Yes, I've been to Europe a few times over the last several years and was interested to see those portable credit card terminals that they bring to your table at restaurants. We have nothing of the like in the U.S. (unless you're talking some really large, fancy place that has developed its own wireless handsets for waitstaff).
The way it was once explained to me is that it has everything to do with the... ready for it?... telephone system.
In the United States, local telephone calls are essentially free. There are local points-of-presence for all the major credit card validation services, so restaurants can use a standard business phone line to call out to validate an infinite number of credit card transactions at a flat rate for phone service. Because of this, credit card infrastructure in the U.S. has been built up around automatic verification of all credit card transactions. Our credit cards don't come with smart chips or the like, because there's simply no real reason for them. The perception by industry is that it's much easier to just call up and verify your credit directly with the bank than to rely on some "unproven" technology like a smart chip.
And so, given no smart chips, there are no "advanced" authentication schemes like the ones you mention. There are a couple of cards that have rolled out devices like you describe that you can use at home for Internet transactions, but I've never heard of a place of business that supports them. And so, it's a chicken-and-egg problem... fancy, smart-chipped credit cards never really take off when the banks try them, because who wants a credit card that you can't count on at most restaurants etc.?
It's much easier to launch an entire new credit card product (like Discover, which is still not accepted in Europe but was rolled out in the U.S. maybe 10 years ago) than it is to add a smart chip to Visa cards, because the new card can ostensibly use the same magnetic stripe readers with just a firmware upgrade or something.
The other thing is, I think the cost for the credit card companies to insure themselves against fraud is a lot less than it is to implement new technology. Right now, if somebody steals your credit card in the U.S., walks into a store and purchases something with it, the merchant is going to be the one who comes up liable, nine times out of ten. The merchat will get back neither the merchandise nor the funds from the fraudulent transaction, and the credit card company goes on about its business. So where's the incentive for the credit card industry to reform its security?
Actually, this is a fairly contentious area of the law, and countless suits and counter-suits are filed over noncompete agreements in California every year. The law about stealing trade secrets is, on the other hand, quite clear, and often times people choose to honor noncompetes just for the sake of avoiding being slapped with a civil suit alleging theft of [clients, information, employees, etc.] Leaving one company to go immediately to its direct competitor usually looks pretty suspect.
Don't worry, most ATM cards double as credit cards these days anyway. There's no PIN number to buy stuff with a credit card -- they make you sign your name. Scanning the PIN number off a card is difficult enough, but can you imagine the astronomical odds that your wallet will get stolen by a thief with the same name as you?
InfoWorld is running a special report on desktop Linux this week. The gist of the author's opinion is that Linux is ready for the desktop -- for a limited set of applications. What makes it less attractive to companies is the lack of good centralized managament tools and the perennial question: Yeah, but why would you switch?
I see a few people here already using Mozilla as an example of why Linux is superior to Windows, but I can install Mozilla on my existing Windows desktops way more easily than I can wipe them and install Linux. Ditto OpenOffice. We all know that the vast majority of PC hardware shipped to enterprises came with Windows pre-installed. Companies are going to need a really compelling reason to replace that with Linux, and "I can run Mozilla" isn't it.
That InfoWorld special report also includes a review of four desktop Linux distros, BTW. Red Hat scores favorably, but Sun Java Desktop comes in second.
Once you've received a digital program over the air, does the FCC have any more authority to tell you what you can do with the copyrighted product that they don't even have the rights to distribute?
You are correct. What has happened here (according to the article) is that the FCC has adopted rules requiring digital broadcasters to implement controls (i.e. copy protection, DRM etc.) preventing indiscriminate sharing of media. So in other words, the FCC can regulate broadcasters, and one of the FCC's mandates to broadcasters is that the protect the rights of the copyright owners of the content they carry. TiVo has implemented some such restriction in thie new system, and the FCC has approved it -- meaning TiVo's system meets the FCC's definition of a scheme to protect copyright. (So I guess this also must mean that TiVo's system meet's the FCC's definition of a broadcaster?)
Sounds to me like what's happened is that the MPAA and NFL won't be able to lobby the FCC to take action against TiVo. Instead, they'll have to spend their own money to sue TiVo under the DMCA.
Re:Now that would be an interesting change!
on
We the Media
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
...and the "plastic surgery-riddled TV boneheads" probably don't write a single scrap of news, either.
I'm currently a professional technology writer/editor and my mandate is still to boil down and synthesize complex topics and make them readable, understandable, and as engaging to readers as possible. I don't see how anybody could find fault in that.
What sense does it make to consider an audience with more education and experience than the reporter? Why on earth would those people read the article?
Fans of the Web and the Internet at large love to repeat over and over how it's going to revolutionize everything. Maybe it is -- but for some reason, that always seems to boil down to knocking somebody off some perceived pedestal. "Oh that guy doesn't know anything, he made this mistake here and I bet twenty other people on the Internet can point out others." Great. But the Internet isn't revolutionizing anything here. There have always been people who say things like that, and there's even a name for them: armchair critics. Their presence does not take away the need for well-informed, insightful, accurate, and well-written journalism.
Journalism as a "conversation" or a "seminar" sounds really nice and new-agey. If that always worked, I guess it would be pretty great. As a counter-example, I could give Slashdot. If a cacophony of voices is all you really need to get your information, why is everyone always yelling "RTFA"?
I've never used Cloudscape, but coming from its Informix roots I trust this - to a certain extent, of course.
Fair enough, because after all its Informix roots only go so far. Informix didn't invent this product, it bought it. Strange that nobody has mentioned this before now.
Cloudscape has a relatively small market share among SQL databases, but it is popular in certain niches. It came bundled with Sun's reference implementation of J2EE at one time, too; I don't know if that's still the case.
Not to sound like an Intel commercial, but that's largely what Intel's Centrino platform is all about. It's designed as a mix of processor and chipset that allows the system to maximize battery life.
I have a Fujitsu Lifebook 5010 that reliably gets me just under 5 hours battery life, maybe more like 4 hours if I have wireless enabled (and there's a hardware switch on the case). Something like playing a DVD is going to suck even more battery, because of the need to spin the drive motor, but I'd wager I have enough juice for that most times.
Centrino isn't a blindingly huge advantage, though. Fujitsu makes a non-Centrino version of the same laptop that comes with 802.11g, and I understand it only gets marginally shorter battery life, and that's all from anecdotal accounts. Centrino does a good job, but a big reason this model's battery lasts so long is because it's 900MHz (so doesn't run as hot, so doesn't need as much energy to run the fan) and it only has a 10 inch screen.
If you've got a robotic exoskeleton and a wide area network, why not just pilot the soldier remotely?
With the remote-pilot soldier, the necessity for a centralized orbital control ship diminishes effectiveness measurably. In some Army field tests, soldiers in this configuration were neutralized by catapult fire from semi-organized militias. It was not possible from the video I saw of this field exercise to tell what country the defenders were from, however they seemed to speak in a vaguely Jamaican patois. Anyway, cloned soldiers would be a much more effective solution.
Depends what he wants it for. Sendmail isn't going to provide you group calendaring and scheduling. It also won't provide you centralized email management and storage if what you use now is POP3 -- something a lot of companies need now with the new corporate governance regulations. You'll have to provide a little more information on your current setup and future requirements if you want a useful answer.
Darl has to pretend that Unixware is a viable alternative to everything Linux, but in reality SCO has a more targeted market than that. As I understand it, they have a big presence in areas like point-of-sale terminals at McDonald's. Those kind of high-volume sales will probably continue to form their core business, particularly if they can continue to create FUD as to whether the Linux alternative will be a viable long-term proposition.
No it won't. I'm willing to bet that the cell phone part of it is itself the most expensive component. They're not going to be able to offer you "just a cell phone" for significantly less than they can offer you a phone with a bunch of pointless gizmos, and meanwhile all their competitors are offering the gizmos. Plus, the carriers are going to continue to push dumb features as a way to stay competitive with one another, so they'll only buy phones that can support those features.
Actually, let me amend that -- the power to establish military laws and see that they are enforced rests with Congress, not just the president. So you get to influence that by voting for your representatives in Congress. Nationally, there are almost 500 of these. A Web site like this one stands a good chance of reaching the attention of all of them, however, so in a way it's a sneaky way to get around the way our representative democracy limits the individual's influence over the process.
But the military isn't a democracy, just as our entire country isn't a true democracy in the strictest sense. It's a representative democracy. You do get some say in what the military does -- you make your input known by voting for its (civilian) commander-in-chief. (That's the U.S. president, for you foreigners.) You don't, on the other hand, get any direct say how it gets to run its security affairs, any more than you get to decide whom it puts in charge of what or what kind of tires it buys to put on Jeeps.
It sounds an awful lot like you're complaining, but you have absolutely no idea how to solve the problem you've raised. This is not constructive...it is merely whining.
Um... as a taxpaying citizen, is it really too much to ask for the military to take care of its own business, when ostensibly the security of our entire nation is at stake? Since when do you or I get to vote on how the military handles its own housekeeping? It's not up to you or I (or Glen) to establish military policy. All we can do is ask that they please address the issue. I think he's done that in a pretty alarmist way -- but he obviously feels like that's what it's going to take.
"Ban" P2P services on military computers? By all means, if that's what it takes. Establish penalties for soldiers who fail to observe security protocols? Abso-effin-lutely. This ain't a civil liberties issue, people, and we're not talking about dismantling entire technological innovations here or anything -- this is the military. I wholeheartedly agree that, before Congress comes along and pushes through any further legislation blaming the American people for failures of security policy (i.e. the Patriot Act), the people who are really and literally on the front lines of the information security issue need to get their shit together in a big way.
When the Great Patent War commences next year, it won't be about getting checks - it will be about scaring people away from Open Source solutions to problems previously solved by proprietary products.
But we can count on "our side" those companies who stand to profit immensely from open source, rather than relying solely upon their own R&D investments to further their products. There's some big names in there, including IBM, Novell, HP, Sun, etc.
And remember, no product can succeed that stands still. It's the very nature of marketing to create demand in the minds of (potential) consumers. For every vendor that tells you a problem has been solved long ago, there's going to be another vendor telling you that it's hasn't been, or spinning a different message to cast the problem in a new light.
I think the problem is that you, me, and most other tech savvy people want Linux on the Desktop; but, not just ours - everyones.
Surely you mean "most other tech savvy totalitarians and communists"?
I'd like to be able to switch to 100 percent free/open source software for everything I do on the computer, but I can't because the options aren't quite there yet. I try to use as much OSS as I can. I really don't much care what software your grandmother uses, however. Seems to me "free" software starts with freedom of choice.
Macromedia has an EXTREME case of non-invented-here that they have been fighting for YEARS.
FYI, Macromedia didn't invent Flash. They bought it from a company called FutureSplash (they shortened the name) sometime around 1997. They've been working to expand the capabilities of the plug-in ever since. Currently, Flash can do a whole hell of a lot with a very small browser plug-in, including not just vector graphics but streaming audio and video and a whole lot else. Why should they discard all that engineering effort (which works pretty well, even if it's often used ill-advisedly) to switch over to SVG, which they certainly didn't invent, certainly can't control (read: improve when they feel like), and can't even do what Flash can do right now?
I'm no flag-waving Macromedia fan -- to the guy who said Flash was the worst-designed program ever made, I'd have to suggest looking at Director -- but it seems like you're the one with the not-invented-here problem. Macromedia came up with Flash and has published the format for all kinds of people to use how they like. You can't have a say in how it works, though, so you don't want to use it.
Am I the only one who finds it easier to get the information I want from the home pages of the sites I trust, rather than relying on an RSS feed? For one thing, in an RSS feed every story has the same priority... stories keep coming in and I have no idea which ones are "bigger" than others. Sites like News.com, on the other hand, follow the newspaper's example of printing the headlines for the more important stories bigger. With RSS, it's just information overload, especially with the same stories duplicated at different sources, etc. Everyone seems really excited about RSS, but when I tried it I just couldn't figure out how to use it such that it would actually give me some real value vs. the resources I already have.
The other thing wrong with the theory is that hardly anybody makes graphic novels. I love the medium as much -- and probably twice as much -- as the next guy, but every time someone wants to float some of this "comics are mainstream literature" hullaballo, we keep talking about the same handful of books. Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns are rapidly approaching their 20-year anniversaries. Dan Clowes has done a lot of other things besides Ghost World -- I'd say the main reason it gets mentioned here is because somebody made a movie out of it.
For this medium to become properly "legitimized" in the mainstream consciousness, there has to be a lot more output on the level of the works mentioned, and we have to let go of this idea that something isn't worthwhile until Hollywood has optioned it.
Slashdot Mirror
Only a month's rent? Well, never mind then.
Yes, I've been to Europe a few times over the last several years and was interested to see those portable credit card terminals that they bring to your table at restaurants. We have nothing of the like in the U.S. (unless you're talking some really large, fancy place that has developed its own wireless handsets for waitstaff).
... ready for it? ... telephone system.
... fancy, smart-chipped credit cards never really take off when the banks try them, because who wants a credit card that you can't count on at most restaurants etc.?
The way it was once explained to me is that it has everything to do with the
In the United States, local telephone calls are essentially free. There are local points-of-presence for all the major credit card validation services, so restaurants can use a standard business phone line to call out to validate an infinite number of credit card transactions at a flat rate for phone service. Because of this, credit card infrastructure in the U.S. has been built up around automatic verification of all credit card transactions. Our credit cards don't come with smart chips or the like, because there's simply no real reason for them. The perception by industry is that it's much easier to just call up and verify your credit directly with the bank than to rely on some "unproven" technology like a smart chip.
And so, given no smart chips, there are no "advanced" authentication schemes like the ones you mention. There are a couple of cards that have rolled out devices like you describe that you can use at home for Internet transactions, but I've never heard of a place of business that supports them. And so, it's a chicken-and-egg problem
It's much easier to launch an entire new credit card product (like Discover, which is still not accepted in Europe but was rolled out in the U.S. maybe 10 years ago) than it is to add a smart chip to Visa cards, because the new card can ostensibly use the same magnetic stripe readers with just a firmware upgrade or something.
The other thing is, I think the cost for the credit card companies to insure themselves against fraud is a lot less than it is to implement new technology. Right now, if somebody steals your credit card in the U.S., walks into a store and purchases something with it, the merchant is going to be the one who comes up liable, nine times out of ten. The merchat will get back neither the merchandise nor the funds from the fraudulent transaction, and the credit card company goes on about its business. So where's the incentive for the credit card industry to reform its security?
Actually, this is a fairly contentious area of the law, and countless suits and counter-suits are filed over noncompete agreements in California every year. The law about stealing trade secrets is, on the other hand, quite clear, and often times people choose to honor noncompetes just for the sake of avoiding being slapped with a civil suit alleging theft of [clients, information, employees, etc.] Leaving one company to go immediately to its direct competitor usually looks pretty suspect.
Don't worry, most ATM cards double as credit cards these days anyway. There's no PIN number to buy stuff with a credit card -- they make you sign your name. Scanning the PIN number off a card is difficult enough, but can you imagine the astronomical odds that your wallet will get stolen by a thief with the same name as you?
InfoWorld is running a special report on desktop Linux this week. The gist of the author's opinion is that Linux is ready for the desktop -- for a limited set of applications. What makes it less attractive to companies is the lack of good centralized managament tools and the perennial question: Yeah, but why would you switch?
I see a few people here already using Mozilla as an example of why Linux is superior to Windows, but I can install Mozilla on my existing Windows desktops way more easily than I can wipe them and install Linux. Ditto OpenOffice. We all know that the vast majority of PC hardware shipped to enterprises came with Windows pre-installed. Companies are going to need a really compelling reason to replace that with Linux, and "I can run Mozilla" isn't it.
That InfoWorld special report also includes a review of four desktop Linux distros, BTW. Red Hat scores favorably, but Sun Java Desktop comes in second.
Sounds to me like what's happened is that the MPAA and NFL won't be able to lobby the FCC to take action against TiVo. Instead, they'll have to spend their own money to sue TiVo under the DMCA.
...and the "plastic surgery-riddled TV boneheads" probably don't write a single scrap of news, either.
I'm currently a professional technology writer/editor and my mandate is still to boil down and synthesize complex topics and make them readable, understandable, and as engaging to readers as possible. I don't see how anybody could find fault in that.
What sense does it make to consider an audience with more education and experience than the reporter? Why on earth would those people read the article?
Fans of the Web and the Internet at large love to repeat over and over how it's going to revolutionize everything. Maybe it is -- but for some reason, that always seems to boil down to knocking somebody off some perceived pedestal. "Oh that guy doesn't know anything, he made this mistake here and I bet twenty other people on the Internet can point out others." Great. But the Internet isn't revolutionizing anything here. There have always been people who say things like that, and there's even a name for them: armchair critics. Their presence does not take away the need for well-informed, insightful, accurate, and well-written journalism.
Journalism as a "conversation" or a "seminar" sounds really nice and new-agey. If that always worked, I guess it would be pretty great. As a counter-example, I could give Slashdot. If a cacophony of voices is all you really need to get your information, why is everyone always yelling "RTFA"?
Cloudscape has a relatively small market share among SQL databases, but it is popular in certain niches. It came bundled with Sun's reference implementation of J2EE at one time, too; I don't know if that's still the case.
Not to sound like an Intel commercial, but that's largely what Intel's Centrino platform is all about. It's designed as a mix of processor and chipset that allows the system to maximize battery life.
I have a Fujitsu Lifebook 5010 that reliably gets me just under 5 hours battery life, maybe more like 4 hours if I have wireless enabled (and there's a hardware switch on the case). Something like playing a DVD is going to suck even more battery, because of the need to spin the drive motor, but I'd wager I have enough juice for that most times.
Centrino isn't a blindingly huge advantage, though. Fujitsu makes a non-Centrino version of the same laptop that comes with 802.11g, and I understand it only gets marginally shorter battery life, and that's all from anecdotal accounts. Centrino does a good job, but a big reason this model's battery lasts so long is because it's 900MHz (so doesn't run as hot, so doesn't need as much energy to run the fan) and it only has a 10 inch screen.
Depends what he wants it for. Sendmail isn't going to provide you group calendaring and scheduling. It also won't provide you centralized email management and storage if what you use now is POP3 -- something a lot of companies need now with the new corporate governance regulations. You'll have to provide a little more information on your current setup and future requirements if you want a useful answer.
Darl has to pretend that Unixware is a viable alternative to everything Linux, but in reality SCO has a more targeted market than that. As I understand it, they have a big presence in areas like point-of-sale terminals at McDonald's. Those kind of high-volume sales will probably continue to form their core business, particularly if they can continue to create FUD as to whether the Linux alternative will be a viable long-term proposition.
Actually, let me amend that -- the power to establish military laws and see that they are enforced rests with Congress, not just the president. So you get to influence that by voting for your representatives in Congress. Nationally, there are almost 500 of these. A Web site like this one stands a good chance of reaching the attention of all of them, however, so in a way it's a sneaky way to get around the way our representative democracy limits the individual's influence over the process.
But the military isn't a democracy, just as our entire country isn't a true democracy in the strictest sense. It's a representative democracy. You do get some say in what the military does -- you make your input known by voting for its (civilian) commander-in-chief. (That's the U.S. president, for you foreigners.) You don't, on the other hand, get any direct say how it gets to run its security affairs, any more than you get to decide whom it puts in charge of what or what kind of tires it buys to put on Jeeps.
"Ban" P2P services on military computers? By all means, if that's what it takes. Establish penalties for soldiers who fail to observe security protocols? Abso-effin-lutely. This ain't a civil liberties issue, people, and we're not talking about dismantling entire technological innovations here or anything -- this is the military. I wholeheartedly agree that, before Congress comes along and pushes through any further legislation blaming the American people for failures of security policy (i.e. the Patriot Act), the people who are really and literally on the front lines of the information security issue need to get their shit together in a big way.
And remember, no product can succeed that stands still. It's the very nature of marketing to create demand in the minds of (potential) consumers. For every vendor that tells you a problem has been solved long ago, there's going to be another vendor telling you that it's hasn't been, or spinning a different message to cast the problem in a new light.
I'd like to be able to switch to 100 percent free/open source software for everything I do on the computer, but I can't because the options aren't quite there yet. I try to use as much OSS as I can. I really don't much care what software your grandmother uses, however. Seems to me "free" software starts with freedom of choice.
I'm no flag-waving Macromedia fan -- to the guy who said Flash was the worst-designed program ever made, I'd have to suggest looking at Director -- but it seems like you're the one with the not-invented-here problem. Macromedia came up with Flash and has published the format for all kinds of people to use how they like. You can't have a say in how it works, though, so you don't want to use it.
Am I the only one who finds it easier to get the information I want from the home pages of the sites I trust, rather than relying on an RSS feed? For one thing, in an RSS feed every story has the same priority ... stories keep coming in and I have no idea which ones are "bigger" than others. Sites like News.com, on the other hand, follow the newspaper's example of printing the headlines for the more important stories bigger. With RSS, it's just information overload, especially with the same stories duplicated at different sources, etc. Everyone seems really excited about RSS, but when I tried it I just couldn't figure out how to use it such that it would actually give me some real value vs. the resources I already have.
Where else do you think they'd find their answers? Usenet??
The other thing wrong with the theory is that hardly anybody makes graphic novels. I love the medium as much -- and probably twice as much -- as the next guy, but every time someone wants to float some of this "comics are mainstream literature" hullaballo, we keep talking about the same handful of books. Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns are rapidly approaching their 20-year anniversaries. Dan Clowes has done a lot of other things besides Ghost World -- I'd say the main reason it gets mentioned here is because somebody made a movie out of it.
For this medium to become properly "legitimized" in the mainstream consciousness, there has to be a lot more output on the level of the works mentioned, and we have to let go of this idea that something isn't worthwhile until Hollywood has optioned it.