They implement Chip and PIN with the chip being a mini flash drive with all your shit on it ready to steal and a PIN authenticator that basically says "this PIN is correct, scout's honour, you can use the banking details!"
I was expecting it to be implemented a'la GSM with the PIN waking up the crypto-processor, submitting the transaction to the crypto-processor, signing the transaction with the card's details and the PIN pad merely passing along the signed transaction and submitting it to the issuing bank.
Chip and PIN is the most retarded use of two factor authentication I have ever seen.
This is the problem with trying to faux-innovate by creating an "experience".
For starters, Dell is shit at it. Second of all, you spend so long tailoring it to the firmware version you started it on that it's now obsolete and the default experience is a million times better anyway.
IMHO Dell needs to differentiate themselves in two ways:
1) By a "build your own smartphone" model using a couple of different form factors (tablet, slider, flip) with commodity snap in parts that are user customizable (screen tech/screen size/flash space/CPU+GPU combo/camera) that would allow them to deliver any phone in any segment at any price point. 2) Keeping up with the latest version of Android and providing the latest default Android experience as soon as possible. Make a generic firmware, stuff it with all the drivers you might need for all of the hardware used in the different combinations and release it quick. Sell on volume, sell on having the latest and greatest Android features available to customers a week after the general release and laugh at HTC promising firmware updates at some undetermined point in the future.
If you give people what they want and quickly you won't have to differentiate yourself with all of this experience wank. You can just sell them whatever they want and sell them by the truckload because you're DELL. When people just want a laptop they jump on Dell's website, price one up, it's cheap as chips and they buy it. Just do the same damn thing with smartphones already.
Speaking as an ex-Support person, if you ever support one thing, once, implictly customers will whinge when you break it through no fault of your own.
They will also bitch if you explicitly say we don't support it before giving a hand with their unsupported problem anyway because you're a decent human being.
Apple was 100% right. It's not a published standard. If they broke shit accidentally later on there'd be hell to pay. Nip it in the bud now.
Nokia has an Exchange connector for most of its S60 models and has had it for ages. It also has a Blackberry connector for those people with BES as well.
If you really need to use self-signed certs is there anything stopping you from including your own CA cert in a company customized version of Firefox that gets rolled out?
I'm kind of annoyed because I work for a web host and now people who use any sort of domain mirroring are going to be completely fucked rather than having a semi-dodgy box come up when their CN doesn't match the web address.
When people distribute User Products that include software under GPLv3, section 6 requires that they provide you with information necessary to modify that software. User Products is a term specially defined in the license; examples of User Products include portable music players, digital video recorders, and home security systems.
"Dear User. To compile this code you will need the iPhone SDK available from Apple and you can push the modified code out to your iPhone using ad-hoc distribution. Have a nice day!"
Done. GPLv3 compliant.
Re:Self-Help & Much To-Do About Nothing.
on
UCITA By the Back Door
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
For quite enlightened reasons (and the more cynical would say selfish ones too), courts tend not to favor resolutions that encourage self-help. Courts are not going to interpret the phrase "detection or prevention of the unauthorized use of software fraudulent or other illegal activities" to allow for deprivations of or interference with the enjoyment of personal property without due process. This law can't be interpreted in any manner to set up a due process satisfying procedure, so it's pretty much unconstitutional if interpreted to allow remote disabling or (suspected) pirated property.
But that's the thing. The vendors do not consider said software your personal property. They consider it to be their property that you have a license to use and they would no doubt argue that all the way to the SCOTUS.
The most important thing about the iPhone isn't the sleek design, the touchscreen, iTunes integration, or any other single feature. It's the way that people use the device. Specifically, it's that people actually use it to do stuff besides making phone calls. Examples:
Almost 85% of iPhone owners browse the Web on their phones, versus 58% of the U.S. smartphone market and 13.1% of the overall U.S. mobile market, according to mobile research firm M:Metrics. Some 31% of iPhone owners watch mobile TV or video, like Google's (GOOG) built-in YouTube software, compared to 4.6% of the overall market. About 20% of iPhone owners access Facebook, versus 1.5% of the overall market. And 74% of iPhone owners listened to music on their phones, compared to 28% of the smartphone market and 6.7% of the overall market.
Even if the usage is overstated that's still a hell of a lot of mobile Internet users.
The iPhone isn't like a regular smartphone. Rather than trying to supplement an experience for someone with existing shitty expectations of the big boy Internet on mobile devices, it's trying to broadly appeal to the market and it's becoming a catalyst that is literally changing the dynamics of the mobile data market.
Saying that people will be loading binary apps will kill off web development is like saying Web 2.0 is pointless because we all have Windows.
In particular, what if games came with an age group flag when they were installed, and operating system users could also have an age limit specified, so that applications with a "18+" flag would not launch of a user configured as "13."
You know that was such a good idea that every console maker decided to implement it as well as Microsoft with Windows Vista.
Internode is putting the radios on masts with LOS to the base station. Buzz would be using WiMax modems with their own antennas much like other WiMax providers in the country.
They're using 2.3GHz, 2.5GHz and 3.5GHz for the WiMax bands. Of course they're going to start having trouble with building penetration at that high a frequency. Trying to use modems with their own antennas is just stupid and is bound to be an epic fail for long distance last mile.
Mac OS X 10.4 introduces a new behavior of coalescing updates that enables Quartz to more efficiently update the frame buffer during each display refresh. In addition to increasing system efficiency, Coalescing updates improved visual consistency and eliminates "tearing" during scrolling and animation. To coalesce updates, the Quartz window server composites all window buffers into a single offscreen frame buffer before flushing it to the screen. When your application issues a command to flush, the system doesn't actually flush that content until the next available display refresh. This allows all updates for multiple applications to happen at the same time. Window server operations (window resize or move, for example) are handled in the same manner--coalesced into a system-wide screen update.
I would assume Apple would be thinking this makes a lot of fucking sense.
They give app writers a way to turn it off if need be. What the hell are we crying about again?
I would have thought that after such technological leaps and bounds that putting the order number of each card at the bottom in some kind of Arabic numerals or at least Cuneiform writings would be within our reach...
Metroid Prime loads up the new area when you shoot the door to open it. Sometimes if it's loading a big area with a heap of new assets, a boss area or loading from a dirty disc the door to the new area will refuse to open for quite some time. Anecdotally I've found that it does cache previous areas on a LRU basis though.
They have no competing product, they're hiring lawyers on a contingency basis, they're filing in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas based on the most stretched association with that venue and they've demanded a jury trial and an injunction up front. They're basically trying to force Google to make the suit go away and they're just rolling the dice to see if they get lucky.
Looks like a patent troll, sounds like a patent troll, smells like a patent troll. They're not going to be able to claim damages for lost profits. The only difference between these people and a typical dedicated patent troll IP firm is that they don't employ their own lawyers and they make some shitty, unrelated product that really has no relevance to this case.
If a north eastern company has to sue a north western company in a Texas court because they're more friendly to patent litigation then you're dealing with a patent troll.
Think of the shiny new APIs that the iPhone currently uses (Core Animation and resolution independence being the big ones) and look at what's not in Tiger but is in Leopard.
Like hell Apple is going to expose those APIs to commoners like us before the big 10.5 release. Developers pay big bucks to have access to that shit before the rest of us and Apple isn't about to kill of that rather lucrative little market. Watch how either XCode 3.0 or XCode 3.1 after Leopard's release supports the iPhone as a target architecture and watch Apple tout it as "So you can write an OS X app? You can write an iPhone app!". Also stay tuned for the retarded Digg post that says "WE WIN! APPLE BOWS DOWN TO THE PRESSURE AND OPENS UP THE IPHONE TO THIRD PARTY APPS!".
Slashdot Mirror
What other phone has seen active updates for 28 months?
I mean besides the original iPhone.
They implement Chip and PIN with the chip being a mini flash drive with all your shit on it ready to steal and a PIN authenticator that basically says "this PIN is correct, scout's honour, you can use the banking details!"
I was expecting it to be implemented a'la GSM with the PIN waking up the crypto-processor, submitting the transaction to the crypto-processor, signing the transaction with the card's details and the PIN pad merely passing along the signed transaction and submitting it to the issuing bank.
Chip and PIN is the most retarded use of two factor authentication I have ever seen.
All I need is a bottle of Shasta and my all-Rush mix tape.
Oh wait. That was for Space Invaders. Carry on.
T-Mobile uses 1700/2100. Only other people that use that frequency are a couple of third string regional providers in Canada.
Apple probably keeps them locked to minimize T-Mobile whiners complaining that 3G doesn't work on their phones.
Still it's really annoying if you go overseas and want to use a SIM card from another country.
This is the problem with trying to faux-innovate by creating an "experience".
For starters, Dell is shit at it. Second of all, you spend so long tailoring it to the firmware version you started it on that it's now obsolete and the default experience is a million times better anyway.
IMHO Dell needs to differentiate themselves in two ways:
1) By a "build your own smartphone" model using a couple of different form factors (tablet, slider, flip) with commodity snap in parts that are user customizable (screen tech/screen size/flash space/CPU+GPU combo/camera) that would allow them to deliver any phone in any segment at any price point.
2) Keeping up with the latest version of Android and providing the latest default Android experience as soon as possible. Make a generic firmware, stuff it with all the drivers you might need for all of the hardware used in the different combinations and release it quick. Sell on volume, sell on having the latest and greatest Android features available to customers a week after the general release and laugh at HTC promising firmware updates at some undetermined point in the future.
If you give people what they want and quickly you won't have to differentiate yourself with all of this experience wank. You can just sell them whatever they want and sell them by the truckload because you're DELL. When people just want a laptop they jump on Dell's website, price one up, it's cheap as chips and they buy it. Just do the same damn thing with smartphones already.
Speaking as an ex-Support person, if you ever support one thing, once, implictly customers will whinge when you break it through no fault of your own.
They will also bitch if you explicitly say we don't support it before giving a hand with their unsupported problem anyway because you're a decent human being.
Apple was 100% right. It's not a published standard. If they broke shit accidentally later on there'd be hell to pay. Nip it in the bud now.
lolwut?
Nokia has an Exchange connector for most of its S60 models and has had it for ages. It also has a Blackberry connector for those people with BES as well.
Anything outside of Australia I'll route over a VPN to a VPS in the states.
87 octane US is like 91 or 92 RON.
That's great but standard in the UK, Japan and half of Europe is RON 95.
If you really need to use self-signed certs is there anything stopping you from including your own CA cert in a company customized version of Firefox that gets rolled out?
I'm kind of annoyed because I work for a web host and now people who use any sort of domain mirroring are going to be completely fucked rather than having a semi-dodgy box come up when their CN doesn't match the web address.
It doesn't even conflict with GPLv3.
When people distribute User Products that include software under GPLv3, section 6 requires that they provide you with information necessary to modify that software. User Products is a term specially defined in the license; examples of User Products include portable music players, digital video recorders, and home security systems.
"Dear User. To compile this code you will need the iPhone SDK available from Apple and you can push the modified code out to your iPhone using ad-hoc distribution. Have a nice day!"
Done. GPLv3 compliant.
For quite enlightened reasons (and the more cynical would say selfish ones too), courts tend not to favor resolutions that encourage self-help. Courts are not going to interpret the phrase "detection or prevention of the unauthorized use of software fraudulent or other illegal activities" to allow for deprivations of or interference with the enjoyment of personal property without due process. This law can't be interpreted in any manner to set up a due process satisfying procedure, so it's pretty much unconstitutional if interpreted to allow remote disabling or (suspected) pirated property.
But that's the thing. The vendors do not consider said software your personal property. They consider it to be their property that you have a license to use and they would no doubt argue that all the way to the SCOTUS.
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/3/apple_s_iphone_smashes_larger_market_on_web_video_music_usage
The most important thing about the iPhone isn't the sleek design, the touchscreen, iTunes integration, or any other single feature. It's the way that people use the device. Specifically, it's that people actually use it to do stuff besides making phone calls. Examples:
Almost 85% of iPhone owners browse the Web on their phones, versus 58% of the U.S. smartphone market and 13.1% of the overall U.S. mobile market, according to mobile research firm M:Metrics.
Some 31% of iPhone owners watch mobile TV or video, like Google's (GOOG) built-in YouTube software, compared to 4.6% of the overall market.
About 20% of iPhone owners access Facebook, versus 1.5% of the overall market.
And 74% of iPhone owners listened to music on their phones, compared to 28% of the smartphone market and 6.7% of the overall market.
Even if the usage is overstated that's still a hell of a lot of mobile Internet users.
The iPhone isn't like a regular smartphone. Rather than trying to supplement an experience for someone with existing shitty expectations of the big boy Internet on mobile devices, it's trying to broadly appeal to the market and it's becoming a catalyst that is literally changing the dynamics of the mobile data market.
Saying that people will be loading binary apps will kill off web development is like saying Web 2.0 is pointless because we all have Windows.
In particular, what if games came with an age group flag when they were installed, and operating system users could also have an age limit specified, so that applications with a "18+" flag would not launch of a user configured as "13."
You know that was such a good idea that every console maker decided to implement it as well as Microsoft with Windows Vista.
It's really a non argument.
# ip route add blackhole 134.17.0.0/16
# route -n
All good!
Another logical fallacy.
For that to work you imply the Chinese are wanting to buy something that the US has. There isn't. They're amassing huge currency reserves instead.
Internode is putting the radios on masts with LOS to the base station. Buzz would be using WiMax modems with their own antennas much like other WiMax providers in the country.
They're using 2.3GHz, 2.5GHz and 3.5GHz for the WiMax bands. Of course they're going to start having trouble with building penetration at that high a frequency. Trying to use modems with their own antennas is just stupid and is bound to be an epic fail for long distance last mile.
Duhhhhh...
Mac OS X 10.4 introduces a new behavior of coalescing updates that enables Quartz to more efficiently update the frame buffer during each display refresh. In addition to increasing system efficiency, Coalescing updates improved visual consistency and eliminates "tearing" during scrolling and animation. To coalesce updates, the Quartz window server composites all window buffers into a single offscreen frame buffer before flushing it to the screen. When your application issues a command to flush, the system doesn't actually flush that content until the next available display refresh. This allows all updates for multiple applications to happen at the same time. Window server operations (window resize or move, for example) are handled in the same manner--coalesced into a system-wide screen update.
I would assume Apple would be thinking this makes a lot of fucking sense.
They give app writers a way to turn it off if need be. What the hell are we crying about again?
I would have thought that after such technological leaps and bounds that putting the order number of each card at the bottom in some kind of Arabic numerals or at least Cuneiform writings would be within our reach...
I thought wrong...
Metroid Prime loads up the new area when you shoot the door to open it. Sometimes if it's loading a big area with a heap of new assets, a boss area or loading from a dirty disc the door to the new area will refuse to open for quite some time. Anecdotally I've found that it does cache previous areas on a LRU basis though.
They have no competing product, they're hiring lawyers on a contingency basis, they're filing in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas based on the most stretched association with that venue and they've demanded a jury trial and an injunction up front. They're basically trying to force Google to make the suit go away and they're just rolling the dice to see if they get lucky.
Looks like a patent troll, sounds like a patent troll, smells like a patent troll. They're not going to be able to claim damages for lost profits. The only difference between these people and a typical dedicated patent troll IP firm is that they don't employ their own lawyers and they make some shitty, unrelated product that really has no relevance to this case.
If a north eastern company has to sue a north western company in a Texas court because they're more friendly to patent litigation then you're dealing with a patent troll.
The RIAA has launched a lawsuit against the Santa Maria delle Grazie for copyright infringement...
Recent Apple laptops have a feature where if you place two fingers on the touchpad and click it performs a right click instead of a left click.
I love it.
Think of the shiny new APIs that the iPhone currently uses (Core Animation and resolution independence being the big ones) and look at what's not in Tiger but is in Leopard.
Like hell Apple is going to expose those APIs to commoners like us before the big 10.5 release. Developers pay big bucks to have access to that shit before the rest of us and Apple isn't about to kill of that rather lucrative little market. Watch how either XCode 3.0 or XCode 3.1 after Leopard's release supports the iPhone as a target architecture and watch Apple tout it as "So you can write an OS X app? You can write an iPhone app!". Also stay tuned for the retarded Digg post that says "WE WIN! APPLE BOWS DOWN TO THE PRESSURE AND OPENS UP THE IPHONE TO THIRD PARTY APPS!".