Actually, no they don't - their credit cards are supplied by another entity (Santander in the UK, Bank of America in the US last time I checked), which handles the credit extension, billing etc etc. Its just another banks white label product with branding applied.
You don't need to tie a credit card to an iTunes account - my wife has one which is funded solely through iTunes gift cards, never had a credit card associated with it.
And in any case, why do these kids have access to the password?
I'm being stupid? Fuck me, and I thought it was common sense to not give kids access to unlimited funds.
Why are the parents typing in the password in the first place? Why does that iTunes account have a credit card linked to it? WHERE IS THE PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY IN ALL OF THIS?!
Oh, wait, if the parent can blame someone else, then they don't have to shoulder the shame of being a poor parent. Seems to be the way of the world these days.
With regard to Assange, read the court documents for this ruling (someone else in this story posts a link) - its very interesting.... basically, Assanges defence couldn't defend their way out of a wet, torn paper bag. Their key defence witnesses are found to have major flaws in their statements, the court even gets one of their major witnesses to essentially flip his position in court and agree that theres nothing wrong with the extradition request as it stands, even Assanges lawyer is found to have actively lied to the court on several occassions.
Also, try reading up on the actual allegations against Assange, they are different to those thrown about here on Slashdot.
That caching is very short - I know that Im typing my password in once or twice a day on my iPad! So why is the parent typing in their password constantly?
I base my opinion on much more than the rest of Slashdot seems to - I read the court papers for McKinnons extradition hearings and I have experience with Aspergers.
A crime was committed, McKinnon was identified and charged, and he deserves to stand trial for the given charges - the fact that he has aspergers has fuck all to do with it. If he can take part in a public panel at Infosecurity Europe 2006 and answer questions on his hack, then why in hell should he not face a court? Hes talked openly and freely about the hack, his motivations and details the reasons he got caught - sounds like hes perfectly capable of reasoning and judgement based decision making to me.
Extradition does not automatically equate to guilt - the following around McKinnon is to deny the American government a chance to put him in front of a court to face charges and nothing I have read or experienced says that he should be allowed to circumvent that.
Heh, reading the ruling makes for quite an amusing time:) The defence witness Brita Sundberg-Weitman seems to make quite a fool of her self in front of the court, admitting that much of what she is complaining about is either not in her expertise or is solely based on information supplied by the defence and no one else, as was the case with a second defence witness Sven-Eric Alhem who also agreed that under the same circumstances he would have also issued the extradition warrant request!
Theres loads of similar stuff in there - he never stood a chance.
Well, to do in-app purchases on the iPhone or iPad, you need to confirm your iTunes password - why do the kids have that? And if the apps are doing purchases directly (which is against Apples rules...) then they need to input card details - why do the kids have those?
Its not a straight "click here - oooh look we just debited your account a hundred bucks", there are already road blocks in place.
I think you know how it's different. Chances are that your parents directly supervised you when you bought your cards. Or if you were older and allowed to buy stuff by yourself you did so with an allowance. Either way there was direct control over how much you bought. And if you had raided their wallets to buy more they would almost certainly have noticed the missing money far more quickly. They might also notice the suspicious number of empty game wrappers & stacks of cards floating around the house. They might even have received a call from the local store or the school about the suspiciously about the number of cards you were purchasing. Aside from all that you as a kid bought your cards with hard cash, not smurfberries or some other ethereal point system designed to cause you to disassociate the worth of the item.
I still don't see how its different - kids are buying stuff marketed directly to them.
I do find it quite interesting that you bring up parental supervision and adult intervention, when that is precisely what is missing in the first place from the issues in this article - the parents are allowing it to happen. And thats still no different to my experiences in childhood...
No, my parents were not there when I bought my trading cards - yes I had an allowance beyond which it was impossible to go, but why is that not the case with these online games? As I said in my original post, which idiot is linking their credit card to their childs iTunes account and letting them go wild? How can that even be considered good parenting? And if you must link your card to their iTunes account, why are you not denying them the passwords?
No, there were no empty game wrappers to be seen - practically everyone I knew had the wrappers off and either on the floor or in the bin before they were out of the shop door because you wanted to see what cards you had. And again no, the shop keepers didn't care if you were buying $10 worth of cards in one go, or were coming back time and again. And yet again no, school teachers didn't care that kids were bringing in shoeboxes full of cards every day. It was all done very openly in the playground or wherever, and no one batted an eyelid.
My parents didn't care either that I had lots of cards, and that cards came and went. Never raised an eyebrow, even when my collection in one game came to well over 8,000 cards. But it wasn't an issue for me - I used my allowance and I did chores to earn those cards, I'm guessing the whole point of this story is that kids are resorting to stealing credit card details or money from their parents, or pushing their parents to top up their balances or what not. Again, more of a problem with the parenting than anything else.
Why isn't there direct control from the parent in this case? Wheres the parenting?!
The point is that all this human interaction and control needs to have as good a counterpart in the digital world. Parents need to be able to control kids spending and expect reasonable protections to be offered by the system. Responsible kid games and infrastructures should impose spending / credit hard limits as a failsafe and account holders should have tools to further limit spending and receive delivery notifications / reports of spending habits. All transactions should also be conducted in a real currency not "smurfberries" or whatever so the kid themselves has a handle on what they're spending.
There should already be an easy way to cap the amount a kid can spend - don't give them access to the funds. Problem solved - these games aren't going to extend kids credit to collect at a later date (they can't, it would be unenforceable), so where is the money coming from ultimately?
Its all coming back to the parents I think. And they need someone to blame other than themselves...
That said, apps that encourage kids to spend real money for shit like costumes etc. are treading on moral thin ice..
How is this any different than the collectable card series that were highly prevelent throughout my childhood - football, baseball, TMNT, Battlestar Galactica, and then on to the collectable card games like Spellfire, Magic etc etc. Not to mention the crap that came along with the interest in Warhammer 40K (what a scam! I occassionally pop into my local store to see what they are doing, and the prices are even more ludicrous today!) and the various AD&D packs.
Kids have been encouraged to buy tat for decades, this isn't new and it isn't any different than back in my youth.
Besides, what kind of a parent links a credit card to a childs iTunes account? Where are these kids getting $99 to spend on crap?
It's not a perfect phone, but it's a great pocket computer with phone capabilities.
There we have it - its not a perfect phone, but its a great pocket computer with phone capabilities. Which is all very well and good, for someone that wants a great pocket computer with phone capabilities instead of a great phone with computer capabilities...
I have laptops etc for my computer needs, I don't need a crippled computer in my pocket, and I don't expect to treat my phone as one. Its a phone, the fact that it might fulfil other needs better than other devices does not detract from the fact that I am after a phone first and foremost, with other capabilities as additional functionality. The N900 failed at that hurdle.
Perhaps thats why I got on with the iPhone so well, and like Android now - I couldn't give a shit about the "walled garden" aspect because to me its primarily a phone, which both the iPhone and Android do well. The added functionality of apps is a welcome bonus, but not the primary reason for having the thing in my pocket.
If fickle is trying out the N900 after 2 years of the iPhone, waiting 3 months to see if I liked the N900 before going back, and then moving to Android a further year on down the line is fickle, then yes I am fickle.
Otherwise, no I just disliked the N900 and found it incredibly shit to use. Sorry I don't like your little pet device, but thats how it goes.
Grow up and stop pretending that the general term "American" isn't used globally and in common parlance to refer to activities of, and bodies within, the United States of America. My statement stands true as written.
Having used both the N900 and several WP7 phones, I'd have to say that Microsoft is certainly not the kiss of death for Nokia but is more likely to be its saviour - the N900 was horrific to use. It was so bad that after three months i went back to my iPhone 3G (and recently I moved over to a HTC Desire, which I love).
Microsoft would still be on the hook for identifying those apps, linking the apps and dealing with source code requests. All extra work, all with the potential for cockups. They are just avoiding the entire issue.
The license specifically mentioned is the GPL, which if allowed would put the onus on Microsoft, as the distributor, to fulfill the requirements of the license even tho it was chosen by a developer. Microsoft is covering their own back here, nothing more imho - they could be up for some serious issues if they cocked up GPL compliance, so they are just not going there.
No its not your responsibility at all - but it is your responsibility to never try to gain access to an account you no longer have authorisation for (authorisation and ability to access are two different things, its good to have both to be in the clear).
Why are these people trying their old accounts? What legitimate reason could they have (beyond being rehired or working as a consultant for their old employer)? I quit a long term job over a year ago, I'm pretty sure some of the public facing accounts I had there would never have been shut down after I left (but all were disclosed to the other members in my team when I left), but Ive never tried to access them - I wouldn't dream of it, unless they asked me to do some work and confirmed I had authorisation to log back in.
In an update they can provide a the exact signatures of all known official certificates issued with the old key - if the specific signature of the application you are loading is on that list, you are allowed to play. If its not, but it can be verified using the original master signing key, then you have a suspect application - since all official games go through Sony, its not going to be difficult for them to produce this list.
Of course, you can refuse to upgrade your PS3 firmware to allow this, at which point you lose the ability to join the PSN. Exactly what Sony have just said, basically.
What is up with the new commenting system? The article says there are 35 comments, the slider at the top of the page says there are 15 full, 0 abbreviated and 20 hidden - but the page only displays 4 comments. Wheres the rest of the "full" comments?!
I certainly agree that Skys TV service is significantly better, but their tactics leave a lot to be desired.
In 2009 Virgin launched their own version of Sky One, called Virgin One. In 2010, Sky bought an owning share in Virgin One and renamed it Channel One. At the end of 2010, Sky discontinued Channel One, so once again we are left without a competitor to Sky One.
If I could get Sky without having to have a dish stuck to the side of the house, I would switch, but I cant.
Not sure where you get that from, the Virgin V+ HD box is free (well, a once off £50 activation charge) for new customers, and as an existing customer I can get one for £70 including the activation charge.
Plus the "£34.50 per month" includes TV, phone (line rental and a fairly decent call package) and 10MB broadband.
Not saying that what Tivo are doing is acceptable (although they never promised eternal service in the UK, or did they? Since people are paying an annual service charge, I would guess not), but at least get stuff correct before ranting.
The mobile phone market is way larger than the "oooh shiney smart phone" crowd. Nokia are doing fine in the rest of the market.
Ferrari don't compete against Ford in all vehicle markets, and neither do Landrover. Nokia doesnt have to go toe to toe with Android or Apple, as long as there are people wanting just a phone - Nokia sell plenty of those a day.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, no they don't - their credit cards are supplied by another entity (Santander in the UK, Bank of America in the US last time I checked), which handles the credit extension, billing etc etc. Its just another banks white label product with branding applied.
You don't need to tie a credit card to an iTunes account - my wife has one which is funded solely through iTunes gift cards, never had a credit card associated with it.
And in any case, why do these kids have access to the password?
I'm being stupid? Fuck me, and I thought it was common sense to not give kids access to unlimited funds.
Why are the parents typing in the password in the first place? Why does that iTunes account have a credit card linked to it? WHERE IS THE PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY IN ALL OF THIS?!
Oh, wait, if the parent can blame someone else, then they don't have to shoulder the shame of being a poor parent. Seems to be the way of the world these days.
With regard to Assange, read the court documents for this ruling (someone else in this story posts a link) - its very interesting.... basically, Assanges defence couldn't defend their way out of a wet, torn paper bag. Their key defence witnesses are found to have major flaws in their statements, the court even gets one of their major witnesses to essentially flip his position in court and agree that theres nothing wrong with the extradition request as it stands, even Assanges lawyer is found to have actively lied to the court on several occassions.
Also, try reading up on the actual allegations against Assange, they are different to those thrown about here on Slashdot.
That caching is very short - I know that Im typing my password in once or twice a day on my iPad! So why is the parent typing in their password constantly?
Stop trying to exonerate the parents from blame.
I base my opinion on much more than the rest of Slashdot seems to - I read the court papers for McKinnons extradition hearings and I have experience with Aspergers.
A crime was committed, McKinnon was identified and charged, and he deserves to stand trial for the given charges - the fact that he has aspergers has fuck all to do with it. If he can take part in a public panel at Infosecurity Europe 2006 and answer questions on his hack, then why in hell should he not face a court? Hes talked openly and freely about the hack, his motivations and details the reasons he got caught - sounds like hes perfectly capable of reasoning and judgement based decision making to me.
Extradition does not automatically equate to guilt - the following around McKinnon is to deny the American government a chance to put him in front of a court to face charges and nothing I have read or experienced says that he should be allowed to circumvent that.
Heh, reading the ruling makes for quite an amusing time :) The defence witness Brita Sundberg-Weitman seems to make quite a fool of her self in front of the court, admitting that much of what she is complaining about is either not in her expertise or is solely based on information supplied by the defence and no one else, as was the case with a second defence witness Sven-Eric Alhem who also agreed that under the same circumstances he would have also issued the extradition warrant request!
Theres loads of similar stuff in there - he never stood a chance.
Why stand against a valid request - just because the guy has aspergers doesn't mean he isn't fit to stand trial.
And the fact that hes become a Slashdot poster boy doesn't alter that either. The guy deserves to be extradited.
Yeah, I'm going to get modded down for this. So what.
Well, to do in-app purchases on the iPhone or iPad, you need to confirm your iTunes password - why do the kids have that? And if the apps are doing purchases directly (which is against Apples rules...) then they need to input card details - why do the kids have those?
Its not a straight "click here - oooh look we just debited your account a hundred bucks", there are already road blocks in place.
I think you know how it's different. Chances are that your parents directly supervised you when you bought your cards. Or if you were older and allowed to buy stuff by yourself you did so with an allowance. Either way there was direct control over how much you bought. And if you had raided their wallets to buy more they would almost certainly have noticed the missing money far more quickly. They might also notice the suspicious number of empty game wrappers & stacks of cards floating around the house. They might even have received a call from the local store or the school about the suspiciously about the number of cards you were purchasing. Aside from all that you as a kid bought your cards with hard cash, not smurfberries or some other ethereal point system designed to cause you to disassociate the worth of the item.
I still don't see how its different - kids are buying stuff marketed directly to them.
I do find it quite interesting that you bring up parental supervision and adult intervention, when that is precisely what is missing in the first place from the issues in this article - the parents are allowing it to happen. And thats still no different to my experiences in childhood...
No, my parents were not there when I bought my trading cards - yes I had an allowance beyond which it was impossible to go, but why is that not the case with these online games? As I said in my original post, which idiot is linking their credit card to their childs iTunes account and letting them go wild? How can that even be considered good parenting? And if you must link your card to their iTunes account, why are you not denying them the passwords?
No, there were no empty game wrappers to be seen - practically everyone I knew had the wrappers off and either on the floor or in the bin before they were out of the shop door because you wanted to see what cards you had. And again no, the shop keepers didn't care if you were buying $10 worth of cards in one go, or were coming back time and again. And yet again no, school teachers didn't care that kids were bringing in shoeboxes full of cards every day. It was all done very openly in the playground or wherever, and no one batted an eyelid.
My parents didn't care either that I had lots of cards, and that cards came and went. Never raised an eyebrow, even when my collection in one game came to well over 8,000 cards. But it wasn't an issue for me - I used my allowance and I did chores to earn those cards, I'm guessing the whole point of this story is that kids are resorting to stealing credit card details or money from their parents, or pushing their parents to top up their balances or what not. Again, more of a problem with the parenting than anything else.
Why isn't there direct control from the parent in this case? Wheres the parenting?!
The point is that all this human interaction and control needs to have as good a counterpart in the digital world. Parents need to be able to control kids spending and expect reasonable protections to be offered by the system. Responsible kid games and infrastructures should impose spending / credit hard limits as a failsafe and account holders should have tools to further limit spending and receive delivery notifications / reports of spending habits. All transactions should also be conducted in a real currency not "smurfberries" or whatever so the kid themselves has a handle on what they're spending.
There should already be an easy way to cap the amount a kid can spend - don't give them access to the funds. Problem solved - these games aren't going to extend kids credit to collect at a later date (they can't, it would be unenforceable), so where is the money coming from ultimately?
Its all coming back to the parents I think. And they need someone to blame other than themselves...
That said, apps that encourage kids to spend real money for shit like costumes etc. are treading on moral thin ice..
How is this any different than the collectable card series that were highly prevelent throughout my childhood - football, baseball, TMNT, Battlestar Galactica, and then on to the collectable card games like Spellfire, Magic etc etc. Not to mention the crap that came along with the interest in Warhammer 40K (what a scam! I occassionally pop into my local store to see what they are doing, and the prices are even more ludicrous today!) and the various AD&D packs.
Kids have been encouraged to buy tat for decades, this isn't new and it isn't any different than back in my youth.
Besides, what kind of a parent links a credit card to a childs iTunes account? Where are these kids getting $99 to spend on crap?
It's not a perfect phone, but it's a great pocket computer with phone capabilities.
There we have it - its not a perfect phone, but its a great pocket computer with phone capabilities. Which is all very well and good, for someone that wants a great pocket computer with phone capabilities instead of a great phone with computer capabilities...
I have laptops etc for my computer needs, I don't need a crippled computer in my pocket, and I don't expect to treat my phone as one. Its a phone, the fact that it might fulfil other needs better than other devices does not detract from the fact that I am after a phone first and foremost, with other capabilities as additional functionality. The N900 failed at that hurdle.
Perhaps thats why I got on with the iPhone so well, and like Android now - I couldn't give a shit about the "walled garden" aspect because to me its primarily a phone, which both the iPhone and Android do well. The added functionality of apps is a welcome bonus, but not the primary reason for having the thing in my pocket.
Obviously you're not fickle.
If fickle is trying out the N900 after 2 years of the iPhone, waiting 3 months to see if I liked the N900 before going back, and then moving to Android a further year on down the line is fickle, then yes I am fickle.
Otherwise, no I just disliked the N900 and found it incredibly shit to use. Sorry I don't like your little pet device, but thats how it goes.
Grow up and stop pretending that the general term "American" isn't used globally and in common parlance to refer to activities of, and bodies within, the United States of America. My statement stands true as written.
Yes, you can't sue the American government unless they say you can.
Having used both the N900 and several WP7 phones, I'd have to say that Microsoft is certainly not the kiss of death for Nokia but is more likely to be its saviour - the N900 was horrific to use. It was so bad that after three months i went back to my iPhone 3G (and recently I moved over to a HTC Desire, which I love).
Microsoft would still be on the hook for identifying those apps, linking the apps and dealing with source code requests. All extra work, all with the potential for cockups. They are just avoiding the entire issue.
The license specifically mentioned is the GPL, which if allowed would put the onus on Microsoft, as the distributor, to fulfill the requirements of the license even tho it was chosen by a developer. Microsoft is covering their own back here, nothing more imho - they could be up for some serious issues if they cocked up GPL compliance, so they are just not going there.
No its not your responsibility at all - but it is your responsibility to never try to gain access to an account you no longer have authorisation for (authorisation and ability to access are two different things, its good to have both to be in the clear).
Why are these people trying their old accounts? What legitimate reason could they have (beyond being rehired or working as a consultant for their old employer)? I quit a long term job over a year ago, I'm pretty sure some of the public facing accounts I had there would never have been shut down after I left (but all were disclosed to the other members in my team when I left), but Ive never tried to access them - I wouldn't dream of it, unless they asked me to do some work and confirmed I had authorisation to log back in.
They certainly can enforce it...
In an update they can provide a the exact signatures of all known official certificates issued with the old key - if the specific signature of the application you are loading is on that list, you are allowed to play. If its not, but it can be verified using the original master signing key, then you have a suspect application - since all official games go through Sony, its not going to be difficult for them to produce this list.
Of course, you can refuse to upgrade your PS3 firmware to allow this, at which point you lose the ability to join the PSN. Exactly what Sony have just said, basically.
What is up with the new commenting system? The article says there are 35 comments, the slider at the top of the page says there are 15 full, 0 abbreviated and 20 hidden - but the page only displays 4 comments. Wheres the rest of the "full" comments?!
Sort it out.
I certainly agree that Skys TV service is significantly better, but their tactics leave a lot to be desired.
In 2009 Virgin launched their own version of Sky One, called Virgin One. In 2010, Sky bought an owning share in Virgin One and renamed it Channel One. At the end of 2010, Sky discontinued Channel One, so once again we are left without a competitor to Sky One.
If I could get Sky without having to have a dish stuck to the side of the house, I would switch, but I cant.
Nope, if you ring the Virgin Media call center when signing up, you can get bumped up to their 100Mbit service for nothing extra. Thats roughly 10MB.
Not sure where you get that from, the Virgin V+ HD box is free (well, a once off £50 activation charge) for new customers, and as an existing customer I can get one for £70 including the activation charge.
Plus the "£34.50 per month" includes TV, phone (line rental and a fairly decent call package) and 10MB broadband.
Not saying that what Tivo are doing is acceptable (although they never promised eternal service in the UK, or did they? Since people are paying an annual service charge, I would guess not), but at least get stuff correct before ranting.
The mobile phone market is way larger than the "oooh shiney smart phone" crowd. Nokia are doing fine in the rest of the market.
Ferrari don't compete against Ford in all vehicle markets, and neither do Landrover. Nokia doesnt have to go toe to toe with Android or Apple, as long as there are people wanting just a phone - Nokia sell plenty of those a day.