MyOpenID.com has two factor, and has had it for a while now.
But all this "single point of failure" stuff is crap, isn't it? Most people (probably not/. readers) have the same damn password for everything. If one of their accounts is cracked - how is that safer than OpenID? In fact, OpenID would probably be a lot safer if it was two factor in that scenario.
In short, OpenID is about the real world, which makes a refreshing change from the years and years of stupid "security" systems that end up forcing people to put passwords on sticky notes on their monitors.
Incremental change is all fine and dandy, but it can still end up as a pile of crap unless the whole team understands what the "vision" is.
Faced with a billion emails from customers all suggesting different and often conflicting things, people on the team with their own hobby horses and pet projects, and countless other influences along the way, you need to ask "Why? How does this help us become a ?"
I've lost count of the number of non-querty input devices and methods I've seen, but none of them have made a dent in usage of the querty keyboard. I suspect this is mainly down to the fact that people just don't want to learn a new system. These guys try to side-step that by saying the glove is for situations in which you can't use a keyboard, but really - is there anything wrong with voice control in most adverse situations? I suppose maybe combat or physical disability, but hmm.
How can you say it was or wasn't when there is only one one significant OS vendor?
"Being the dominant gaming platform hasn't been a flop"
It's a gaming platform. Whether it's dominant is another matter - references please.
"Developers going en masse to DirectX over OpenGL hasn't been a flop."
Hooray! One thing! One! Never mind that nobody outside the development community cares, it's one thing that MS has done well, I tell ya!
Oh, no, wait. MS didn't support OpenGL very well, so if developers wanted to get their stuff on the only OS in town.... I think you know where that's going.
When will people understand? Microsoft is a M-O-N-O-P-O-L-Y.
Microsoft have no strategic reason to make Windows wonderful. Some people at MSFT might *want* to, but frankly, they're deluding themselves. Their entire business is structured to prevent innovation. They just need to make sure the hoards of corporate clients keep upgrading. With no real competition, the hoards always will of course, provided the sales guys dangle a couple of half-decent ideas in their faces, and threaten the end-of-life thing of course (that's called "choice" in IT circles).
Anyone who thinks I'm wrong - look at what MSFT have achieved in the last 10 years. Is there anything - anything at all - that has not been either a flop or just a blatant me-too play?
The first rule of critical thinking about Microsoft and operating systems is to recall that they are a monopoly. This means they have zero need, desire, and (now that Bill has officially gone) ability to innovate. As long as those legions of faceless IT managers all over the world argue successfully for the upgrade licences, M$ is immune from having to make any good or original ideas.
Yes, there's Linux, yes there's Apple, but M$ have lost the ability to care about competition.
If, as seems likely, the ISPs, supported by governments and organitions like the RIAA, strangle the net as we known it - what can we do?
I have a mesh router, and so do a couple of my neighbours. We have them on our roofs. We share our iTunes libraries and other stuff over them. They're fast - very fast. Of course, we're reliant on our ISPs for email and WAN access, but if *enough* people did what we were doing, what could happen? A cultural shift would certainly be needed, but if we could re-create the freedoms we currently enjoy on the ISP-controlled fixed-line internet... could that be the light at the end of this tunnel?
YouTube videos would seem to be entirely consistent with the English constitution, according to Bagehot:
"The fancy of the mass of men is incredibly weak; it can see nothing without a visible symbol, and there is much that it can scarcely make out with a symbol. Nobility is the symbol of mind. It has the marks from which the mass of men always used to infer mind, and often still infer it. A common clever man who goes into a country place will get no reverence; but the 'old squire' will get reverence. Even after he is insolvent, when every one knows that his ruin is but a question of time, he will get five times as much respect from the common peasantry as the newly-made rich man who sits beside him. The common peasantry will listen to his nonsense more submissively than to the new man's sense. An old lord will get infinite respect. His very existence is so far useful that it awakens the sensation of obedience to a sort of mind - the coarse dull, contracted multitude, who could neither appreciate or perceive any other."
What is the difference between China and Microsoft? One is prolific in making faithful copies of everything that's sucessful, or even just interesting. The other is a nation with 5,000 years of history. They both have about the same R&D budget though.
Seriously - I wonder if this is the start of a real strategy shift for MS overall? One thing that's totally mystified me over the last few years is why they think that simply copying everything and anyone is a "stategy" at all. I mean, if I was working there I'd be utterly demoralised: the Zune, Silverlight, Book Search, Live.com... is there not ONE thing that MS does that is unique, or even remotely innovative? Where do all the R&D billions go?
To say that the study is not conclusive until enough time has passed for users to get acclimated is irrelevant. The test was on today's users using today's technology so we know what's happening now, not at some undefined point in the future. I'm sure in 100 years time we'll all be experts at programming our video recorders too - but that's hardly useful information.
I'm not sure what 'indiscriminate criticism' is either, but if it's random negative critical statements, then the blog post isn't it. And yes, of course I agree that a publicly-funded institution should not be allowed to criticise anyone with no grounds for the complaint - but then nor should any institution, or person, if they do so in public, but that's completely irrelevant to what we're talking about here.
Is anyone else flabbergasted by the BPI chief's statement that "allowing indiscriminate criticism of the RIAA is inappropriate for a Government funded institution"?
Surely in terms of editorial integrity at least, it should be case that it would be wholly appropriate - if not actually desirable - to criticise a private company if you are being funded by the government?
Paul Birch of Revolver Records is probably not alone in seeing the government as being simply a tool of corporate influence. This just shows how bad things have got - that people like him now need to make no secret of the fact that they expect governments to work exclusively for commercial interests. I mean, we know that the military industrial complex is now one and the same as democratically elected government in the West, but to flaunt is like this is just staggering I think.
how exactly would having anti-virus or anti-spyware stop things
Well said! The notion that desktop computing in the Internet age would be problem-free if only everyone installed anti-malware software is completely bogus and doesn't even stand up to the slightest scrutiny. Everyone and is dog runs anti-malware (you can't buy a new PC without the stupid stuff literally flying out of the screen at you the minute you boot it up), and everyone and his dog is hideously infested with malware. Talk about brain-dead commentary!
From TFA: "He said sites peppered with personalisation tools were in danger of resembling the "glossy but useless" sites at the height of the dotcom boom."
Eh? Since when was personalisation a feature of Web 2.0? Surely that's a feature of the bad old days of Broadvision and all that crap. I can't think of any recent sites that focus on personalisation. In fact quite the opposite: it's all about being part of the crowd.
"Shill bidding isn't illegal, its just against ebay's terms and conditions."
I know it's completely unreasonable to ask you to RTFA on/. but if you HAD read the article, you'd have also read the words "shill bidding... is illegal under the 2006 Fraud Act."
This is part of the reason The Sunday Times reported on this in the first place.
> "Nearly all of the major, visible new features in Vista are already > available in Apple's operating system"...
But surely it's even worse than that? Can you point to a single thing that Vista lets you do - as an average Joe six-pack - that even Windows 98 does not let you do? Indeed going further, is there anything you can do with Vista that would even be easier to do than with Windows 98?
In 100 years time, people will look at us and think "Life must have been soooo crap under that monopoly." And they'll be dead right. It IS crap.
From what I can tell of almost everything the WIPO has done to date, it's a classic case of an organisation simply doing stuff because it has a remit to do it, rather than out of any need to do it or even an understating of why it should. This latest move is typical. Internet + content + intellectual property = something WIPO should gwt involved with. But why? Might it be better simply to stand aside and do nothing? We'll never know, because the boys and girls at WIPO are paid to do a job - and by gum they'll do it. Regardless.
"I dont know if you've ever tried, but using a GPS in a city can be *very* difficult, even impossible."
I've not encountered that problem in London, and judging by the number of satnav screen I see glowing away in cabs and delivery vans, neither does anyone else.
One side effect of London cabbies having to do "The Knowledge" to get a license is that it creates a market for cheap, illegal cab drivers to fill the supply gap brough about by having such an exclusive system. With hoards of unlicensed cabbies around, women get raped, uninsured road accidents happen, tourists get ripped off and legitimate cab fares are sky high.
I am a Londoner, and I think the sooner the GPS makes The Knowledge a prerequisite of licenced cab driving irrelevant, the better. The times I've been to NYC and got a cab it's been paradise in comparison.
Can anyone suggest a single thing that Microsoft has done in the last few years that could be described (loosely) as innovative from the point of view of the end users of their products? By that I would exclude things like the.NET platform, which Joe Sixpack knows nothing about.
Is it Clippy? Might it be the Strip in the new Office? It surely is not Book Search, the Zune or IE7... I'm really struggling here, yet they are one of the largest corporations on earth. Something is seriously wrong with Microsoft.
There exists a team of network administrators here who spend all day adding sites to the block list and watching browsing habits 24-hours-a-day for additional sites to block. (The Psiphon web site is already inaccessible to me. Slashdot's story submission entitled "Gingrich says Free Speech Forfeit" is blocked, yet the remainder of Slashdot is not.)
"O beautiful for pilgrims feet, Whose stern impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness! America ! America ! God shed his grace on thee"
PFFFT! NOT ANY MORE - WELCOME TO THE 21st CENTURY.
One of, if not the most, saddest posts on Slashdot today.
Slashdot Mirror
MyOpenID.com has two factor, and has had it for a while now.
But all this "single point of failure" stuff is crap, isn't it? Most people (probably not /. readers) have the same damn password for everything. If one of their accounts is cracked - how is that safer than OpenID? In fact, OpenID would probably be a lot safer if it was two factor in that scenario.
In short, OpenID is about the real world, which makes a refreshing change from the years and years of stupid "security" systems that end up forcing people to put passwords on sticky notes on their monitors.
No. Once you have your MySpace account, you can then use that to log in to any site that supports OpenID. That is the point of OpenID.
Your question does illustrate a problem with OpenID though: many people find it hard to understand. It's not obvious.
Incremental change is all fine and dandy, but it can still end up as a pile of crap unless the whole team understands what the "vision" is.
Faced with a billion emails from customers all suggesting different and often conflicting things, people on the team with their own hobby horses and pet projects, and countless other influences along the way, you need to ask "Why? How does this help us become a ?"
I've lost count of the number of non-querty input devices and methods I've seen, but none of them have made a dent in usage of the querty keyboard. I suspect this is mainly down to the fact that people just don't want to learn a new system. These guys try to side-step that by saying the glove is for situations in which you can't use a keyboard, but really - is there anything wrong with voice control in most adverse situations? I suppose maybe combat or physical disability, but hmm.
"XP wasn't a flop"
How can you say it was or wasn't when there is only one one significant OS vendor?
"Being the dominant gaming platform hasn't been a flop"
It's a gaming platform. Whether it's dominant is another matter - references please.
"Developers going en masse to DirectX over OpenGL hasn't been a flop."
Hooray! One thing! One! Never mind that nobody outside the development community cares, it's one thing that MS has done well, I tell ya!
Oh, no, wait. MS didn't support OpenGL very well, so if developers wanted to get their stuff on the only OS in town.... I think you know where that's going.
When will people understand? Microsoft is a M-O-N-O-P-O-L-Y.
Microsoft have no strategic reason to make Windows wonderful. Some people at MSFT might *want* to, but frankly, they're deluding themselves. Their entire business is structured to prevent innovation. They just need to make sure the hoards of corporate clients keep upgrading. With no real competition, the hoards always will of course, provided the sales guys dangle a couple of half-decent ideas in their faces, and threaten the end-of-life thing of course (that's called "choice" in IT circles).
Anyone who thinks I'm wrong - look at what MSFT have achieved in the last 10 years. Is there anything - anything at all - that has not been either a flop or just a blatant me-too play?
The first rule of critical thinking about Microsoft and operating systems is to recall that they are a monopoly. This means they have zero need, desire, and (now that Bill has officially gone) ability to innovate. As long as those legions of faceless IT managers all over the world argue successfully for the upgrade licences, M$ is immune from having to make any good or original ideas.
Yes, there's Linux, yes there's Apple, but M$ have lost the ability to care about competition.
If, as seems likely, the ISPs, supported by governments and organitions like the RIAA, strangle the net as we known it - what can we do?
I have a mesh router, and so do a couple of my neighbours. We have them on our roofs. We share our iTunes libraries and other stuff over them. They're fast - very fast. Of course, we're reliant on our ISPs for email and WAN access, but if *enough* people did what we were doing, what could happen? A cultural shift would certainly be needed, but if we could re-create the freedoms we currently enjoy on the ISP-controlled fixed-line internet ... could that be the light at the end of this tunnel?
YouTube videos would seem to be entirely consistent with the English constitution, according to Bagehot:
"The fancy of the mass of men is incredibly weak; it can see nothing without a visible symbol, and there is much that it can scarcely make out with a symbol. Nobility is the symbol of mind. It has the marks from which the mass of men always used to infer mind, and often still infer it. A common clever man who goes into a country place will get no reverence; but the 'old squire' will get reverence. Even after he is insolvent, when every one knows that his ruin is but a question of time, he will get five times as much respect from the common peasantry as the newly-made rich man who sits beside him. The common peasantry will listen to his nonsense more submissively than to the new man's sense. An old lord will get infinite respect. His very existence is so far useful that it awakens the sensation of obedience to a sort of mind - the coarse dull, contracted multitude, who could neither appreciate or perceive any other."
What is the difference between China and Microsoft? One is prolific in making faithful copies of everything that's sucessful, or even just interesting. The other is a nation with 5,000 years of history. They both have about the same R&D budget though.
Seriously - I wonder if this is the start of a real strategy shift for MS overall? One thing that's totally mystified me over the last few years is why they think that simply copying everything and anyone is a "stategy" at all. I mean, if I was working there I'd be utterly demoralised: the Zune, Silverlight, Book Search, Live.com... is there not ONE thing that MS does that is unique, or even remotely innovative? Where do all the R&D billions go?
" it deosn't mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are"
Actually, the study showed that as long as the first and last letters of the words are in the correct places, the others can be randomly placed.
To say that the study is not conclusive until enough time has passed for users to get acclimated is irrelevant. The test was on today's users using today's technology so we know what's happening now, not at some undefined point in the future. I'm sure in 100 years time we'll all be experts at programming our video recorders too - but that's hardly useful information.
Also, some people have mentioned the small sample size. In usability testing, this is not necessarily a problem. See: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html and http://www.measuringusability.com/sample.htm
I'm not defending the study, I'm just pointing out that there's more to such research than you might assume.
I'm not sure what 'indiscriminate criticism' is either, but if it's random negative critical statements, then the blog post isn't it. And yes, of course I agree that a publicly-funded institution should not be allowed to criticise anyone with no grounds for the complaint - but then nor should any institution, or person, if they do so in public, but that's completely irrelevant to what we're talking about here.
Surely in terms of editorial integrity at least, it should be case that it would be wholly appropriate - if not actually desirable - to criticise a private company if you are being funded by the government?
Paul Birch of Revolver Records is probably not alone in seeing the government as being simply a tool of corporate influence. This just shows how bad things have got - that people like him now need to make no secret of the fact that they expect governments to work exclusively for commercial interests. I mean, we know that the military industrial complex is now one and the same as democratically elected government in the West, but to flaunt is like this is just staggering I think.
how exactly would having anti-virus or anti-spyware stop things
Well said! The notion that desktop computing in the Internet age would be problem-free if only everyone installed anti-malware software is completely bogus and doesn't even stand up to the slightest scrutiny. Everyone and is dog runs anti-malware (you can't buy a new PC without the stupid stuff literally flying out of the screen at you the minute you boot it up), and everyone and his dog is hideously infested with malware. Talk about brain-dead commentary!
From TFA: "He said sites peppered with personalisation tools were in danger of resembling the "glossy but useless" sites at the height of the dotcom boom."
Eh? Since when was personalisation a feature of Web 2.0? Surely that's a feature of the bad old days of Broadvision and all that crap. I can't think of any recent sites that focus on personalisation. In fact quite the opposite: it's all about being part of the crowd.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596 007655/findability-20/
This book has been shaking things up a bit in some circles in the same way as The Tipping Point did.
And Stirling's quoted on the book's blurb. Bit of a giveaway.
"Shill bidding isn't illegal, its just against ebay's terms and conditions."
/. but if you HAD read the article, you'd have also read the words "shill bidding ... is illegal under the 2006 Fraud Act."
/.
I know it's completely unreasonable to ask you to RTFA on
This is part of the reason The Sunday Times reported on this in the first place.
Don't worry, you're not an idiot - you're on
> "Nearly all of the major, visible new features in Vista are already
> available in Apple's operating system"...
But surely it's even worse than that? Can you point to a single thing that Vista lets you do - as an average Joe six-pack - that even Windows 98 does not let you do? Indeed going further, is there anything you can do with Vista that would even be easier to do than with Windows 98?
In 100 years time, people will look at us and think "Life must have been soooo crap under that monopoly." And they'll be dead right. It IS crap.
From what I can tell of almost everything the WIPO has done to date, it's a classic case of an organisation simply doing stuff because it has a remit to do it, rather than out of any need to do it or even an understating of why it should. This latest move is typical. Internet + content + intellectual property = something WIPO should gwt involved with. But why? Might it be better simply to stand aside and do nothing? We'll never know, because the boys and girls at WIPO are paid to do a job - and by gum they'll do it. Regardless.
"I dont know if you've ever tried, but using a GPS in a city can be *very* difficult, even impossible."
I've not encountered that problem in London, and judging by the number of satnav screen I see glowing away in cabs and delivery vans, neither does anyone else.
Is this an American problem?
One side effect of London cabbies having to do "The Knowledge" to get a license is that it creates a market for cheap, illegal cab drivers to fill the supply gap brough about by having such an exclusive system. With hoards of unlicensed cabbies around, women get raped, uninsured road accidents happen, tourists get ripped off and legitimate cab fares are sky high.
I am a Londoner, and I think the sooner the GPS makes The Knowledge a prerequisite of licenced cab driving irrelevant, the better. The times I've been to NYC and got a cab it's been paradise in comparison.
Gilgongo!
(Look it up - although I admit it's not a very funny joke.)
Can anyone suggest a single thing that Microsoft has done in the last few years that could be described (loosely) as innovative from the point of view of the end users of their products? By that I would exclude things like the .NET platform, which Joe Sixpack knows nothing about.
Is it Clippy? Might it be the Strip in the new Office? It surely is not Book Search, the Zune or IE7... I'm really struggling here, yet they are one of the largest corporations on earth. Something is seriously wrong with Microsoft.
There exists a team of network administrators here who spend all day adding sites to the block list and watching browsing habits 24-hours-a-day for additional sites to block. (The Psiphon web site is already inaccessible to me. Slashdot's story submission entitled "Gingrich says Free Speech Forfeit" is blocked, yet the remainder of Slashdot is not.)
"O beautiful for pilgrims feet,
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America ! America !
God shed his grace on thee"
PFFFT! NOT ANY MORE - WELCOME TO THE 21st CENTURY.
One of, if not the most, saddest posts on Slashdot today.