Not completely unfair either as there are about 50 times more J2ME phones as there are Android powered devices:)
But what might be interesting to know is how often your QA department finds model-specific errors on J2ME and Android devices.
Android has pretty much played out the way that we feared: there is enough fragmentation among Android handsets to significantly restrict the freedom of software developers.
The notion that Android suffers from a huge fragmentation problem seems to be repeated everywhere, but I really don't understand where this is coming from. I've developed JME and Android applications and the amount of fragmentation on Android is mostly non-existent. Apart from some small number of device-specific bugs (that are fixed with phone updates) that won't affect most Android apps, cross-device development is a breeze. I remember JME development was way more troublesome, where model-specific versions were the rule instead of the exception.
Linux On The Desktop has been an unachieved goal for about a decade now and it seems it's stuck with unreliable drivers. Especially graphics- and wireless drivers are notoriously in this regard, where every version offers some new surprises regarding errors and lack of stability.
And even an open source driver doesn't guarantee quality. For at least a year now, drivers for Intel's graphics cards have been the source of a lot of problems on the desktop (see http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2009081702335OSHWKN). And I'm not even mentioning the various buggy ALSA drivers that have been a plague for linux desktop users in the past.
Taking these two observations, one can state that we cannot trust hardware companies nor kernel developers to produce quality and stable drivers. Both parties cannot and/or will not test against many possible hardware and software combinations. Kernel developers do not have the resources and I don't believe companies will invest a lot of effort as well (especially not for such a small market-share)
Microsoft seems to know about this problem and offers the WHQL driver-certification to ensure a certain driver quality. I don't know what qualifies for such a certification but I won't be surprised they have a huge amount of resources available for testing various (popular?) hardware and software combinations. But again, even Microsoft cannot cover nearly all the bases.
So what does that leave Desktop Linux? In my opinion, if it really wants to be better than Windows in terms of delivered quality and offer a smooth and stable environment, it needs to control the hardware offer as well. It's Apple's little public secret: the reason why their software is perceived to be so stable and seamless, is because you don't have to fiddle around with drivers. Plus, the OS guys can actually test the delivered system pretty thoroughly because of the limited variations in hardware.
The way I see it Canonical should have released a Ubuntu laptop bundled with hardware that is well-tested to work with the current available drivers. But also release their OS for use on other hardware, but without the guarantee that everything will work as good as on the offered hardware. They had a good shot at this with their Dell deal roughly one or two years ago but it seems they dropped the ball on that. Even the Dell guys made the remark that it was getting pretty difficult to find quality drivers for some components (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NTkxOA). From the outside it seems that Canonical only was interested in delivering the OS part and didn't really pay any attention to the complete product. The end result was a 'nice try', but riddled with problems regarding hibernation, wireless and dual-monitor support, not exactly trivial pieces of functionality on a laptop. I don't know if their current offerings are any better, but a bad first impression is pretty hard to make up for.
Is there any research as to why DLC's are bought more then the actual game? Is it because DLC's are harder to pirate, is it's delivery system preferred above physical discs or is it the low price that drives pirates to a buy? Or perhaps the lack of a decent demo-version?
My problem with some of these digital distribution systems is that the software that comes with it demands a premium place on my desktop. Steam is the worst offender of this, doing the automatically-startup-at-boot thing after install, automatically downloading all kinds of stuff without any notification (folks with a download-cap would really like that), displaying promotions and ads (sometimes even while I was playing a game, thus minimizing the game for some unwanted ad, yikes!).. Yes it can be deactivated but how should this kind of agressive treatment compell me to use it again? If a regular shopkeeper turns up at my doorstep every day just because I bought something from them I'd get pissed off pretty easily as well.
Impulse on the other hand was fairly civilized in that respect, no auto downloading, no popup ads.. but the deal maker for me was the option to buy, download and play the game immediately *and* receiving a physical copy of the game by mail a week or so later. Call me old fashioned or paranoid, but I like having an actual cd/dvd of a game without being tied to the distribution system du jour.
I completely agree with you, but I think the problem with the previous player's name isn't with the meaning of the word but with the usage of it. From what I can gather, people don't actually disagree with democracy as a system, but there is some negativity about connecting the system's name for other kinds of activities and purposes.
As was mentioned in another thread, the word 'freedom' has been (ab)used in this way as well. So if you'd called it 'freedom player', it will probably have the same effect as 'democracy player' did. It's not about people hating freedom, it's about the usage of a term that's been used a lot outside it's own context.
So that's why I suggested another word for democracy, as it's a bit tainted right now.
Although the issues raised with the Dutch voting machines appears to be very similar to the earlier reported Diebold problems, it has some differences.
For one, the actual voting machine is pretty huge, and to change anything to the machine's functions it has to be screwed open, after which a specific chip is to be replaced. That's a lot different from the Diebold issue in which, with little covert skills, you could actually change the machine's code while voting (because it's so easy).
The main issue raised in the documentary isn't really the machines themselves, but the relatively easy access to it outside the election. The makers of the documentary simply asked a city's government official for a machine and they got it. They could then change the machine's code by replacing a chip and send it back without anyone checking it's integrity. Furthermore, the machines are stored in a weakly secured location (no camera's, just a lock on a door). And barely any software-integrity check is made when the machine is put into function. So the machines can be compromised before any election without anyone knowing it.
So I would say that the design of the machine was pretty secure by itself, but the main problem seemed to lie in the process of checking machine integrity and secure storage. Still something in need of a fix, but as far as I know nowhere near the problems the Diebold machines are having.
The only game that asked me to turn off the disk drive after loading (?!), and never wanting to turn it on again was Yie-Ar Kung Fu! A primarily melee 2d fighter, where you could jump insanely high to get away from your opponent. Although it's not from epyx (Konami I think), I'd gladly give some wii points for it.
Altough Monsterz is a fun game, it doesn't actually use svg graphics. If you look at the game files, you'll see that the graphics are supplied in.png format. The graphics may have been created using vector based composition, ingame they're just regular pixels.
While we're on the topic, using SVG (or any other vector based graphics format) directly in a game could be unwise. Mainly because the strongly increased rendering power needed to nicely display the vectors (anti aliasing the edges for example) could ultimately slow down your game.. a lot.
Found it an interesting read, giving lots of examples on how usability should be approached and shows some good examples on how it can fail. It also introduces some techniques surrounding 'personas'. But for me, the most important thing the book did was triggering a certain way of thinking about usability, which I think is far more important than any technique a book can throw at you.
I had the same problem, but found a solution for it using vpn. The idea is to create a 'insecure' zone which only offers standard (64/128 bits) WEP encryption provided by a wireless router/accesspoint, and a 'secure zone' which can only be accessed through a vpn connection on that same wireless network. The vpn can be encrypted through IPSEC using a, for example, 2048 bits encryption.
Right now my main (wired network) router is an old pc running debian linux. I've connected my wireless router to a nic on the linux box, and setup the wireless router to operate as an access point (thus only providing access to the wirless network, leaving the actual routing to the linux box).
After installing openvpn on the linuxbox and fiddled with the firewall/routing rules, the insecure zone will only provide internetaccess to all adresses using UDP and a few adresses through TCP (needed to connect and play using Nintendo's WiFi service). The secure zone (accessed through the vpn connection) will get access to all udp and tcp addresses. This way, full featured network clients like laptops and desktops can install the openvpn client and use the internet with at least some decent security, while the DS can get access to its needed internetaddresses through the insecure zone.
Because Nintendo's Wifi Service uses direct UDP connections with other players, you cannot effectively prevent people who cracked your WEP code (and managed to get past the MAC address filter) to use your internet connection for UDP connections. But I doubt they'll bother cracking it just to play games on your connection:)
Since SP2 you simply cannot 'forget' to reboot, since the windows security update manager systray thingy keeps demanding a reboot every x minutes. And requesting input focus every time it does so, thus interrupting you from doing your work.
But how does a distribution like Ubuntu handle the restart/reboot problem then? Yeah it asks to install updates and sure, it doesn't require a reboot when patching non-kernel stuff. But when does the actual patch get applied? When the patched app gets restarted? When the library is reloaded? And how does it guarantee stability when an app was still running while patching, and starts to reload a recently patched library (which only works on the patched app version)?
Some of the trailers on the apple site adapt their size and quality to your quicktime plugin's bandwidth setting. Just set it to LAN and you'll get bigger and higher quality video.
By constantly harassing unexpecting visitors with numerous popups per page, fake OS interfaces, epilepticly blinking discobanners and after clicking treating them with even more annoyances, no wonder people are trying to avoid them.
That, and the fact that still a lot of ads badly placed (for example, selling morgages on a britney spears fanpage) no wonder no one clicks on them.
I do think ads can work in benefit of advertiser and visitor, but now most web users have grown such an aversion to them making ads more and more ineffective.
hacked by realloc?
on
SCO.com Defaced
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Anyone looked at what's begin written down in the background of the image?
from what you can read: h?cke? by rea??oc(
so.. hacked by realloc(
also notice the photoshop smear spots near the arms of the woman in the background.
Here's a (dutch:P) site about this thing, with more details
http://www.zdnet.nl/News.cfm?id=14504
The article says that LimeWire 2.0.2 and Grokster ask on installation if you want to install a certain 'service' or program called 'ClickTillUWin'. Whether or not you confirm or deny this request, it secretly DOES install it on your pc. This so-called online lottery game contains the trojan. If you go to clicktilUwin.com you'll see that there are possibly more programs 'infected' by this trojan (check the partners section).
What is basically does (according to the above article) is install a file called Dlder.exe. When you start the p2p program it came with, dlder.exe will automatically start too and download a second piece, called explorer.exe (and no, not the same one windows users normally have). This program then does some things to the windows registry and sends usernames and your ip adress to http://www.2001-007.com.
Symantec (the guys of Norton Antivirus) have called this thing a trojan horse and all of their antivirus applications will regognize it as one. The above article also states that other antiviruscompanies have also already updated their software (waiting for you to press the 'update button' that is:)
Slashdot Mirror
Not completely unfair either as there are about 50 times more J2ME phones as there are Android powered devices :)
But what might be interesting to know is how often your QA department finds model-specific errors on J2ME and Android devices.
Well, that's true for all software that runs on a multitude of hardware.
Android has pretty much played out the way that we feared: there is enough fragmentation among Android handsets to significantly restrict the freedom of software developers.
The notion that Android suffers from a huge fragmentation problem seems to be repeated everywhere, but I really don't understand where this is coming from. I've developed JME and Android applications and the amount of fragmentation on Android is mostly non-existent. Apart from some small number of device-specific bugs (that are fixed with phone updates) that won't affect most Android apps, cross-device development is a breeze. I remember JME development was way more troublesome, where model-specific versions were the rule instead of the exception.
Linux On The Desktop has been an unachieved goal for about a decade now and it seems it's stuck with unreliable drivers. Especially graphics- and wireless drivers are notoriously in this regard, where every version offers some new surprises regarding errors and lack of stability.
However, having a stable ABI won't be the magic solution to this. A lot (if not most) of the problems encountered on one platform with a stable ABI (Windows) seem to be related to buggy drivers. A more recent example: http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2008/03/vista-capable-lawsuit-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers.ars
And even an open source driver doesn't guarantee quality. For at least a year now, drivers for Intel's graphics cards have been the source of a lot of problems on the desktop (see http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2009081702335OSHWKN). And I'm not even mentioning the various buggy ALSA drivers that have been a plague for linux desktop users in the past.
Taking these two observations, one can state that we cannot trust hardware companies nor kernel developers to produce quality and stable drivers. Both parties cannot and/or will not test against many possible hardware and software combinations. Kernel developers do not have the resources and I don't believe companies will invest a lot of effort as well (especially not for such a small market-share)
Microsoft seems to know about this problem and offers the WHQL driver-certification to ensure a certain driver quality. I don't know what qualifies for such a certification but I won't be surprised they have a huge amount of resources available for testing various (popular?) hardware and software combinations. But again, even Microsoft cannot cover nearly all the bases.
So what does that leave Desktop Linux? In my opinion, if it really wants to be better than Windows in terms of delivered quality and offer a smooth and stable environment, it needs to control the hardware offer as well. It's Apple's little public secret: the reason why their software is perceived to be so stable and seamless, is because you don't have to fiddle around with drivers. Plus, the OS guys can actually test the delivered system pretty thoroughly because of the limited variations in hardware.
The way I see it Canonical should have released a Ubuntu laptop bundled with hardware that is well-tested to work with the current available drivers. But also release their OS for use on other hardware, but without the guarantee that everything will work as good as on the offered hardware. They had a good shot at this with their Dell deal roughly one or two years ago but it seems they dropped the ball on that. Even the Dell guys made the remark that it was getting pretty difficult to find quality drivers for some components (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NTkxOA). From the outside it seems that Canonical only was interested in delivering the OS part and didn't really pay any attention to the complete product. The end result was a 'nice try', but riddled with problems regarding hibernation, wireless and dual-monitor support, not exactly trivial pieces of functionality on a laptop. I don't know if their current offerings are any better, but a bad first impression is pretty hard to make up for.
Is there any research as to why DLC's are bought more then the actual game? Is it because DLC's are harder to pirate, is it's delivery system preferred above physical discs or is it the low price that drives pirates to a buy? Or perhaps the lack of a decent demo-version?
My problem with some of these digital distribution systems is that the software that comes with it demands a premium place on my desktop. Steam is the worst offender of this, doing the automatically-startup-at-boot thing after install, automatically downloading all kinds of stuff without any notification (folks with a download-cap would really like that), displaying promotions and ads (sometimes even while I was playing a game, thus minimizing the game for some unwanted ad, yikes!).. Yes it can be deactivated but how should this kind of agressive treatment compell me to use it again? If a regular shopkeeper turns up at my doorstep every day just because I bought something from them I'd get pissed off pretty easily as well.
Impulse on the other hand was fairly civilized in that respect, no auto downloading, no popup ads.. but the deal maker for me was the option to buy, download and play the game immediately *and* receiving a physical copy of the game by mail a week or so later. Call me old fashioned or paranoid, but I like having an actual cd/dvd of a game without being tied to the distribution system du jour.
When dealing with cheap (or open!) cheese, you may assume worse...
I completely agree with you, but I think the problem with the previous player's name isn't with the meaning of the word but with the usage of it. From what I can gather, people don't actually disagree with democracy as a system, but there is some negativity about connecting the system's name for other kinds of activities and purposes. As was mentioned in another thread, the word 'freedom' has been (ab)used in this way as well. So if you'd called it 'freedom player', it will probably have the same effect as 'democracy player' did. It's not about people hating freedom, it's about the usage of a term that's been used a lot outside it's own context. So that's why I suggested another word for democracy, as it's a bit tainted right now.
Relax. It's just the word that's getting bad publicity, not the idea itself. Like the mediaplayer, names of government systems can be changed easily.
But the question is.. what name should we give it?
Although the issues raised with the Dutch voting machines appears to be very similar to the earlier reported Diebold problems, it has some differences.
For one, the actual voting machine is pretty huge, and to change anything to the machine's functions it has to be screwed open, after which a specific chip is to be replaced. That's a lot different from the Diebold issue in which, with little covert skills, you could actually change the machine's code while voting (because it's so easy).
The main issue raised in the documentary isn't really the machines themselves, but the relatively easy access to it outside the election. The makers of the documentary simply asked a city's government official for a machine and they got it. They could then change the machine's code by replacing a chip and send it back without anyone checking it's integrity. Furthermore, the machines are stored in a weakly secured location (no camera's, just a lock on a door). And barely any software-integrity check is made when the machine is put into function. So the machines can be compromised before any election without anyone knowing it.
So I would say that the design of the machine was pretty secure by itself, but the main problem seemed to lie in the process of checking machine integrity and secure storage. Still something in need of a fix, but as far as I know nowhere near the problems the Diebold machines are having.
The only game that asked me to turn off the disk drive after loading (?!), and never wanting to turn it on again was Yie-Ar Kung Fu! A primarily melee 2d fighter, where you could jump insanely high to get away from your opponent. Although it's not from epyx (Konami I think), I'd gladly give some wii points for it.
Altough Monsterz is a fun game, it doesn't actually use svg graphics. If you look at the game files, you'll see that the graphics are supplied in .png format. The graphics may have been created using vector based composition, ingame they're just regular pixels.
While we're on the topic, using SVG (or any other vector based graphics format) directly in a game could be unwise. Mainly because the strongly increased rendering power needed to nicely display the vectors (anti aliasing the edges for example) could ultimately slow down your game.. a lot.
I've recently read ' The inmates are running the asylum: Why high tech products drive us crazy and how to restore the sanity'
Found it an interesting read, giving lots of examples on how usability should be approached and shows some good examples on how it can fail. It also introduces some techniques surrounding 'personas'. But for me, the most important thing the book did was triggering a certain way of thinking about usability, which I think is far more important than any technique a book can throw at you.
Yes one might assume that, weren't it for the total lack of PONIES!11LOLOLOL!
I had the same problem, but found a solution for it using vpn. The idea is to create a 'insecure' zone which only offers standard (64/128 bits) WEP encryption provided by a wireless router/accesspoint, and a 'secure zone' which can only be accessed through a vpn connection on that same wireless network. The vpn can be encrypted through IPSEC using a, for example, 2048 bits encryption.
:)
Right now my main (wired network) router is an old pc running debian linux. I've connected my wireless router to a nic on the linux box, and setup the wireless router to operate as an access point (thus only providing access to the wirless network, leaving the actual routing to the linux box).
After installing openvpn on the linuxbox and fiddled with the firewall/routing rules, the insecure zone will only provide internetaccess to all adresses using UDP and a few adresses through TCP (needed to connect and play using Nintendo's WiFi service). The secure zone (accessed through the vpn connection) will get access to all udp and tcp addresses. This way, full featured network clients like laptops and desktops can install the openvpn client and use the internet with at least some decent security, while the DS can get access to its needed internetaddresses through the insecure zone.
Because Nintendo's Wifi Service uses direct UDP connections with other players, you cannot effectively prevent people who cracked your WEP code (and managed to get past the MAC address filter) to use your internet connection for UDP connections. But I doubt they'll bother cracking it just to play games on your connection
Since SP2 you simply cannot 'forget' to reboot, since the windows security update manager systray thingy keeps demanding a reboot every x minutes. And requesting input focus every time it does so, thus interrupting you from doing your work.
But how does a distribution like Ubuntu handle the restart/reboot problem then? Yeah it asks to install updates and sure, it doesn't require a reboot when patching non-kernel stuff. But when does the actual patch get applied? When the patched app gets restarted? When the library is reloaded? And how does it guarantee stability when an app was still running while patching, and starts to reload a recently patched library (which only works on the patched app version)?
Could this be the infamous missing link?
steals from the rich, donates to the poor
Some of the trailers on the apple site adapt their size and quality to your quicktime plugin's bandwidth setting. Just set it to LAN and you'll get bigger and higher quality video.
By constantly harassing unexpecting visitors with numerous popups per page, fake OS interfaces, epilepticly blinking discobanners and after clicking treating them with even more annoyances, no wonder people are trying to avoid them.
That, and the fact that still a lot of ads badly placed (for example, selling morgages on a britney spears fanpage) no wonder no one clicks on them.
I do think ads can work in benefit of advertiser and visitor, but now most web users have grown such an aversion to them making ads more and more ineffective.
Anyone looked at what's begin written down in the background of the image? from what you can read: h?cke? by rea??oc( so.. hacked by realloc( also notice the photoshop smear spots near the arms of the woman in the background.
Their site holds a (fairly useless) flash animation. And you probably don't have flash installed.
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc /data/w32.dlder.html
:)
For a desribement of the trojan in grammatical correct english
Here's a (dutch :P) site about this thing, with more details
http://www.zdnet.nl/News.cfm?id=14504
The article says that LimeWire 2.0.2 and Grokster ask on installation if you want to install a certain 'service' or program called 'ClickTillUWin'. Whether or not you confirm or deny this request, it secretly DOES install it on your pc. This so-called online lottery game contains the trojan. If you go to clicktilUwin.com you'll see that there are possibly more programs 'infected' by this trojan (check the partners section).
What is basically does (according to the above article) is install a file called Dlder.exe. When you start the p2p program it came with, dlder.exe will automatically start too and download a second piece, called explorer.exe (and no, not the same one windows users normally have). This program then does some things to the windows registry and sends usernames and your ip adress to http://www.2001-007.com.
Symantec (the guys of Norton Antivirus) have called this thing a trojan horse and all of their antivirus applications will regognize it as one. The above article also states that other antiviruscompanies have also already updated their software (waiting for you to press the 'update button' that is :)
It really sounds like an april-fools joke (and I really wish it is!)
F FX 0ADFPLOC.html
http://www.theage.com.au/news/state/2001/07/02/
Looks like we've devolved to a state where we can't even make wheels anymore.
Does someone already have a patent for breathing?