We've been using one-time pads in Finland for a long time, and they do the job.
What's the issue?
The issue is that US banks are foolishly only seeing additional security as a cost to them.
Whereas banks based in slightly more enlightened countries in the world have realised that there are other associated benefits such as reduced fraud and increased customer satisfaction/trust.
I always found url shortening to be a weird and potentially dangerous practice. Trading some comfort to squeeze your link into a tweet for the comfort to actually predict where this link will take you?
To be fair, it's not just Twitters fault.
It's also the fault of websites who come up with insane 350 character URLs and email clients that attempt to word-wrap the aforementioned 350 character URL and manage to make the hyperlink unclickable.
Oh and Slashdot coders who include the number of characters in between < and > as part of the overall word count for your signature.
I'd rather have a phone that has a software-swappable identifier that handshakes with the tower, but I suppose that is just dreaming.
I don't. If it's in software then it can be locked down and I can be forced by either the current carrier and/or the hardware manufacturer to jump through additional (probably costly) hoops to change carrier.
I can replace a SIM with any carrier I like, at any time I like, at no additional cost to me (beyond buying the SIM and the minutes/data for the carrier I want to use) and without having to be tied to any kind of data connection for verification/authentication/billing.
Once booted, a lot of hardware doesn't work and I have to install drivers for everything including silly things like CPU driver and various system bus drivers and sometimes even sound cards.
If you've got hardware which isn't too old and you have Windows 7 then you'll find that the vast majority of drivers are found automatically by Windows Update.
When I upgraded my four year old Shuttle to Windows 7, drivers for all the components (including the motherboard, sound card and a fairly old Radeon 3650 released in Jan 2008) were included. In fact, I didn't need to go and get the drivers from the manufacturers site at all.
The laptop I bought recently worked fine after a full OS re-install, same as the Asus Nettop I got last year. Again, no trip to the manufacturers website to get drivers needed.
To be honest, it sounds the OP hasn't any experience of the latest flavours of Linux and you haven't any experience of the latest version of Windows.
He's exaggerating to sell a product, of course, but there is some nuggets of truth to the current computing set-up.
Look at how the iPad works compared to any other operating system. It works out of the box, if you use it in the default configuration you get a good experience, finding software, installing it, updating it and un-installing it is a dead simple and consistent process, you aren't asked questions that the majority of people don't give a toss about (For example, which folder to you want to install the program to? Do you want complete, custom or minimal installs?) and concepts of closing vs minimising, drag and drop and single vs double click are swept away for something which is easier to understand.
Yes, we know that geeks hate iPad's for all the usual reasons - but the product has sold enough to show that the non-geeks are happy to pay several hundreds of pounds/dollars/etc to get something that works in that way and has those limitations.
In contrast, when a family member gets a new PC, I have to remove all the junk that's installed, change a number of insane default settings, install a virus checker and do a number of other bits and pieces which - whilst not rocket science - I really shouldn't have to do.
They could face developer exodus... but it probably won't happen.
They could face customer exodus... but it probably won't happen.
My bet is that a year from now, this issue will have be a distant memory for the vast majority of people and PSN will be ticking along as normal.
I'm sure there are plenty of people who would like to see these issues cause Sony to crash and burn - but past history (with things like the rootkit) has shown that it is unlikely to happen.
In defense of CmdrTaco, the first generation iPod was a piece of crap. It was expensive, only had 5 GB of storage space, required a FireWire port, and only had software available for the Mac. It wasn't until the third generation iPod where they had those issues fixed, which is right around where they started flying off the shelves.
Ignoring the price, those were only "issues" if you didn't own a Mac.
I still remember the howls of anguish from Windows users complaining that they couldn't use it with their operating system and the software developers who, sensing the opportunity, stepped in and offered products which allowed you to do just that.
What the iPod did was make MP3 players cool, it made them a fashion accessory.
It was far far more than that:
It was slimmer and lighter than the competition which meant it was easier to carry around with you.
It was prettier than the competition and looked like it was worth the money you paid for it, you weren't embarrassed to pull it out of your pocket.
It had a far better build quality. The competition were producing players with nasty plasticy buttons and creaky bodies.
The battery life (I think) was better.
It used Firewire instead of USB 1.1, so loading songs onto the device averaged about 1-2 seconds per song rather than the competition which was capable of about 1 minute per song.
It came with iTunes which automatically managed your library, syncing and playlists whilst the competition made you drag and drop your files.
It had a user interface which was easy to use and didn't make you want to cry. As opposed to the competition which never managed to produce anything with less than 7 buttons.
Yes, it wasn't perfect - but compared to the Creative Nomand or the Archos Jukebox it was an amazing bit of kit. In fact the only people who didn't like it were Slashdot readers and that was pretty much going to guarantee it would sell like hotcakes.
So because you've declared FPS and platform games dead the whole lack of controller doesn't matter?
Assuming you weren't trying to put words into my mouth, then you misunderstood the term "done to death". It means we have rather a lot of them and not that they "are dead".
What I did say was that if we agree with the OP's assertion that a mouse and keyboard are essential for games then we are ignoring a whole bunch of opportunities for new and inventive games which aren't constrained by these control methods. The Wii is a good example, many of it's games simply wouldn't work (or be enjoyable) with a keyboard and mouse.
I do, however, agree with you that FPS games are rubbish on touch screen devices. Every different control method has it's pros and cons, touch screens are no different.
Without the traditional set of buttons, a joystick and for FPSers a mouse it's really a non-starter...
...for traditional games.
A device with a multi-touch interface opens up all sorts of new possibilities for gaming which would be impossible (or, at least, difficult) to do with traditional control methods. For example, I cannot see how someone could implement two player "Flight Control" using buttons, a joystick and a mouse and get it to be remotely as enjoyable as the version on the iPad.
Personally I think the FPS genre has been done to death like the 2D platform genre before that. It's time to move on to newer more inventive genres without having developers imaginations hamstrung by the limitations of older control methods.
With a book I can let someone borrow it, I can gift it, I can sell it.. I can shelf it and reread it 5 years from now. "E books" offer me nothing except worry over when it will expire
I used to think this, but then I took a look at the wall of books in my house and controversially realised that the number of times I'd lent them out to people or gone back and read them again many years later could be counted on the fingers of one hand. When I came around to reading a new book, there was always something new and interesting to buy that meant I didn't have to go back to my existing collection. I have books that I've read only once and that was when I bought it.
In short, I get the impression that the idea that people want to go back and read old fiction books is a little like the idea that people want user replaceable batteries in their mobile phones. Lots of people are very vocal about the fact that they want it (and I fully expect several of them to reply to this post and tell me how wrong I am) - but actually the vast majority of people really don't
(I'm excluding references books as they are not used in the same way as fiction)
An ad supported kindle should be free, or at least under $40. I would gladly pay the extra $25 to not see ads. In fact, I have.
Agreed, the $25 discount for a lifetime of adverts doesn't seem to be a particularly good deal. In addition, if you have the disposable income to drop $114 on a reading device, there is a good chance you can afford the extra to get one without ads.
Personally I think the discount should have been $40. Only because then it would then make that version of the Kindle cost $99 which, I believe, is considered the sweet spot for many consumers.
Given Amazon's vast retail knowledge, I'm surprised they didn't do this. Or maybe they are just testing the water in preparation for a $99 Kindle for Christmas?
Doing this gives Blackberry devices a chance to compete on merit instead of on how many apps they have. And it gives developers a unified target for app development -- make an Android app and it will run on both Android devices and Blackberries, which strengthens both platforms at the expense of their other competitors.
Seems like a poor idea to me as it means developers won't specifically target the playbook, instead relying on their existing Android developments.
OS/2 suffered the same problem with it's Windows compatibility. No-one actually wrote anything for it as they just targetted Windows instead knowing that it running on OS/2 was an addition benefit.
Whilst it may mean they get access to hundreds of applications immediately, the longer they leave it, the more dependent they are on maintaining compatibility with Android in order for their platform to succeed - and they could have got themselves into that mess far cheaper and easier by just releasing an Android tablet.
Self regulation is just toothless regulation, basically letting a business say, 'ya.. thats kind of a cool idea.. and if it's convenient i might consider it'
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
The most effective form of self regulation (here in Europe, at least) is when Governments say to companies "sort out some sort of self regulation quickly that we think is reasonable - or we'll do it for you and you'll accept it whether or like it or not".
Although I admit that this isn't so much "self regulation" more "coerced self regulation".
The most interesting and disappointing thing about Pwn2Own for me was that all the recent development of sand-boxing in browsers suggested that they were going to herald in a new era of browser security.
In actual fact it turns out that, thanks sloppy implementations, they aren't very good at their job.
Open Outlook, load up the Visual Basic Editor and put this into a new module:
Public Sub ToggleReplyToAll() ActiveInspector.CurrentItem.Actions("Reply to All") = Not ActiveInspector.CurrentItem.Actions("Reply to All") End Sub
Then open an email and add a button pointing to that macro. After that, if you want to disable "Reply to All" then press the button. To re-enable, press it again.
Note! Only works on emails sent within same organisation. Only works on emails read on Microsoft Outlook. "Reply to All" is still enabled on other email clients (such as their Blackberry or OWA). Can be circumvented with a little VBA knowledge - however this will be beyond most people. Not completely foolproof, but will stop a lot of people.
It's a relatively open platform, which makes it easier to dupe users into installing trojans. The thing that troubles me is that google doesn't vet the apps before they're published, leaving a lot of users vulnerable. There's surely a better middle ground between "walled garden" and "wide open wild west".
The other issue is that the way the application presents the security access it needs is, for the average user, completely confusing. You install an app and it gives you a list of 7 things it needs to do including things like "read phone state" and "access internet".
For overly simple apps it may be possible for something like "access contacts data" to be picked up as nefarious by the end user - but in the vast majority of cases there is a long list of permissions and the users are given no real help in understanding what it all means. As such, they blindly accept what is presented to them because they don't understand what the phone is trying to tell them.
(Hell, if I were to decline to install any apps where I didn't fully understand the access it was asking for I don't think I'd have anything installed on my device)
In short, whilst you cannot stop stupidity, there are some pretty major flaws in the user experience which isn't exactly helping people.
They are great at designing, building and marketing dumbphones. Smartphones, however, they they are certainly heading towards rank incompetence at a rapid pace, especially given how badly they've handled the ownership of Symbian, Meamo and MeeGo.
They aren't doing dumbphones very well any more either. For example, the Nokia 6600 fold has a bug where if you press the "6mno" key three times in a row during texting then every so often the phone will lock up solid. The only way to get back a working phone is to pop out the battery.
Since the issue was found (and reported on Nokia's forums) they've released no less than 6 updates - none of which have resolved the problem.
Am I the only one who feels utterly miserable going to work in the pitch dark, where the first light of the day I see is the fluorescent tubes above my cubicle?
I'm the opposite, as in I'd happily trade darker mornings for the opportunity to come home and be able to do more outdoors in the evening.
Have another read of his comment. He sent an email To: one person and Bcc: to that person's boss. The boss receives an email that does not have his email address anywhere in it. When the boss hits reply-all, the email will go to two people: the person who sent the email and the person to whom it was addressed. It was the boss who was in the Bcc field and hence when the boss hits reply, he doesn't send an email to himself.
I was stung by this six months into my first job and shortly afterwards realised that no-one in the office environment uses BCC in this way for the very reason you describe. Plus it doesn't help that Microsoft Outlook out of the box hides the BCC field - which means that the vast majority of users have no idea it even exists.
The better solution is to send the email directly the person as you would normally and then dig that out of the Sent Items and forward that onto your boss with a simple "FYI". If he tries to do a Reply-All then it'll only go back to you.
This article gives a very good overview of Microsoft's previous strategic partners and how well each one of them ended.
(it's currently missing Sendo and Ericsson although the author has indicated that he'll update it to include them soon)
Personally I think it would be a good thing to have iOS, Android, WebOS and Windows Phone thriving in the marketplace as it means that each one will be forced to innovate to stay relevant - which can only be a good thing for the consumer.
However on the basis of Microsoft's past performance, I wish Nokia the very best of luck as they are going to need a lot of it.
So, Wikipedia was wrong about Corruption being a text adventure game? Or did you miss that the article was about graphic adventure games?
Some of the early games given in the article had text entry with pictures - which is also what the Magnetic Scrolls game had. However the parser made it the next stepping stone before you got to point and click based interfaces and, you could argue, it actually was almost a step back because you had to drop the flexibility of language parsing and go back to a simple verb-noun construct to make it easy to use.
I thought it might have been worth a mention, even if it was only a sentence or two.
(or to respond directly to your snark, yes Wikipedia is wrong because at that time it was considered a graphical adventure game - because it had pictures in it)
A good article although I was a little disappointed to see that they didn't mention Magnetic Scrolls who developed several adventure games in mid 1980s and early 1990s.
The amazing thing about them (at the time) was the language parser. Previous adventures games could only handle verb-noun commands (eg. "hit box") but it could cope with more complex things such as "go right, open the door and look out of the window".
My personal favourite game was Corruption which I first saw on an Amstrad PCW although it was available for a lot more platforms. Although I never played them, The Guild Of Thieves, Pawn and Jinxter were considered some of their finer efforts.
You can get a Magnetic Scroll emulator for a wide variety of platforms to run many of their games.
Just a shame they didn't bother to use modern design practices to accommodate mobiles.
I gave up hoping that they'd do that around 2001 and so wrote AvantSlash. It screen-scrapes and then reformats nicely for mobile phones, I've been reading/. on various Windows Mobile devices, iPhone's and now my HTC Desire HD without a problem.
Of course the new design completely killed the code so I'll have to look at re-working it, so that won't solve your issues immediately I'm afraid.
The new redesign has obviously broken AvantSlash so in the next couple of days I'll evaluate the mobile version of Slashdot, determine if AvantSlash is still relevant and (if so) issue an update.
For people who are stuck on computers which aren't powerful enough or just want a clean reading experience (no posting or logging in, sorry) then this could be a better option for you.
Personally, I use it to read Slashdot on my HTC Desire and iPhone when I'm sitting on the tube or train.
Slashdot Mirror
The issue is that US banks are foolishly only seeing additional security as a cost to them.
Whereas banks based in slightly more enlightened countries in the world have realised that there are other associated benefits such as reduced fraud and increased customer satisfaction/trust.
To be fair, it's not just Twitters fault.
It's also the fault of websites who come up with insane 350 character URLs and email clients that attempt to word-wrap the aforementioned 350 character URL and manage to make the hyperlink unclickable.
Oh and Slashdot coders who include the number of characters in between < and > as part of the overall word count for your signature.
I don't. If it's in software then it can be locked down and I can be forced by either the current carrier and/or the hardware manufacturer to jump through additional (probably costly) hoops to change carrier.
I can replace a SIM with any carrier I like, at any time I like, at no additional cost to me (beyond buying the SIM and the minutes/data for the carrier I want to use) and without having to be tied to any kind of data connection for verification/authentication/billing.
If you've got hardware which isn't too old and you have Windows 7 then you'll find that the vast majority of drivers are found automatically by Windows Update.
When I upgraded my four year old Shuttle to Windows 7, drivers for all the components (including the motherboard, sound card and a fairly old Radeon 3650 released in Jan 2008) were included. In fact, I didn't need to go and get the drivers from the manufacturers site at all.
The laptop I bought recently worked fine after a full OS re-install, same as the Asus Nettop I got last year. Again, no trip to the manufacturers website to get drivers needed.
To be honest, it sounds the OP hasn't any experience of the latest flavours of Linux and you haven't any experience of the latest version of Windows.
He's exaggerating to sell a product, of course, but there is some nuggets of truth to the current computing set-up.
Look at how the iPad works compared to any other operating system. It works out of the box, if you use it in the default configuration you get a good experience, finding software, installing it, updating it and un-installing it is a dead simple and consistent process, you aren't asked questions that the majority of people don't give a toss about (For example, which folder to you want to install the program to? Do you want complete, custom or minimal installs?) and concepts of closing vs minimising, drag and drop and single vs double click are swept away for something which is easier to understand.
Yes, we know that geeks hate iPad's for all the usual reasons - but the product has sold enough to show that the non-geeks are happy to pay several hundreds of pounds/dollars/etc to get something that works in that way and has those limitations.
In contrast, when a family member gets a new PC, I have to remove all the junk that's installed, change a number of insane default settings, install a virus checker and do a number of other bits and pieces which - whilst not rocket science - I really shouldn't have to do.
They could face developer exodus ... but it probably won't happen. ... but it probably won't happen.
They could face customer exodus
My bet is that a year from now, this issue will have be a distant memory for the vast majority of people and PSN will be ticking along as normal.
I'm sure there are plenty of people who would like to see these issues cause Sony to crash and burn - but past history (with things like the rootkit) has shown that it is unlikely to happen.
Sorry, but just being realistic.
Ignoring the price, those were only "issues" if you didn't own a Mac.
I still remember the howls of anguish from Windows users complaining that they couldn't use it with their operating system and the software developers who, sensing the opportunity, stepped in and offered products which allowed you to do just that.
It was far far more than that:
Yes, it wasn't perfect - but compared to the Creative Nomand or the Archos Jukebox it was an amazing bit of kit. In fact the only people who didn't like it were Slashdot readers and that was pretty much going to guarantee it would sell like hotcakes.
For someone who claims I have a right to be wrong, you've managed to get off to a fine start. Flight Control a flight simulator? Are you joking? Have you actually heard, seen or even played the game?
Assuming you weren't trying to put words into my mouth, then you misunderstood the term "done to death". It means we have rather a lot of them and not that they "are dead".
What I did say was that if we agree with the OP's assertion that a mouse and keyboard are essential for games then we are ignoring a whole bunch of opportunities for new and inventive games which aren't constrained by these control methods. The Wii is a good example, many of it's games simply wouldn't work (or be enjoyable) with a keyboard and mouse.
I do, however, agree with you that FPS games are rubbish on touch screen devices. Every different control method has it's pros and cons, touch screens are no different.
...for traditional games.
A device with a multi-touch interface opens up all sorts of new possibilities for gaming which would be impossible (or, at least, difficult) to do with traditional control methods. For example, I cannot see how someone could implement two player "Flight Control" using buttons, a joystick and a mouse and get it to be remotely as enjoyable as the version on the iPad.
Personally I think the FPS genre has been done to death like the 2D platform genre before that. It's time to move on to newer more inventive genres without having developers imaginations hamstrung by the limitations of older control methods.
I used to think this, but then I took a look at the wall of books in my house and controversially realised that the number of times I'd lent them out to people or gone back and read them again many years later could be counted on the fingers of one hand. When I came around to reading a new book, there was always something new and interesting to buy that meant I didn't have to go back to my existing collection. I have books that I've read only once and that was when I bought it.
In short, I get the impression that the idea that people want to go back and read old fiction books is a little like the idea that people want user replaceable batteries in their mobile phones. Lots of people are very vocal about the fact that they want it (and I fully expect several of them to reply to this post and tell me how wrong I am) - but actually the vast majority of people really don't
(I'm excluding references books as they are not used in the same way as fiction)
Agreed, the $25 discount for a lifetime of adverts doesn't seem to be a particularly good deal. In addition, if you have the disposable income to drop $114 on a reading device, there is a good chance you can afford the extra to get one without ads.
Personally I think the discount should have been $40. Only because then it would then make that version of the Kindle cost $99 which, I believe, is considered the sweet spot for many consumers.
Given Amazon's vast retail knowledge, I'm surprised they didn't do this. Or maybe they are just testing the water in preparation for a $99 Kindle for Christmas?
Seems like a poor idea to me as it means developers won't specifically target the playbook, instead relying on their existing Android developments.
OS/2 suffered the same problem with it's Windows compatibility. No-one actually wrote anything for it as they just targetted Windows instead knowing that it running on OS/2 was an addition benefit.
Whilst it may mean they get access to hundreds of applications immediately, the longer they leave it, the more dependent they are on maintaining compatibility with Android in order for their platform to succeed - and they could have got themselves into that mess far cheaper and easier by just releasing an Android tablet.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
The most effective form of self regulation (here in Europe, at least) is when Governments say to companies "sort out some sort of self regulation quickly that we think is reasonable - or we'll do it for you and you'll accept it whether or like it or not".
Although I admit that this isn't so much "self regulation" more "coerced self regulation".
The most interesting and disappointing thing about Pwn2Own for me was that all the recent development of sand-boxing in browsers suggested that they were going to herald in a new era of browser security.
In actual fact it turns out that, thanks sloppy implementations, they aren't very good at their job.
Open Outlook, load up the Visual Basic Editor and put this into a new module:
Then open an email and add a button pointing to that macro. After that, if you want to disable "Reply to All" then press the button. To re-enable, press it again.
Note! Only works on emails sent within same organisation. Only works on emails read on Microsoft Outlook. "Reply to All" is still enabled on other email clients (such as their Blackberry or OWA). Can be circumvented with a little VBA knowledge - however this will be beyond most people. Not completely foolproof, but will stop a lot of people.
The other issue is that the way the application presents the security access it needs is, for the average user, completely confusing. You install an app and it gives you a list of 7 things it needs to do including things like "read phone state" and "access internet".
For overly simple apps it may be possible for something like "access contacts data" to be picked up as nefarious by the end user - but in the vast majority of cases there is a long list of permissions and the users are given no real help in understanding what it all means. As such, they blindly accept what is presented to them because they don't understand what the phone is trying to tell them.
(Hell, if I were to decline to install any apps where I didn't fully understand the access it was asking for I don't think I'd have anything installed on my device)
In short, whilst you cannot stop stupidity, there are some pretty major flaws in the user experience which isn't exactly helping people.
They aren't doing dumbphones very well any more either. For example, the Nokia 6600 fold has a bug where if you press the "6mno" key three times in a row during texting then every so often the phone will lock up solid. The only way to get back a working phone is to pop out the battery.
Since the issue was found (and reported on Nokia's forums) they've released no less than 6 updates - none of which have resolved the problem.
I'm the opposite, as in I'd happily trade darker mornings for the opportunity to come home and be able to do more outdoors in the evening.
It just seems silly to me that it's dark by 4pm.
I was stung by this six months into my first job and shortly afterwards realised that no-one in the office environment uses BCC in this way for the very reason you describe. Plus it doesn't help that Microsoft Outlook out of the box hides the BCC field - which means that the vast majority of users have no idea it even exists.
The better solution is to send the email directly the person as you would normally and then dig that out of the Sent Items and forward that onto your boss with a simple "FYI". If he tries to do a Reply-All then it'll only go back to you.
This article gives a very good overview of Microsoft's previous strategic partners and how well each one of them ended.
(it's currently missing Sendo and Ericsson although the author has indicated that he'll update it to include them soon)
Personally I think it would be a good thing to have iOS, Android, WebOS and Windows Phone thriving in the marketplace as it means that each one will be forced to innovate to stay relevant - which can only be a good thing for the consumer.
However on the basis of Microsoft's past performance, I wish Nokia the very best of luck as they are going to need a lot of it.
Some of the early games given in the article had text entry with pictures - which is also what the Magnetic Scrolls game had. However the parser made it the next stepping stone before you got to point and click based interfaces and, you could argue, it actually was almost a step back because you had to drop the flexibility of language parsing and go back to a simple verb-noun construct to make it easy to use.
I thought it might have been worth a mention, even if it was only a sentence or two.
(or to respond directly to your snark, yes Wikipedia is wrong because at that time it was considered a graphical adventure game - because it had pictures in it)
A good article although I was a little disappointed to see that they didn't mention Magnetic Scrolls who developed several adventure games in mid 1980s and early 1990s.
The amazing thing about them (at the time) was the language parser. Previous adventures games could only handle verb-noun commands (eg. "hit box") but it could cope with more complex things such as "go right, open the door and look out of the window".
My personal favourite game was Corruption which I first saw on an Amstrad PCW although it was available for a lot more platforms. Although I never played them, The Guild Of Thieves, Pawn and Jinxter were considered some of their finer efforts.
You can get a Magnetic Scroll emulator for a wide variety of platforms to run many of their games.
I gave up hoping that they'd do that around 2001 and so wrote AvantSlash. It screen-scrapes and then reformats nicely for mobile phones, I've been reading /. on various Windows Mobile devices, iPhone's and now my HTC Desire HD without a problem.
Of course the new design completely killed the code so I'll have to look at re-working it, so that won't solve your issues immediately I'm afraid.
The new redesign has obviously broken AvantSlash so in the next couple of days I'll evaluate the mobile version of Slashdot, determine if AvantSlash is still relevant and (if so) issue an update.
For people who are stuck on computers which aren't powerful enough or just want a clean reading experience (no posting or logging in, sorry) then this could be a better option for you.
Personally, I use it to read Slashdot on my HTC Desire and iPhone when I'm sitting on the tube or train.
http://www.fourteenminutes.com/code/avantslash/