1.43 terrabytes is peanuts these days. My $50/month dedicated server comes with 10 terrabytes/month transfer. While there are still costs associated with internet distribution, they are thousands of times smaller than for the equivalent physical media.
You have to be kidding. Cycling through rush hour traffic, the opportunity for some bleary eyed, hung over burger flipper to flatten me with his peugot 206 presents itself several thousand times. The odds aren't good; you have to be on your guard every second.
It was a long time ago, but I learned from the book 'QBasic By Example'. Wait - here it is! It's a top book, and doesn't try to explain things with ridiculous metaphors or other silly mechanisms, it just gives you a bit of code and explains it thoroughly and understandably.
The only advice I can give is move on from basic pretty darn quickly. Go to pascal, or python, or something... anything - just get away from it once you've got the fundamentals!
I didn't originally see that the merchant having CC numbers was a problem, but if that could be eliminated (along with 90% of CC fraud), that'd be excellent. In the e-commerce systems I've written, it's always been a case of 'get the customers CC details as soon as possible and run them through the merchant account'. Nothing to stop the management of the company, or any of the technicians taking all of the numbers.
Thinking about it, that problem can also be solved by digital signatures. If the bank has your public key tied to your account (presumably signed in person when the bank account is set up), the merchant can send the customer a receipt of the transaction with your account number and the total on it. This can then be digitally signed by the customer, so the bank can tell that they (and noone else) have authorized the transaction. Only then is the customer charged, the merchant informed, and the customer gets the product.
Granted, there could still be instances of people's machines getting hacked, their private keys stolen and their passphrases logged, but it's much easier to get credit card numbers by other means at the moment.
It's all technically possible, but as you say, the most difficult task would be getting the three parties (bank backend, merchant e-commerce platform & customer browser) to agree on a standard.
I hope this will someday be realised, because the idea of central repositories controlled by compaines or goverments is just a bit silly. If any single human has access to the data (it's OK if it's committee access), that access will be abused.
For the life of me I can't see what's wrong with a glorified cookie in this case.
Each user has a 'contact details' record, a 'financial details' record, and an 'identity' record on their machine, like a cookie, but digitally signed to say that it is actually theirs. When user visits a site, they get a digitally signed message saying "This is [X corp], we need your financial details to continue. We will destroy this info within 24 hours and will not pass it on. Certified by [Y regulatory body] YES OR NO".
If a site wants identification (unified logons) the site gives the user a random string to encrypt to the site's public key to verify they are who they say they are.
No more funny business with Big Evil Corporations knowing everything you do. No worries about people hacking the central repository and getting 10,000 credit card numbers overnight. No worries about people stealing your password, 'cause it's never transmitted - it's just used to encrypt the token to enter the site clientside.
I've recently installed Debian on one of my servers. The setup process was far quicker than SuSE 7.2, taking 15 minutes instead of an hour and a half.
The installer is very easy to use - better than SuSE. It consists of a series of Yes/No questions and a bit of partitioning, with a choice to deviate and expert-configure your system at any stage.
Apt is a dream to use - shiny new KDE 2 without having to shell out £50. I'm a quick convert. I won't be going back to SuSE anytime soon.
The tabbed browsing is almost up to galeon-level, though the speed is still slow, and its missing an (X) to close individual tabs. Use ctrl-w to close tabs in the meantime. This feature is quickly becoming my favorite.
Yep, gotta love the tabs. You can configure the middle mouse button (or wheel) to close it. Download MultiZilla here. It's easily my fave feature over IE. Unfortunately, it appears to be broken in v0.9.6:(
For all KDE's improvements on functionality and eye candy, I could use 1.x quite easily on a 166 mhz machine, but 2.2.x is unusably slow. Runs a treat on my 350 though:)
More features can mean less speed if poorly implemented - Mozilla's going bloat. I really hope KDE stays reasonably lean.
Just because someone collects Nazi items doesn't make them evil.
This was a very important time in history, where a lot of things were learned. We'd like to think we learn from history instead of re-hashing it again and again (not mentioning any *cough* Bush *cough* influential American figures).
The US itself is fairly good at mass-murder. Can you say Vietnam, Hiroshima?
You are an ill-informed bigot. Think about who you are and what you stand for before posting this kind of inane babble.
It does appear that building an app with GCC and distributing it under the GPL would conflict with the license for this SDK. Talk about viral - Microsoft is trying to proscribe limits on the license under which you distribute YOUR application!
The licences are both restricting in their own ways. If I develop my software using GPLed code, I can only redistribute it under GPL. If I develop it with said SDK, I can't use GPL stuff etc...
The GPL may be viral, but M$'s is just aggressive, using a standard M$ tactic - it targets specific entities which it perceives to be a threat, and cleverly dispenses with them. I could mention 'browser war', but I don't want to get flamed now, do I?
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1.43 terrabytes is peanuts these days. My $50/month dedicated server comes with 10 terrabytes/month transfer. While there are still costs associated with internet distribution, they are thousands of times smaller than for the equivalent physical media.
I thought this was going to be something interesting, like bringing online gambling to slot machines.
What a swizz.
I'm going to be getting me a load of dowell, some rubber bands and make some transtegrity sets like these.
Christmas presents should provide fun on Christmas day, and shouldn't be so expensive that the recipient feels bad about chucking them on boxing day.
and guess what the only result returned for "more evil than google" is?
what?! you're a graphic designer?
anti-republican fix at BushGame.com. Requires flash, but quite hilarious.
Or they could just block the WON authentication servers. Only about 3 of them.
It was a long time ago, but I learned from the book 'QBasic By Example'. Wait - here it is! It's a top book, and doesn't try to explain things with ridiculous metaphors or other silly mechanisms, it just gives you a bit of code and explains it thoroughly and understandably.
The only advice I can give is move on from basic pretty darn quickly. Go to pascal, or python, or something... anything - just get away from it once you've got the fundamentals!
Hope this helps.
Thanks for your reply.
I didn't originally see that the merchant having CC numbers was a problem, but if that could be eliminated (along with 90% of CC fraud), that'd be excellent. In the e-commerce systems I've written, it's always been a case of 'get the customers CC details as soon as possible and run them through the merchant account'. Nothing to stop the management of the company, or any of the technicians taking all of the numbers.
Thinking about it, that problem can also be solved by digital signatures. If the bank has your public key tied to your account (presumably signed in person when the bank account is set up), the merchant can send the customer a receipt of the transaction with your account number and the total on it. This can then be digitally signed by the customer, so the bank can tell that they (and noone else) have authorized the transaction. Only then is the customer charged, the merchant informed, and the customer gets the product.
Granted, there could still be instances of people's machines getting hacked, their private keys stolen and their passphrases logged, but it's much easier to get credit card numbers by other means at the moment.
It's all technically possible, but as you say, the most difficult task would be getting the three parties (bank backend, merchant e-commerce platform & customer browser) to agree on a standard.
I hope this will someday be realised, because the idea of central repositories controlled by compaines or goverments is just a bit silly. If any single human has access to the data (it's OK if it's committee access), that access will be abused.
For the life of me I can't see what's wrong with a glorified cookie in this case.
Each user has a 'contact details' record, a 'financial details' record, and an 'identity' record on their machine, like a cookie, but digitally signed to say that it is actually theirs. When user visits a site, they get a digitally signed message saying "This is [X corp], we need your financial details to continue. We will destroy this info within 24 hours and will not pass it on. Certified by [Y regulatory body] YES OR NO".
If a site wants identification (unified logons) the site gives the user a random string to encrypt to the site's public key to verify they are who they say they are.
No more funny business with Big Evil Corporations knowing everything you do. No worries about people hacking the central repository and getting 10,000 credit card numbers overnight. No worries about people stealing your password, 'cause it's never transmitted - it's just used to encrypt the token to enter the site clientside.
Can someone tell me where I've gone wrong?
Erm... 'YOU' would be older?
Christ...
I have two words for ya:
crampon molestation
Reminds me of This article I read a while ago.
I've recently installed Debian on one of my servers. The setup process was far quicker than SuSE 7.2, taking 15 minutes instead of an hour and a half.
The installer is very easy to use - better than SuSE. It consists of a series of Yes/No questions and a bit of partitioning, with a choice to deviate and expert-configure your system at any stage.
Apt is a dream to use - shiny new KDE 2 without having to shell out £50. I'm a quick convert. I won't be going back to SuSE anytime soon.
Yep, gotta love the tabs. You can configure the middle mouse button (or wheel) to close it. Download MultiZilla here. It's easily my fave feature over IE. Unfortunately, it appears to be broken in v0.9.6
For all KDE's improvements on functionality and eye candy, I could use 1.x quite easily on a 166 mhz machine, but 2.2.x is unusably slow. Runs a treat on my 350 though :)
More features can mean less speed if poorly implemented - Mozilla's going bloat. I really hope KDE stays reasonably lean.
You, sir, are an idiot.
Just because someone collects Nazi items doesn't make them evil.
This was a very important time in history, where a lot of things were learned. We'd like to think we learn from history instead of re-hashing it again and again (not mentioning any *cough* Bush *cough* influential American figures).
The US itself is fairly good at mass-murder. Can you say Vietnam, Hiroshima?
You are an ill-informed bigot. Think about who you are and what you stand for before posting this kind of inane babble.
They apparantly saved over £250,000 (~$350k) by switching to Linux and Star Office. This was during the uproar about MS licensing.
--ALex
My Poor Sig.
The licences are both restricting in their own ways. If I develop my software using GPLed code, I can only redistribute it under GPL. If I develop it with said SDK, I can't use GPL stuff etc...
The GPL may be viral, but M$'s is just aggressive, using a standard M$ tactic - it targets specific entities which it perceives to be a threat, and cleverly dispenses with them. I could mention 'browser war', but I don't want to get flamed now, do I?