the SSL of today (assuming someone doesn't find a flaw in that anytime soon), it'd probably be painfully slow on top of that.
I mentioned control and legality -- and this is a big one -- once you upload your content to these ASPs, who has control over the digital data? Certainly not the user of the service. Do you really thing the terms of service for each ASP will:
No thanks. Count me out. I'd rather use outdated software that I already licensed and installed on my local desktop thank you very much.
When technology has caught up in 10-15 years, perhaps it'll be a viable option. But even then, some of the not-easily-resolved challenges I've mentioned will still exist.
Every time someone mentions brute-force attacks against encrypted data, all I can think of is the growing number of computers that part of remote controlled botnets.
I imagine that brute-force encryption attacks by anyone with a direct or indirect connection to a 20,000+ node net are alarmingly easy.
I might be mistaken here, but I don't think people stating the game as "easy" is that cut and dry.
Wind Waker was easy, sure. It also could be completed in a fairly short time period. I think back to Majora's Mask where it took me months of playtime here and there to solve due to the constant time travel. I think the combination of the two factors -- easy AND fast --are what people are referring to when they say it was "easy."
A prime example is the case of "the other world" that exists in a good number of the other Zelda games. Where a gloriously long adventure has been divided evenly by two different worlds.
In the case of Wind Waker, the "alternate world" was basically a room or two in the castle and a single dirt road outside leading to a dungeon where the final battle took place -- a far cry from the light and dark worlds of previous adventures.
I'm sure I'm not the only one that wished they could have gone and explored the rest of Hyrule (especially in cel-shaded world) instead of it being barricaded off like some poorly put together landscape.
Damn that was beautifully stated. THANK YOU.
Your statements are spot on, but unfortunately the require a level of common-sense and maturity that the majority of gamers don't possess.
I also absolutely loved Wind Waker as I have loved every single Zelda game to date.
The diversion from a realistic look actually made the game MORE enjoyable for me for a number of reasons:
What really amazes me is that people are so hung up on the look of the game that they totally miss the real disappointment in Wind Waker -- that it was one of the most quick and simple-to-beat Zelda games.
It my opinion, it was much too short. With the richness and scale (HUGE!) of the environment, I really wanted more adventure and more opportunities to explore and find secrets scattered througout.
I'm hoping that Twilight Princess won't suffer the same fate. Even if so, I'm sure it will be an enjoyable diversion from real life regardless
I don't know whether I should laugh because that was funny or laugh because Geico's advertising is working as well as it appears to be.
I, for one, welcome our poker playing... oh nevermind.
I have it on good authority that this official report was a significant piece of evidence in determining which syndication method had indeed been adopted as the industry standard.
Obviously though, spelling steganography is much more difficult.
Just was doing some searching for funny things in the code comments:
Header comment in all:
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Foobar;
aas_map.c; line 295
//NOW close the fucking brush!!
q_math.c; line 561 & 562
// evil floating point bit level hacking
// what the fuck?
cgame.plg; line 75:
D:\quake3\MissionPack\code\game\bg_pmove.c(987) : warning C4189: 'shit' : local variable is initialized but not referenced
tr_Backend.c; line 401:
// do initialization shit
ai_dmq3.c; line 3344:
//if the enemy is invisible then shoot crappy most of the time
ui_shared.h; line 163:
// the benefits of c++ in DOOM will greatly help crap like this
jdmainct.c; line 196-197:
/* Create the funny pointer lists discussed in the comments above.
make_funny_pointers (j_decompress_ptr cinfo)
l_threads.c; line 202, 215:
//Stupid me... forgot this!!!
macosx_sys.m; line 268:
/* Okay, this is a stupid hack, but what the hell, I was bored. ;) */
aas_map.c; line 261:
//there are no brush bevels marked but who cares :)
unzip.c; line 926:
/* various hacks, don't look :) */
vm.c; line 315: :)
it might be better to wait for DOOM 3 before you start porting.
sv_client.c; line 988:
// we basically use this while loop to avoid using 'goto' :)
I started organize all my phishing e-mails into a RSS news feed back in May and wrote a (slow) little script to generate false information.
I'm probably averaging about 2 phishing e-mail spam a day at the moment.
Most of them are sitting on sites referenced with IP addresses, but occassionally there will be domains from obviously hacked sites -- the most recent one was a lawfirm's site hosting a PayPal scam which I found amusing.
That particular site was written about ad nauseam, but lack of support for Mac wasn't it's major problem. The site was simply a pain to use, as has been noted in written form at least once.
Excellent response, thank you!
I think you're taking your knowledge for granted. The mouse is doing the wrong thing because you are familiar with it and know that it is. Someone inexperienced might think it's doing the right thing and struggle forward.
And no fair -- you can't tell people to "switch to the other button/finger" when you're not around
Though it really doesn't matter. Double-clicking is as un-intuitive as right-clicking. My point was that discounting the argument just because you are more skilled is naive.
You're definitely right with the terminology issue though. I always use "click two times really fast with your pointer finger" and that seems to work.
See... this is exactly the attitude I was talking about. You and the rest of us geeks aren't the only people in the world who use computers, and to be successful, Apple has to decide what hardware will be more friendly to the largest audience -- and judging from the people I see in the Apple store, we are definitely not it.
Instead, they ship with the simple and provide the "upgrade" to those of us who want/need it.
I prefer the "annoying keyboard-mouse" combination click as you put it. But I don't use a mouse - I use a Wacom pen/tablet and my other hand is always resting above the control key on the keyboard anyway.
I'll give you that - double-clicking does take some dexterity.
But I'll also say that in my opinion --based on observing my 6-year-old niece -- double-clicking with an Apple rocker-style single button mouse is much easier than double-clicking with a single finger on a multi-button mouse (wow... say that five times fast)
I suppose you're right. But the lower-end mice are the ones that always ship with the computer and I'd wager what most non-geek people end up using.
Interesting though - I'll have to look at the mice on display next time I'm at the store. Out of the mice I have (three HP mice, a Wacom cordless, a little Macally mouse and another cheap $10 laptop mouse) every one of them is symmetrical.
In my personal experience, it appears that most non-geek people "turn off" their brains when computing and subconciously decide that they won't exert any (and I mean ANY) effort to figure out a problem.
There are fundamental differences between using a mouse and driving a car, and using a keyboard and putting on shoes that I think are also woth mentioning:
Try to explain these to an inexperienced user and you'll get as much of a blank stare as when talking about the difference between left and right mouse buttons.
It amazes me (okay, not really) that there are so many holier-than-thou attitudes here disregarding the 'two mouse buttons are too confusing' argument. I guess they fail to realize that the world is full of people, and not everyone is as knowledgeable, skilled, smart, dexterous or experienced as themselves.
Many people here would do a lot for their awareness of this reality by reading The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman.
This is great stuff
Many, many people have a huge false sense of security when it comes to cell phones (and phones in general for that matter), thinking that what they say won't and/or can't be intercepted by anyone. I've witnessed people giving out credit cards, social security numbers and other personal information over their cell phone numerous times. If it's really this easy to grab conversations from the air, i's just more fuel to the identity theft fire.
After all, this implies that you can do some easy scamming by just go a highly populated area and phishing away. Of course, it might be hard to explain to passerbys just what that big tube-like thing you're holding is for
You mean people actually pay for porn?
If you ask me, all a tax on porn is going to do is increase the quantity of porn that is already available for free.
Hmmm... now that I've typed that out loud, it doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Bring on the porn tax!
I should have also mentioned that:
Was wondering when this was going to appear on Slashdot.
When I first saw this on another site, I did a bit of surfing around and found the Kokoro-Dreams site that has a few pictures and (more importantly) videos of the ladies in action.
All but one of these is in WMV format and the other is a Real Media file. I would have Coral-Cached this whole site, but they've implemented some nasty referer checking and it won't work.
So instead, I Cached the individual video files for your enjoyment:
http://www.kokoro-dreams.co.jp.nyud.net:8090/WMV/
http://www.kokoro-dreams.co.jp.nyud.net:8090/WMV/
http://www.kokoro-dreams.co.jp.nyud.net:8090/real
http://www.kokoro-dreams.co.jp.nyud.net:8090/WMV/
There's also this Japanese PDF file (not many pictures):
http://www.kokoro-dreams.co.jp.nyud.net:8090/ng/a
If you're interested in surfing around the original Japanese site, you can do so here:
http://www.kokoro-dreams.co.jp/
Are they serious?
That will just be three more randomly generated data bits that I'll have to add to my alternate identity generation script because phishers will merely start adding those same questions to their forms.
The ONLY way phishing will stop is when it no longer yields a return, and that is likely to never happen. At the very least, we can lessen the damage by populating the sites in my known phishing sites RSS feed with bogus, but real-looking data. Feel free to send me any phishing sites you receive.
I'd actually like to put together a Firefox plugin to make this more automated. If anyone is willing to help, feel free to contact me.
Yes, this is a bit of vigilanteism, but show me one GOOD alternative (and don't say laws or enforcement) that works and I'll gladly take the feed and script down