I have to agree with this. Although the manual might be useful to reveal seldom-used or very specific features, the basic operation of any device should be intuitive. How can this be done? Doesn't everyone have their own idea of what's "intuitive"?
After reading the book "The Design of Everyday Things" (ISBN 0465067107) it seems that there is less involved in an intuitive interface than one might think. The main problem is that seldom is there any thought put into how to make something intuitive-- instead things get built based on the least amount of effort, even if it's only a very small amount of additional effort to make things easy to use.
After reading this book, I now see all kinds of examples of bad design that could have been easily fixed with just a tiny amount of effort, or things that could have been made intuitive with the exact same amount of effort, but making it intuitive simply wasn't even a consideration.
For example, where I live there are several light switches in a three-gang box that control different lights. They are wired randomly, and I'm always mis-guessing which switch goes with which light. A better design, which would have taken the exact same amount of effort would have been to wire the light on the left from the point of view of the box with the left-hand switch. Put the light on the right in the right-hand switch, etc. In fact, when I get "around to it" I plan to rewire them this way.
As another example, some other switches are horizontal. Push the right side they come on, push the left they go off. Unfortunately the door to the room is on the right. This means that I'm always pressing the switch against the normal direction of movement as I come in or leave the room. Again, for zero additional effort they could have been wired so that they're operated in the same direction as normal movement.
These are the sorts of thoughts that book will provoke. Recommended reading for anyone who is at all interested in how things work.
For a preview, try one of the sample SUPERSTITIAL ads, available from the firm marketing them. You can even test your browser against some of the other formats offered by the same company.
My favorite quote (from near the bottom of the paragraph):
Full Screen Superstitial is guaranteed to play perfectly for every consumer, every time.
I'd sure like to see the terms of that guarantee... <grin>
The nice part is that it's not even a plugin. It's just a user chrome hack. Talk about nonintrusive!
Unfortunately, it currently requires contact with a web server (local or remote) because of this Mozilla bug. However, I'm hopeful that will get fixed at some point.
The ads sure don't display for me on Mozilla 1.4 with this handy click-to-play Flash hack I saw on another Slashdot posting. <sarcasm>Oh, darn.</sarcasm>
Another hint-- socks matter a lot. Thin cotton socks are nice for sitting around, but if you'll be on your feet all day, look into some Thor-lo walking socks or something similar. The "hiking" socks might also work, but I find them too thick for my feet unless I really need the extra padding.
If blisters are a problem, get a VERY thin inner sock. This should be about the thickness of a nylon stocking. This lets the outer sock rub against the inner sock instead of your skin. (If it's too thick your skin just rubs against two socks instead of one...)
So not only is it idiocy, it's legislated idiocy.;-)
To quote:
by stating the drug's name but not what it was used for, the ads were exempt from a Food and Drug Administration regulation that generally requires prescription drug advertisements to disclose the risks of the medication as well as its benefits. From the drug companies' perspective, it was impractical to include detailed risk information in a 30- or 60-second TV spot.
The actual regulations are here In particular, scroll down a bit to see 202.1(e)
Kudos to you for handling this very responsibly. Despite the attention-grabbing comment by pudge, you followed the policy he linked to quite nicely.
It doesn't seem to me at all unclear "why an exploit was made public before Apple resolved the problem". In fact this seems very clear in what you wrote:
After Apple reneged on the Nov. 3rd release date I gave them 2-3 weeks. After the 2-3 weeks were up, I asked for the status and they said "December". Meanwhile, users are left exposed and independent rediscovery seemed fairly likely.
The wiretrip policy linked above is quite clear on how long to give a vendor ("maintainer") to come up with a fix:
B. The MAINTAINER has 5 work days respond. Note that all times of work days are relative to the ORIGINATOR, not the MAINTAINER. Suggestion to the MAINTAINER: sooner is better than later--just because you have 5 days does not mean you need to take them all. The ORIGINATOR is technically free to do whatever they want to do after 5 work days--however, they should be fair and wait if the MAINTAINER shows adequate initiative to fix the ISSUE.
This is clarified a bit on what it means to "respond" in the FAQ section:
Q. I'm a software maintainer, and I can't possibly fix the problem in 5 days.... A. You don't have to. If you (re)read the above, you have 5 days to establish communication. Provided you cooperate with the researcher and keep them 'in the loop', they should provide you with whatever time necessary to resolve the ISSUE (within fair reason).
Q. I'm a software maintainer, and I want more than 5 days! A. Well, considering that, in general, you don't have *anything* technically, this document hopes to provide you with at least 5. Be on your best behavior, cooperate with the ORIGINATOR, and you should get more.:)
According to policy, you would have been OK (if somewhat rude) releasing this after 5 work days from initial contact. Extending it through 48 calendar days and several patch cycles seems extraordinarily generous.
I wouldn't feel at all bad about the timeline followed. If anything it shows remarkable restraint.
1. A method to improve peri-anal hygiene comprising:
providing a gel of viscosity thick enough to rest for several seconds on a piece of toilet paper without causing noticeable disintegration of the piece of toilet paper;
dispensing a quantity of the gel onto the sheet of toilet paper;
applying the gel to an anal area using the sheet of toilet paper as an applicator; and
wiping the anal area with a dry sheet of toilet paper to dry the anal area of moisture left by said applying the gel.
2. A method to improve peri-anal hygiene comprising:
dispensing a gel onto a piece of toilet paper using a gel pump, the gel having a viscosity of sufficient thickness to prevent noticeable disintegration of a portion of the piece of toilet paper when the gel is applied to the portion; and
wiping an anal area with the gel using the piece of toilet paper as an applicator.
3. The method of claim 2, further including:
storing the gel in a container, the gel pump being secured to the container.
4. The method of claim 2, further including:
wiping the anal area with a dry piece of toilet paper for substantially drying the anal area of moisture left by said wiping the anal area with the gel.
5. An apparatus for improving peri-anal hygiene comprising:
a gel pump attached to a container; and
a gel applied to a portion of a piece of toilet paper by said gel pump, said gel having a viscosity of sufficient thickness to prevent noticeable disintegration of said portion of said piece of toilet paper when said gel is applied to said portion.
6. The apparatus of claim 5, wherein:
said gel comprises Aloe Vera gel. -----
Re:This may affect you because
on
Telstar 4 is Down
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I work for the Erotic Networks
Isn't that the place where every network interface is in promiscuous mode? <grin>
The best approach to a security "evaluation" is to ask the admins responsible for permission first. This lets them know that "something" might be going on soon so if they detect your attempts they won't panic and send the cops to your house/dorm room.
This also makes it obvious that you were really trying to help find/enhance security rather than just hacking into the system for your own benefit.
One of the crazy things about Tivo is that your costs are lower than you think-- especially if you buy a lifetime subscription. You can recover a lot of your cost by selling your Tivo when you're done with it.
My Tivo that I purchased for $800, including lifetime subscription, now sells for about $380-400 on Ebay. Units modified with the same hard drive upgrade as mine sell for about $550-$600. (Which is extra nice considering the drive only cost me $120, but create a recovery price difference of $150-ish.)
So the cost comes down to $800 + $120 ($920) less the recovery value on Ebay ($550). This comes down to about $10/month for my three years of use including hardware costs.
Tivos without lifetime service generally sell for $300 or more less than those that have it. This means that the resale value of this feature actually increases over time. (It was $200 when I bought it.)
The big gotcha is that if your Tivo breaks, your recovery costs drop quite a bit. Not to zero, but certainly much lower unless you can find parts and fix it yourself.
Not to say I'm not glad they made that choice, I am, I'm just not convinced that their intentions were necessarily, "pure".
Their intentions were probably not "pure" from an idealistic standpoint. However, when I can read through books like Richard Stevens' TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1 in Mozilla on Linux, I'm glad they made it available and so compatible-- pure intentions or no.
Here's a hint, Intuit: Copy protection of the "fuck with the user's hard disk" variety didn't work in the DOS era, and it won't work now -- it pisses off the very people you most want to make happy: repeat customers.
I think you have a lot of company in this regard. Two years ago, Intuit's Quicken 2002 ended up being so intrusive on my main system that it got shuttled off into its own little isolated VMware world.
This will be my last "upgrade" to Quicken as the pain that the 2002 version gave me relative to the new features vs. the 2000 version made it not worth doing. Intuit cleverly does not provide a good way to export/import data to old versions or I would already have gone back. (QIF just doesn't cut it...)
Although the same VMware treatment would work with this year's release of TurboTax, I hate sending Intuit the $40 message that it's OK to jerk their customers around. Instead, I sent H&R block (aka "TaxCut") the $40 message that I'm glad they have not gone down this path.
And just in case there's anyone on Slashdot who isn't incensed by this policy (unlikely, but I love to preach to the choir), here are some choice words from Intuit's president and CEO:
"The problem we're solving for is piracy," Bennett continued. "Last year, we got paid for only about a third of the approximately 15 million federal returns prepared and filed on TurboTax desktop products. With this year's TurboTax license, taxpayers can still prepare and file multiple returns from one PC. So while we don't expect to get paid for all of those additional 10 million returns, we believe many resulted from pass-along copies and will result in additional TurboTax sales. Now, for a small but very vocal group of people, product activation is a crusade. But for the vast majority of our customers, it's a non-issue. And for Intuit it's a big opportunity."
And for the big "duh!" award:
However, Intuit executives said that recent customer protests are largely made up of non-customers, with other, more malicious agendas.
Here's a hint-- if someone's that annoyed with your product, they probably aren't going to buy it.
My "malicious agenda" is to spend my money elsewhere.
If it's physical presence that's the case, this should result in an enormous flood of online-only retailers to Oregon, where there is no sales tax. We could certainly use the jobs here.
Personally, I can see a huge new market for mail-forwarding services opening up in Oregon soon. The only trick will be how to run them on a margin less than the usual sales tax rates...
The Intuit software runs really nicely under VMware. In fact, I've had BETTER luck running Quicken under VMware than my normal Win2k system since many of the Microsoft security updates break the (probably undocumented) APIs that Quicken depends on. (I leave this VMware system unpatched and run it through an aggressive firewall/intrusion detector on the Linux host.)
I have a single Win2k VMware instance that has Turbo Tax for the last 8 years or so on it in addition to Quicken. When I upgrade my PC, I just take the virtual machine along and the Intuit software comes with it.
Although this scheme would also work to allow the same installation to work past upgrades, etc. I don't feel like rewarding Intuit's increasingly customer-hostile behavior and will be looking around for a different product to use this year.
When I started out in stereo equipment in the 1970's, you could go to any dealer and get handouts with product specifications on just about any product sold. You could compare transient intermodulation distortion, total harmonic distortion, FM sensitivity, wow & flutter, etc. Now you go into some place like Best Buy or Circuit City and there is nothing but a tag on the shelf. You're lucky if it shows even the most basic specs (e.g., watts per channel, number of discs the changer holds, etc.) and God help you if you ask the salesman for anything more. He'll look at you like you have three heads.
Nowadays we shouldn't have to depend on salespeople to know every detail about every product. They have hundreds/thousands of products in their stores-- even a Slashdot geek would have problems keeping current on the detailed specs on all those items.
Consumers have a huge advantage over salespeople. We can actually research the items we want in depth since we have the advantage of focussing on at most a handful of items. Thanks to how easy it is these days to exchange information it's trivial to get in-depth specifications on whatever we want.
Remember the Bad Old Days before most major vendors had their product info online? People were lucky to find any information anywhere. Brand, faith, and luck were pretty much all we had.
Now, however we can pop right on over to the various manufacturers' websites and get all the information we could want about the product. No info available? Hmmm, maybe that product drops off the list right there.
As if that wasn't enought, we can go to Consumer Reports' website and see what they think of a product. We can go to Epinions and see if a bunch of people we don't know are griping about it. We can check Reseller Ratings to see if an online store is screwing people over, or really trying to do business.
This kind of information flow has the potential to really improve quality and reward quality as word of crappy products/merchants gets out. In addition, we get a better statistical sampling since we have more people commenting than just the one or two we might know who bought the same thing.
Unfortunately, the bitter portion of me has to concede that most people just don't have the motivation to do any research. To them, I say you deserve what you get.;-)
The author in that Epinions link was quoting from the year 2000 Consumer Reports buying guide-- that was not an Epinions-generated list.
Interestingly, the Consumer Reports subscriber-only website does not have any information about VCR repair history. However, the Dec 2002 issue of Consumer reports makes the following recommendations:
"If you regularly record TV programs for later viewing, look to the top-ranked Toshiba W-727, $100, or the Sony SLV-N55, $90. Of the models we tested for this report, they have the best picture in EP mode--the slow speed that time-shifters generally use to conserve tape."
It seems odd for them to recommend a brand that would have a terrible repair history.
Epinions and Consumer reports are both great sites for anyone who wants to check up on things beforehand. (And for Epinions, for anyone who wants to vent about something after the fact.)
Slashdot Mirror
Since you're ignoring friction, this won't matter. ;-)
If you're feeling nostalgic, you could always grab a copy from Ebay.
Newer versions (2001ish) go for about $270 including shipping on Ebay. The newest version direct from World Book is $1100.
If you like learning random things, you should try out the Wikipedia random page feature.
I have to agree with this. Although the manual might be useful to reveal seldom-used or very specific features, the basic operation of any device should be intuitive. How can this be done? Doesn't everyone have their own idea of what's "intuitive"?
After reading the book "The Design of Everyday Things" (ISBN 0465067107) it seems that there is less involved in an intuitive interface than one might think. The main problem is that seldom is there any thought put into how to make something intuitive-- instead things get built based on the least amount of effort, even if it's only a very small amount of additional effort to make things easy to use.
After reading this book, I now see all kinds of examples of bad design that could have been easily fixed with just a tiny amount of effort, or things that could have been made intuitive with the exact same amount of effort, but making it intuitive simply wasn't even a consideration.
For example, where I live there are several light switches in a three-gang box that control different lights. They are wired randomly, and I'm always mis-guessing which switch goes with which light. A better design, which would have taken the exact same amount of effort would have been to wire the light on the left from the point of view of the box with the left-hand switch. Put the light on the right in the right-hand switch, etc. In fact, when I get "around to it" I plan to rewire them this way.
As another example, some other switches are horizontal. Push the right side they come on, push the left they go off. Unfortunately the door to the room is on the right. This means that I'm always pressing the switch against the normal direction of movement as I come in or leave the room. Again, for zero additional effort they could have been wired so that they're operated in the same direction as normal movement.
These are the sorts of thoughts that book will provoke. Recommended reading for anyone who is at all interested in how things work.
My favorite quote (from near the bottom of the paragraph):
I'd sure like to see the terms of that guarantee... <grin>
The nice part is that it's not even a plugin. It's just a user chrome hack. Talk about nonintrusive!
Unfortunately, it currently requires contact with a web server (local or remote) because of this Mozilla bug. However, I'm hopeful that will get fixed at some point.
The ads sure don't display for me on Mozilla 1.4 with this handy click-to-play Flash hack I saw on another Slashdot posting. <sarcasm>Oh, darn.</sarcasm>
Another hint-- socks matter a lot. Thin cotton socks are nice for sitting around, but if you'll be on your feet all day, look into some Thor-lo walking socks or something similar. The "hiking" socks might also work, but I find them too thick for my feet unless I really need the extra padding.
If blisters are a problem, get a VERY thin inner sock. This should be about the thickness of a nylon stocking. This lets the outer sock rub against the inner sock instead of your skin. (If it's too thick your skin just rubs against two socks instead of one...)
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/1998/198_ads.htm
So not only is it idiocy, it's legislated idiocy.
To quote:
The actual regulations are here In particular, scroll down a bit to see 202.1(e)
It doesn't seem to me at all unclear "why an exploit was made public before Apple resolved the problem". In fact this seems very clear in what you wrote:
The wiretrip policy linked above is quite clear on how long to give a vendor ("maintainer") to come up with a fix:
This is clarified a bit on what it means to "respond" in the FAQ section:
According to policy, you would have been OK (if somewhat rude) releasing this after 5 work days from initial contact. Extending it through 48 calendar days and several patch cycles seems extraordinarily generous.
I wouldn't feel at all bad about the timeline followed. If anything it shows remarkable restraint.
It's not absurd, it's Aloe Vera!
USPTO search
-----
What is claimed is:
1. A method to improve peri-anal hygiene comprising:
providing a gel of viscosity thick enough to rest for several seconds on a piece of toilet paper without causing noticeable disintegration of the piece of toilet paper;
dispensing a quantity of the gel onto the sheet of toilet paper;
applying the gel to an anal area using the sheet of toilet paper as an applicator; and
wiping the anal area with a dry sheet of toilet paper to dry the anal area of moisture left by said applying the gel.
2. A method to improve peri-anal hygiene comprising:
dispensing a gel onto a piece of toilet paper using a gel pump, the gel having a viscosity of sufficient thickness to prevent noticeable disintegration of a portion of the piece of toilet paper when the gel is applied to the portion; and
wiping an anal area with the gel using the piece of toilet paper as an applicator.
3. The method of claim 2, further including:
storing the gel in a container, the gel pump being secured to the container.
4. The method of claim 2, further including:
wiping the anal area with a dry piece of toilet paper for substantially drying the anal area of moisture left by said wiping the anal area with the gel.
5. An apparatus for improving peri-anal hygiene comprising:
a gel pump attached to a container; and
a gel applied to a portion of a piece of toilet paper by said gel pump, said gel having a viscosity of sufficient thickness to prevent noticeable disintegration of said portion of said piece of toilet paper when said gel is applied to said portion.
6. The apparatus of claim 5, wherein:
said gel comprises Aloe Vera gel.
-----
Isn't that the place where every network interface is in promiscuous mode? <grin>
The best approach to a security "evaluation" is to ask the admins responsible for permission first. This lets them know that "something" might be going on soon so if they detect your attempts they won't panic and send the cops to your house/dorm room.
This also makes it obvious that you were really trying to help find/enhance security rather than just hacking into the system for your own benefit.
It always struck me as an unfortunate name for a device with 120/240 volts pulsing through it. One loose cable and it will really Sparkle.
Kinda like the Quantum Fireball, runner up in the unfortunately-named-PC-hardware contest.
Here's some USENET perspective on hard drive history:
Jul 20 1990: 600MB about as big as you can find
Apr 5 1992: 2gb disks mentioned as "new"
Jul 13 1992: A mention of a Seagate 43400N (3.6GB)
So if he means "before 1993" as early '90s, it could be valid. I doubt that it predates the 1990s-- certainly not in a 3.5" form factor.
I bet this is the stolen code:
for (i=0; i<256; i++) {
Dirty, stinking thieves!
One of the crazy things about Tivo is that your costs are lower than you think-- especially if you buy a lifetime subscription. You can recover a lot of your cost by selling your Tivo when you're done with it.
My Tivo that I purchased for $800, including lifetime subscription, now sells for about $380-400 on Ebay. Units modified with the same hard drive upgrade as mine sell for about $550-$600. (Which is extra nice considering the drive only cost me $120, but create a recovery price difference of $150-ish.)
So the cost comes down to $800 + $120 ($920) less the recovery value on Ebay ($550). This comes down to about $10/month for my three years of use including hardware costs.
Tivos without lifetime service generally sell for $300 or more less than those that have it. This means that the resale value of this feature actually increases over time. (It was $200 when I bought it.)
The big gotcha is that if your Tivo breaks, your recovery costs drop quite a bit. Not to zero, but certainly much lower unless you can find parts and fix it yourself.
The problem is he's finished in only half a Maxtor...
Just fire all the troublemakers as an example to others. Morale will skyrocket. ;-)
Their intentions were probably not "pure" from an idealistic standpoint. However, when I can read through books like Richard Stevens' TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1 in Mozilla on Linux, I'm glad they made it available and so compatible-- pure intentions or no.
I think you have a lot of company in this regard. Two years ago, Intuit's Quicken 2002 ended up being so intrusive on my main system that it got shuttled off into its own little isolated VMware world.
This will be my last "upgrade" to Quicken as the pain that the 2002 version gave me relative to the new features vs. the 2000 version made it not worth doing. Intuit cleverly does not provide a good way to export/import data to old versions or I would already have gone back. (QIF just doesn't cut it...)
Although the same VMware treatment would work with this year's release of TurboTax, I hate sending Intuit the $40 message that it's OK to jerk their customers around. Instead, I sent H&R block (aka "TaxCut") the $40 message that I'm glad they have not gone down this path.
And just in case there's anyone on Slashdot who isn't incensed by this policy (unlikely, but I love to preach to the choir), here are some choice words from Intuit's president and CEO:
(From http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,889690
And for the big "duh!" award:
Here's a hint-- if someone's that annoyed with your product, they probably aren't going to buy it.
My "malicious agenda" is to spend my money elsewhere.
I sure hope you were talking about the planes rather than the pilots...
Personally, I can see a huge new market for mail-forwarding services opening up in Oregon soon. The only trick will be how to run them on a margin less than the usual sales tax rates...
The Intuit software runs really nicely under VMware. In fact, I've had BETTER luck running Quicken under VMware than my normal Win2k system since many of the Microsoft security updates break the (probably undocumented) APIs that Quicken depends on. (I leave this VMware system unpatched and run it through an aggressive firewall/intrusion detector on the Linux host.)
I have a single Win2k VMware instance that has Turbo Tax for the last 8 years or so on it in addition to Quicken. When I upgrade my PC, I just take the virtual machine along and the Intuit software comes with it.
Although this scheme would also work to allow the same installation to work past upgrades, etc. I don't feel like rewarding Intuit's increasingly customer-hostile behavior and will be looking around for a different product to use this year.
When I started out in stereo equipment in the 1970's, you could go to any dealer and get handouts with product specifications on just about any product sold. You could compare transient intermodulation distortion, total harmonic distortion, FM sensitivity, wow & flutter, etc. Now you go into some place like Best Buy or Circuit City and there is nothing but a tag on the shelf. You're lucky if it shows even the most basic specs (e.g., watts per channel, number of discs the changer holds, etc.) and God help you if you ask the salesman for anything more. He'll look at you like you have three heads.
;-)
Nowadays we shouldn't have to depend on salespeople to know every detail about every product. They have hundreds/thousands of products in their stores-- even a Slashdot geek would have problems keeping current on the detailed specs on all those items.
Consumers have a huge advantage over salespeople. We can actually research the items we want in depth since we have the advantage of focussing on at most a handful of items. Thanks to how easy it is these days to exchange information it's trivial to get in-depth specifications on whatever we want.
Remember the Bad Old Days before most major vendors had their product info online? People were lucky to find any information anywhere. Brand, faith, and luck were pretty much all we had.
Now, however we can pop right on over to the various manufacturers' websites and get all the information we could want about the product. No info available? Hmmm, maybe that product drops off the list right there.
As if that wasn't enought, we can go to Consumer Reports' website and see what they think of a product. We can go to Epinions and see if a bunch of people we don't know are griping about it. We can check Reseller Ratings to see if an online store is screwing people over, or really trying to do business.
This kind of information flow has the potential to really improve quality and reward quality as word of crappy products/merchants gets out. In addition, we get a better statistical sampling since we have more people commenting than just the one or two we might know who bought the same thing.
Unfortunately, the bitter portion of me has to concede that most people just don't have the motivation to do any research. To them, I say you deserve what you get.
The author in that Epinions link was quoting from the year 2000 Consumer Reports buying guide-- that was not an Epinions-generated list.
Interestingly, the Consumer Reports subscriber-only website does not have any information about VCR repair history. However, the Dec 2002 issue of Consumer reports makes the following recommendations:
"If you regularly record TV programs for later viewing, look to the top-ranked Toshiba W-727, $100, or the Sony SLV-N55, $90. Of the models we tested for this report, they have the best picture in EP mode--the slow speed that time-shifters generally use to conserve tape."
It seems odd for them to recommend a brand that would have a terrible repair history.
Epinions and Consumer reports are both great sites for anyone who wants to check up on things beforehand. (And for Epinions, for anyone who wants to vent about something after the fact.)