I think if I get it within 2 or three millimeters of the reader it will work.
The distance to read a card is a function of the reader which provides the wireless power signal much more than it's a function of the card you're using. So your work reader is configured to be lower power and have your familiar slap the wallet functionality, while anyone wanting to read your card buys a different reader that works fine from several feet away (or more, but it just gets noisy when you activate 100 cards at once).
I know a guy in Atlanta that's been working on doing exactly this with a Makerbot. And all that stuff is open source, from mechanical plans to software.
I won't argue that 40 isn't a lot of bits. But frequently bits are used for different purposes than part of addressing memory locations. Especially in the microcontroller world.
The author pretty much tells us why we can believe this patent troll is working for Broadcom. These are probably real patents then. But they're using troll tactics to keep them out of a bigger more expensive fight. Pretty nasty.
Hey, engineering in general is a profession. Bridges and skyscrapers get built. And if the engineers mess up people can die. And there's liability for flaws.
Should all software hold to this standard? No. I didn't involve a civil engineer building a clubhouse as a kid. But there are places where correctness does matter and is worth the extra discipline and professionalism.
Remember to subtract the number of people that won't buy Fable 3 for full price if they can't sell it and get half their money back. Fable 1 was a cool game, but not replayable, and not worth $50-60.
What's up with that? There's no reason for it. There's so many kinds of coffee, from single origin, to exact roasting times, to flavored. And then there's decaf. Plain old decaf. I'm trying to cut down my caffeine intake, but it's hard.
I've seen fake iPhones that look less like iPhones than that Galazy i9000 in the picture. I was ready to jump on the Slashdot bandwagon and complain about patents and trade dress. But that looks like an iPhone knock off. And seeing that there are competing phones that don't look like an iPhone, I think Apple has a case here.
I agree, though we're at a place where the Good has been the enemy of the Great. People that understand cookies install and use Adblock correctly. And that solves the problem for everyone that can develop a better solution.
While most internet users and shoppers don't know about cookies and couldn't be bothered to learn how to use Adblock (it's hard to figure out just what to allow). But they can be creeped out when they find out they've been "tracked." Or rather that they've unintentionally been telling ad networks about every site they visit.
Technically speaking, a cookie is NOT something a website attaches to you to track you. They do generate the data, but you voluntarily send it back to them whenever you're on the site.
1. You request data from a website. 2. The website says you should go find an ad to display in the corner of the page. 3. You request ad form ad site, saying, "Hi, we've met before, I'm John Doe. You remember me, right? You do? Hooray!"
The current technology doesn't track you so much as your browser reminds everyone who you are. A do not track list is moronic unless the technology shifts.
Problem is there's not yet a good way for your average user to manage what sites he does this for and what sites don't get such friendly treatment. There's no reason for the default to be so open with ad networks, because that's just creepy. You don't go around offering all your info to everybody on the street trying to sell you stuff.
I know that politically motivated wiki pages shouldn't be cited because of bias, but what about stuff that is standard knowledge?
Because you're having trouble choosing what's politically motivated and what's not. The DSM-IV-TR is one of the most politically motivated, committee written books ever put together. That's the content of the reference manual, outside discussions can be even more biased.
Want to know what's political? The DSM-III had "Sexual Orientation Disturbance." That's diagnosing homosexuality as a mental disorder. Try doing that without getting into politics, civil rights, and religion.
Thank You! I was worried it was only me that noticed that. What's funny is that the op is such a PERFECT example of the idea the article is pushing.
What's so fun about this is that to be such a good example requires that he not know just how good an example he is! Amazing, really. And yet, it's just happened right here.
about a month ago, while going through the motions of updating java one day (clicking on all those security warnings, running the little interface), i thought: to hack a system, why not just copy this stupid little interface and have the user gleefully click through all of the little security warnings?
Because by the time you've overwritten the updater software and you're displaying a UI you're already running code on the system. A prerequisite to your idea is that the system already be hacked. So no, it can't help you hack a system.
Basically, a virus will not let you know what it's doing. And your autoupdate services are either already running malicious code or they won't go out and download bad stuff. You're perfectly safe going through dialogs and letting Java update itself.
Because, instead of registering yourself to run by using the registry, you're substituting your payload for a program already set to run. It makes less noise and requires actually scanning the running processes instead of scanning the Windows registry and filenames of running processes. It's also easier for new virus writers to do.
And to contradict this entire thread: GP is missing the point, too. The malware isn't looking for further user interaction. Just a hook on startup to get going and doing its thing.
Wondering why this is news and what's really new about this? Well, it's not. It's all old stuff. A security researcher quoted in the article says as much.
Someone who sells a game will gain more money. But there's no telling if they will spend it on a game, hoping from the same publisher in your case, or a cheeseburger. No money is directly handed back to the publisher.
It's not necessary for the game seller, Person A in my story, to use the money to buy another game. He bought the first game knowing that he'd be able to sell it. This lowered both his perceived and real cost of the game at the time of his purchase, possibly to a point lower than his perceived utility enabling the original purchase to occur.
By your logic the publishers make money off of pirates because they raised the price of their game to account for the pirates. (And no, lets not get into whether or not a pirate would pay for it because that's a whole 'nother ball game.)
Not true. By my logic the publisher was only able to charge $50 for a videogame because Person B (through the secondary market) helped subsidize Person A's purchase at that price. You can raise the original sale price only up to the shared utility provided to purchasers that they are willing to pay for. Piracy does not subsidize a purchase since a pirate does not give any money to Person A to help the purchase. See the difference? Buying used isn't stealing from the producer, it's retroactively helping to pay for the original purchase.
A better model for publishers would be for users to send their game back to the publisher in exchange for a discount on another game of theirs. This would boost brand loyalty for the customer, provide a more constant revenue stream for the publisher, and also allow for a publisher-centric used game market.
That's not entirely "better." Store credit or publisher credit isn't worth the same as real money (to some it's probably close). The publisher could go bankrupt or they might start only publishing horrible games or they could start charging more than the credit holder would otherwise be willing to pay for a game. That risk would have to be insured against to have the same utility as real money. So they might have to give $25 credit instead of $20 cash. Ideally this extra insurance would offset the risk and vendor lock-in exactly and neither option would be "better" or "worse" than the other, it'd just be part of the deal.
...I understand that publishers don't make any money off used games sales...I get that.
Actually, you're wrong. Publishers do make money off used game sales. Not directly, but easy to see if you analyze the system.
Person A buys a game new (ex. $50), plays it, sells it to a used game broker (ex. $20). Person B buys the used game from the broker (ex. $40), part of this purchase goes to the broker for facilitating the transaction, part goes to subsidize the original purchase price (the $20 Person A received when selling the game comes from this purchase).
So Person A effectively purchased the game for less money. The lower price for Person A either allows him to purchase the game in the first place (was his perceived utility of the game between $30 and $50?), or leaves leftover money for the purchase of another game (this is his hobby).
So through the secondary market, Persons A and B share the cost. If, as the your hypothetical publisher who doesn't "make any money off used game sales" argues, Persons A and B would both have bought the game for $50 each, giving them earnings of $100, then the game could have been priced closer to that $100 knowing the secondary market would allow for the cost sharing (let's say MSRP of $80, giving the broker a $20 piece of the $100 pie). If it wouldn't have sold for $80 to $100, then both A and B weren't interested enough to each pay $50, were they?
One of the problems of computer security is that it's hard to be sure the level at which you're operating is secure. Your app may think it's secure, but the OS can view its memory. The OS may think it's secure, but it might be virtualized or running on a rootkit or boot sector virus. You might have a malicious BIOS update. It's almost impossible to verify from any level if the level below you is infected or not.
This is a neat, though probably impractical, way of trying to understand what the lower levels of the system are doing and judge the trustworthiness of those levels.
So the one instuction is essentially a move command that has multiple modes... Ahem. Isn't that cheating?
Yes, it is cheating. He basically took the instruction bits of the program and said, "Behold, for they are now address bits!" With the caveat that the address bits happen to address INSTRUCTIONS. It's all pretty brain-dead.
So if I'm watching video or using VoIP for more than 15 minutes I'll get put in the lower priority queue? And I'll lose frames or drop calls?
Oh wait, Comcast wants to sell me cable TV and VoIP that doesn't get messed up after 15 minutes, but asks a large fee for it? I think I see what's going on here.
Slashdot Mirror
I think if I get it within 2 or three millimeters of the reader it will work.
The distance to read a card is a function of the reader which provides the wireless power signal much more than it's a function of the card you're using. So your work reader is configured to be lower power and have your familiar slap the wallet functionality, while anyone wanting to read your card buys a different reader that works fine from several feet away (or more, but it just gets noisy when you activate 100 cards at once).
But they haven't started allowing you to sit in from the internet, which is just so much more awesome.
You're assuming someone that can't focus manually bought that camera?
Or, a better hypothesis: having an autistic child is life changing and difficult enough that you rely on your community more wherever you live.
I know a guy in Atlanta that's been working on doing exactly this with a Makerbot. And all that stuff is open source, from mechanical plans to software.
I won't argue that 40 isn't a lot of bits. But frequently bits are used for different purposes than part of addressing memory locations. Especially in the microcontroller world.
How much testing has been done to show the effectiveness of this on boys?
Since your immune system is the same as a female's, I'm going to say a lot of testing has been done.
The author pretty much tells us why we can believe this patent troll is working for Broadcom. These are probably real patents then. But they're using troll tactics to keep them out of a bigger more expensive fight. Pretty nasty.
Hey, engineering in general is a profession. Bridges and skyscrapers get built. And if the engineers mess up people can die. And there's liability for flaws.
Should all software hold to this standard? No. I didn't involve a civil engineer building a clubhouse as a kid. But there are places where correctness does matter and is worth the extra discipline and professionalism.
Remember to subtract the number of people that won't buy Fable 3 for full price if they can't sell it and get half their money back. Fable 1 was a cool game, but not replayable, and not worth $50-60.
What's up with that? There's no reason for it. There's so many kinds of coffee, from single origin, to exact roasting times, to flavored. And then there's decaf. Plain old decaf. I'm trying to cut down my caffeine intake, but it's hard.
So there are also these things where you can watch other people play. There is no "information asymmetry". And thousands of people watch those, too.
And yet, by being more polite in public, you can demonstrate you are not a mugger, and we can better identify and deal with actual muggers.
So while Chrome was not previously DDoSing servers, this action (that is more polite than just not DDoSing things), helps everybody out. Neat, eh?
I've seen fake iPhones that look less like iPhones than that Galazy i9000 in the picture. I was ready to jump on the Slashdot bandwagon and complain about patents and trade dress. But that looks like an iPhone knock off. And seeing that there are competing phones that don't look like an iPhone, I think Apple has a case here.
I agree, though we're at a place where the Good has been the enemy of the Great. People that understand cookies install and use Adblock correctly. And that solves the problem for everyone that can develop a better solution.
While most internet users and shoppers don't know about cookies and couldn't be bothered to learn how to use Adblock (it's hard to figure out just what to allow). But they can be creeped out when they find out they've been "tracked." Or rather that they've unintentionally been telling ad networks about every site they visit.
Technically speaking, a cookie is NOT something a website attaches to you to track you. They do generate the data, but you voluntarily send it back to them whenever you're on the site.
1. You request data from a website.
2. The website says you should go find an ad to display in the corner of the page.
3. You request ad form ad site, saying, "Hi, we've met before, I'm John Doe. You remember me, right? You do? Hooray!"
The current technology doesn't track you so much as your browser reminds everyone who you are. A do not track list is moronic unless the technology shifts.
Problem is there's not yet a good way for your average user to manage what sites he does this for and what sites don't get such friendly treatment. There's no reason for the default to be so open with ad networks, because that's just creepy. You don't go around offering all your info to everybody on the street trying to sell you stuff.
I know that politically motivated wiki pages shouldn't be cited because of bias, but what about stuff that is standard knowledge?
Because you're having trouble choosing what's politically motivated and what's not. The DSM-IV-TR is one of the most politically motivated, committee written books ever put together. That's the content of the reference manual, outside discussions can be even more biased.
Want to know what's political? The DSM-III had "Sexual Orientation Disturbance." That's diagnosing homosexuality as a mental disorder. Try doing that without getting into politics, civil rights, and religion.
Thank You! I was worried it was only me that noticed that. What's funny is that the op is such a PERFECT example of the idea the article is pushing.
What's so fun about this is that to be such a good example requires that he not know just how good an example he is! Amazing, really. And yet, it's just happened right here.
about a month ago, while going through the motions of updating java one day (clicking on all those security warnings, running the little interface), i thought: to hack a system, why not just copy this stupid little interface and have the user gleefully click through all of the little security warnings?
Because by the time you've overwritten the updater software and you're displaying a UI you're already running code on the system. A prerequisite to your idea is that the system already be hacked. So no, it can't help you hack a system.
Basically, a virus will not let you know what it's doing. And your autoupdate services are either already running malicious code or they won't go out and download bad stuff. You're perfectly safe going through dialogs and letting Java update itself.
Because, instead of registering yourself to run by using the registry, you're substituting your payload for a program already set to run. It makes less noise and requires actually scanning the running processes instead of scanning the Windows registry and filenames of running processes. It's also easier for new virus writers to do.
And to contradict this entire thread: GP is missing the point, too. The malware isn't looking for further user interaction. Just a hook on startup to get going and doing its thing.
Wondering why this is news and what's really new about this? Well, it's not. It's all old stuff. A security researcher quoted in the article says as much.
Someone who sells a game will gain more money. But there's no telling if they will spend it on a game, hoping from the same publisher in your case, or a cheeseburger. No money is directly handed back to the publisher.
It's not necessary for the game seller, Person A in my story, to use the money to buy another game. He bought the first game knowing that he'd be able to sell it. This lowered both his perceived and real cost of the game at the time of his purchase, possibly to a point lower than his perceived utility enabling the original purchase to occur.
By your logic the publishers make money off of pirates because they raised the price of their game to account for the pirates. (And no, lets not get into whether or not a pirate would pay for it because that's a whole 'nother ball game.)
Not true. By my logic the publisher was only able to charge $50 for a videogame because Person B (through the secondary market) helped subsidize Person A's purchase at that price. You can raise the original sale price only up to the shared utility provided to purchasers that they are willing to pay for. Piracy does not subsidize a purchase since a pirate does not give any money to Person A to help the purchase. See the difference? Buying used isn't stealing from the producer, it's retroactively helping to pay for the original purchase.
A better model for publishers would be for users to send their game back to the publisher in exchange for a discount on another game of theirs. This would boost brand loyalty for the customer, provide a more constant revenue stream for the publisher, and also allow for a publisher-centric used game market.
That's not entirely "better." Store credit or publisher credit isn't worth the same as real money (to some it's probably close). The publisher could go bankrupt or they might start only publishing horrible games or they could start charging more than the credit holder would otherwise be willing to pay for a game. That risk would have to be insured against to have the same utility as real money. So they might have to give $25 credit instead of $20 cash. Ideally this extra insurance would offset the risk and vendor lock-in exactly and neither option would be "better" or "worse" than the other, it'd just be part of the deal.
...I understand that publishers don't make any money off used games sales...I get that.
Actually, you're wrong. Publishers do make money off used game sales. Not directly, but easy to see if you analyze the system.
Person A buys a game new (ex. $50), plays it, sells it to a used game broker (ex. $20).
Person B buys the used game from the broker (ex. $40), part of this purchase goes to the broker for facilitating the transaction, part goes to subsidize the original purchase price (the $20 Person A received when selling the game comes from this purchase).
So Person A effectively purchased the game for less money. The lower price for Person A either allows him to purchase the game in the first place (was his perceived utility of the game between $30 and $50?), or leaves leftover money for the purchase of another game (this is his hobby).
So through the secondary market, Persons A and B share the cost. If, as the your hypothetical publisher who doesn't "make any money off used game sales" argues, Persons A and B would both have bought the game for $50 each, giving them earnings of $100, then the game could have been priced closer to that $100 knowing the secondary market would allow for the cost sharing (let's say MSRP of $80, giving the broker a $20 piece of the $100 pie). If it wouldn't have sold for $80 to $100, then both A and B weren't interested enough to each pay $50, were they?
One of the problems of computer security is that it's hard to be sure the level at which you're operating is secure. Your app may think it's secure, but the OS can view its memory. The OS may think it's secure, but it might be virtualized or running on a rootkit or boot sector virus. You might have a malicious BIOS update. It's almost impossible to verify from any level if the level below you is infected or not.
This is a neat, though probably impractical, way of trying to understand what the lower levels of the system are doing and judge the trustworthiness of those levels.
So the one instuction is essentially a move command that has multiple modes... Ahem. Isn't that cheating?
Yes, it is cheating. He basically took the instruction bits of the program and said, "Behold, for they are now address bits!" With the caveat that the address bits happen to address INSTRUCTIONS. It's all pretty brain-dead.
So if I'm watching video or using VoIP for more than 15 minutes I'll get put in the lower priority queue? And I'll lose frames or drop calls?
Oh wait, Comcast wants to sell me cable TV and VoIP that doesn't get messed up after 15 minutes, but asks a large fee for it? I think I see what's going on here.