Imitating warning pages or other elements of the UI is not a new tactic.
Perhaps browsers could be developed to use some feature that 3rd party pages couldn't easily duplicate? It might not be practical to use colors/effects etc not supported by standard browser features, but maybe a browser could be designed to display some preset USER SPECIFIC DATA or graphic that javascript and other net-driven browser code does NOT have access to?
Hardware has advanced quite a bit over the years. Perhaps they (or someone licensed/contracted to do so) could create viable mobile versions. There certainly is a large potential user base between iOS and Android.
So what will it be? Which desktop OSes, consoles, and/or mobile devices may see this game? The article lacked coverage of that important point. They did say this:
"Randy Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox Software, says an announcement regarding the future of the IP would be made on Sunday at the company's panel at the video game convention PAX 2010, which is being held in Seattle, Washington."
So maybe gamers will have more concrete news Sunday? I think the mobile platforms are a very attractive target. They certainly could reach many users very quickly, and without the delay and manufacturing costs of shipping associate with brick and mortar retail. But can/will a quality product be coded soon???
Well not having an x86 like the current Apple TV, it won't be able to run Mac OS X apps, take OS X add-on Quicktime codecs etc. With a low power ARM CPU, they're no doubt using another chip or the GPU for h.264 decoding, so that'll be what it has the horsepower for. A hacked version will be more like a jailbroken iPhone/iPad than a Mac. I wouldn't expect to be able to add an ElGato Systems Eye-TV Hybrid USB tuner for cable/over-the-air tv with this one.
Induction is less efficient too. It's why the transformer in a power supply is often nowhere near 100% efficient as induction is how they work.
An inductive charger is tougher to design than a good transformer. In general it takes a lot of copper to make a fairly low loss device that functions at 50 or 60 Hz (the power line frequency). Core loss and flux leakage issues aside, both need thick enough conductors to have low resistance losses, and enough turns (to get enough inductance) to draw little current with no load.
Depending on the design, some may question whether there are any undesirable health effects from magnetic fields near an inductive charger (similar to that from deflection coils in a c.r.t. monitor)
In practice it is attempts at cutting the size weight and cost of copper and core materials that leads to tradeoffs making some transformers inefficient under load or ecessively wasteful under no/light loads. The later is a common issue with wal-wart transformers/supplies.
The inductance needed, and thus the size and cost, can be reduced by operating transformers/coils at higher frequencies. Even PC power supplies and common curly CFL replacements for incandescent lamps have transformers in them. Those are just operating higher frequencies. In many cases the losses are mainly from the forward on-resistance of the switching transistors and diodes, and losses from them not quite instantly switching between on and off. My point here is that transformers/coil are not inherently inefficient.
Even at 60 Hz, it's not uncommon to have transformers of 95% efficiency if people don't cut corners. Even then switching supplies may offer lower waste under near no load conditions.
I wouldn't be surprised if the standby power wasted by an old 60 Hz inductive toothbrush base sitting idle is enough to run an iPad. Losses of only a few Watts may seem insignificant, but they add up, especially for things powered all the time. I once modified the power supply in an early digital alarm clock to save power. The savings were enough to watch a 13" color tv 2 hours a day. (The tv had a couple of modifications too)
Design choices in consumer devices have a massive energy impact. Perhaps with an optical or magnetic sensor to switch it on, and a high-frequency coil, an inductive charger could be fairly efficient. It still seems like needless complexity to me though. I'm not sure I want the Apple TV with the rental arrangement, but they do deserve credit for going with a design with very very lower power consumption (less than x86 designs, and probably less than a VCR was even when turned off!)
This ties in with the space junk story "The space age has filled Earth's orbit with all manner of space junk, from spent rocket stages to frozen bags of astronaut urine..."
Apparently/. missed seeing this episode something like 2 years ago...
There have been recent advances, the Stanford researcher is having better results than previous work mentioned in the earlier articles. From this one:
"The newest versions of the adhesive, developed in 2009, have a two-layer system, similar to the gecko's lamellae and setae. The "hairs" are even smaller than the ones on the first version - about 20 micrometers wide, which is five times thinner than a human hair. These versions support higher loads and allow Stickybot to climb surfaces such as wood paneling, painted metal and glass."
Developing a good codec is very complex, and that's before trying to dodge patent landmines. For a deeper understanding of how things stack up with h.264 and VP8, it helps to get the perspective of a ffmpeg/x.264 developer. It's a very detailed technical analysis.
What's really needed here are some new (or at least freshly recycled?) questions. Let me try...
Why isn't there a botnet that installs this "familiar" looking OS on a patch Tuesday?
It could download in advance, even copy user files over, then magically spring to life. The old OS could be left for dual-boot to run games or whatever.
I know, I know, something wholesome shouldn't be associated with malware but it seems as natural as giving a thirsty dog a bowl of water
Actually I think you'll need to put that coil in series with the flash. IIRC, an inverter charges a capacitor up to a few hundred volts D.C. across the flash which doesn't conduct until it is triggered by a brief higher-voltage pulse from a transformer. That pulse causes the gas to ionize (conduct). If the coil were across the flash, the cap would be shorted and couldn't build up a big charge to release in one high-energy burst. Maybe flash designs have changed, but that's how they've worked in the past.
Tracking one person around a city with RFID would be a nuisance.
For people driving, it could be pretty automatic using the RFIDs in your tires. They have all had them for some time now. It doesn't seem like it'd be that hard to add the ability to read those through the sensor systems that input into traffic-light controllers.
There are already places using RFID to allow prepaid drivers through highway toll-gates.
Integration with your cell, On-Star system, and facial/plate recognition through traffic cams at no extra charge.
Speaking of exit monitoring... That sweater you bought has an RFID chip the size of a grain of sand, and a thread for an antenna. Thanks your using your shopping bonus buy loyalty membership card. Did the flu shot hurt a little more than usual? Gotta chip on your shoulder? Not exactly, but you're getting warm...
Thank you for shopping with us, and enjoying the milk. Our cows trust us with our oxytocin linked hormones, and so will you...
Yes, there seem to be medications getting into the water supply, but don't worry, we've optimized them. When you get your new remotely read digital water meter, we'll be able to optimize by address.
Thank you for putting on that tin-foil hat, we've found the resonant frequency and it helps us track you... by detecting incidental phase modulation of microwave signals reflected from it, we can hear what you hear.
Please get that TV/monitor with 240 Hz refresh. It's so much better for flashing subliminal messages... uhhh I mean WoW explosions and digital artifacts.
Don't worry... none of this is real. It's all a dream. Unfortunately that means you aren't real either. Oh well... you can wake up now
I really think you're severely underestimating people's resistance to change. Nobody is going to want to throw away 10 years of experience coding Flash to learn something else. Many will do it anyway, but not many of them will be happy about it.
It's a safe bet that many DOS 3.3 developers weren't happy about needing to get up to speed on Windows or Mac GUIs either. No doubt there were many people using DOS for a long time. But how much were they spending?
Which users are most likely to be new buyers of either software or advertised products?
If one can say anything significant about Apple's user base, it's that they're among the most desirable buyers to have. Would you rather have an ad seen by 1000 Flash-free Apple customers, or 5000 IE 6 users? Of course choices depend on what you're selling, but most will go after those that are spending.
No need to kill a site while it is still serving a purpose, but don't neglect supporting a prime and rapidly growing userbase too long or it'll cost you.
Of course advertisers often don't know if/how to reach the people they want most. Expect them to embrace iAds wholeheartedly and find them good value while paying more per viewer. Android buyers are likely a desirable group too, but don't be surprised if they shy away from things that eat battery life.
So now Flash only stalks users and shares what Flash sites they've visited with other Flash sites the rest of the time? Normal browser cookie controls can't prevent/delete those either. That's still not much respect for privacy. It's nasty behavior most users don't know about.
Some Firefox users use the BetterPrivacy plugin for dealing with Flash cookies, ideally most would also disable Flash by default and enable it only on specific sites. (several plugins allow such control)
Browser settings, including private browsing, zero-size or auto cache delete, and no-cookie or delete-cookie settings DO NOT prevent JAVA content from saving cookies, cached images and other data. (not kept with similar browser files)
Among other uses, the NoScript plugin can disable Flash, JAVA, and Silverlight on untrusted sites. It can also be set to block clear-GIFs aka web-beacons (stalking via tiny invisible images you can't see loading from third-party servers).
Even browsers that allow disabling cookies usually still have both Flash cookies (some trail every Flash site) and JAVA cookies. JAVA also may cache images outside the browser cache.
As memory intensive as modern browsers are, and with them seemly able to go back endlessly with that back button, it should also be assumed that every page you visit it swapped into the virtual memory swap file.
At this point, Private Browsing mode seems to do little more than hide the browser history from a tech-illiterate spouse.
Safari does deserve a small amount of credit for the disallow third-party cookies setting being the default.
It seems the problem is that we're not idealistic enough. Instead of constantly comparing against what logic would lead us to believe to be ideal, we sometimes accept what we're surrounded with as "normal" no matter how screwed up it is. Our perceptions tend to be relative instead of absolute. Even the algorithms in software rating risk were making the assumption that normal meant okay.
We get used to our own stink. If we stare at that blueish-green cast of a c.r.t. with a weak red gun a while, it's the white walls of our rooms that we'll see with a reddish cast. If we swim in a slowly warming pot.... you get the idea.
We need to shift out activities around and politely slap some sense into each other.
If we don't, it'll seem normal to spend much more than we earn, being a few pounds heavier than the obese neighbor becomes average, having 20 minutes an hour of ads on commercial tv will be "normal", that percentage of bugs and rodent droppings in your food will be normal, frequent malware on your computer will be normal, having corrupt politicians will be just the way it is...
"We have done everything we could think of" Dick Cheney on Meet the Press September 10. 2006.
As an end user, I'd like to see an app store where liability insurance is mandatory to cover damages that users may experience from misleading or malicious closed-source apps. The insurance companies should still require source. For totally open source apps, the store should indicate if/what independent volunteer group (or one funded by a small per-app fee) has reviewed the app.
I think that OS / software vendors that take the entire burden of security debugging on themselves by failing to provide source code to all should be liable for all direct or indirect damages that result from vulnerabilities others might have found and fixed (or reported for fixing).
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps the Grateful Dead saw this coming?
Imitating warning pages or other elements of the UI is not a new tactic.
Perhaps browsers could be developed to use some feature that 3rd party pages couldn't easily duplicate? It might not be practical to use colors/effects etc not supported by standard browser features, but maybe a browser could be designed to display some preset USER SPECIFIC DATA or graphic that javascript and other net-driven browser code does NOT have access to?
Hardware has advanced quite a bit over the years. Perhaps they (or someone licensed/contracted to do so) could create viable mobile versions. There certainly is a large potential user base between iOS and Android.
So what will it be? Which desktop OSes, consoles, and/or mobile devices may see this game?
The article lacked coverage of that important point. They did say this:
"Randy Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox Software, says an announcement regarding the future of the IP would be made on Sunday at the company's panel at the video game convention PAX 2010, which is being held in Seattle, Washington."
So maybe gamers will have more concrete news Sunday? I think the mobile platforms are a very attractive target. They certainly could reach many users very quickly, and without the delay and manufacturing costs of shipping associate with brick and mortar retail.
But can/will a quality product be coded soon???
I'd love to see them release a new iPhone just for the hell of it :p
A Linksys router with a VoIP phone jack, built-in camera, and monitor out might be a possibility.
Or something to prevent a post labor-day drop in gas prices?
Well not having an x86 like the current Apple TV, it won't be able to run Mac OS X apps, take OS X add-on Quicktime codecs etc. With a low power ARM CPU, they're no doubt using another chip or the GPU for h.264 decoding, so that'll be what it has the horsepower for. A hacked version will be more like a jailbroken iPhone/iPad than a Mac. I wouldn't expect to be able to add an ElGato Systems Eye-TV Hybrid USB tuner for cable/over-the-air tv with this one.
Induction is less efficient too. It's why the transformer in a power supply is often nowhere near 100% efficient as induction is how they work.
An inductive charger is tougher to design than a good transformer. In general it takes a lot of copper to make a fairly low loss device that functions at 50 or 60 Hz (the power line frequency). Core loss and flux leakage issues aside, both need thick enough conductors to have low resistance losses, and enough turns (to get enough inductance) to draw little current with no load.
Depending on the design, some may question whether there are any undesirable health effects from magnetic fields near an inductive charger (similar to that from deflection coils in a c.r.t. monitor)
In practice it is attempts at cutting the size weight and cost of copper and core materials that leads to tradeoffs making some transformers inefficient under load or ecessively wasteful under no/light loads. The later is a common issue with wal-wart transformers/supplies.
The inductance needed, and thus the size and cost, can be reduced by operating transformers/coils at higher frequencies. Even PC power supplies and common curly CFL replacements for incandescent lamps have transformers in them. Those are just operating higher frequencies. In many cases the losses are mainly from the forward on-resistance of the switching transistors and diodes, and losses from them not quite instantly switching between on and off. My point here is that transformers/coil are not inherently inefficient.
Even at 60 Hz, it's not uncommon to have transformers of 95% efficiency if people don't cut corners. Even then switching supplies may offer lower waste under near no load conditions.
I wouldn't be surprised if the standby power wasted by an old 60 Hz inductive toothbrush base sitting idle is enough to run an iPad. Losses of only a few Watts may seem insignificant, but they add up, especially for things powered all the time. I once modified the power supply in an early digital alarm clock to save power. The savings were enough to watch a 13" color tv 2 hours a day. (The tv had a couple of modifications too)
Design choices in consumer devices have a massive energy impact. Perhaps with an optical or magnetic sensor to switch it on, and a high-frequency coil, an inductive charger could be fairly efficient. It still seems like needless complexity to me though.
I'm not sure I want the Apple TV with the rental arrangement, but they do deserve credit for going with a design with very very lower power consumption (less than x86 designs, and probably less than a VCR was even when turned off!)
Then there's the question... does one need to reboot when installing Ksplice?
why is it NWA, and not NMA?
Typos and other strangeness generated while distracted by porn or similar -> Lickdicksia
Next up: brewing in zero-G
This ties in with the space junk story "The space age has filled Earth's orbit with all manner of space junk, from spent rocket stages to frozen bags of astronaut urine..."
Steve Jobs was a coke dealer.
No, it was John Scully and Pepsi
Apparently /. missed seeing this episode something like 2 years ago...
There have been recent advances, the Stanford researcher is having better results than previous work mentioned in the earlier articles. From this one:
"The newest versions of the adhesive, developed in 2009, have a two-layer system, similar to the gecko's lamellae and setae. The "hairs" are even smaller than the ones on the first version - about 20 micrometers wide, which is five times thinner than a human hair. These versions support higher loads and allow Stickybot to climb surfaces such as wood paneling, painted metal and glass."
Developing a good codec is very complex, and that's before trying to dodge patent landmines.
For a deeper understanding of how things stack up with h.264 and VP8, it helps to get the perspective of a ffmpeg/x.264 developer.
It's a very detailed technical analysis.
What's really needed here are some new (or at least freshly recycled?) questions. Let me try...
Why isn't there a botnet that installs this "familiar" looking OS on a patch Tuesday?
It could download in advance, even copy user files over, then magically spring to life.
The old OS could be left for dual-boot to run games or whatever.
I know, I know, something wholesome shouldn't be associated with malware but it seems as natural as giving a thirsty dog a bowl of water
If facebook is going to try and muscle out the other bookies the mugbook is the place for them.
You could also determine when a group of people are not around their home and use this information to decide when to rob their house.
They can also sniff media access control (MAC) addresses to target the most popular premium laptops.
Actually I think you'll need to put that coil in series with the flash.
IIRC, an inverter charges a capacitor up to a few hundred volts D.C. across the flash which doesn't conduct until it is triggered by a brief higher-voltage pulse from a transformer. That pulse causes the gas to ionize (conduct). If the coil were across the flash, the cap would be shorted and couldn't build up a big charge to release in one high-energy burst. Maybe flash designs have changed, but that's how they've worked in the past.
Tracking one person around a city with RFID would be a nuisance.
For people driving, it could be pretty automatic using the RFIDs in your tires. They have all had them for some time now. It doesn't seem like it'd be that hard to add the ability to read those through the sensor systems that input into traffic-light controllers.
There are already places using RFID to allow prepaid drivers through highway toll-gates.
Integration with your cell, On-Star system, and facial/plate recognition through traffic cams at no extra charge.
Speaking of exit monitoring... That sweater you bought has an RFID chip the size of a grain of sand, and a thread for an antenna. Thanks your using your shopping bonus buy loyalty membership card. Did the flu shot hurt a little more than usual? Gotta chip on your shoulder? Not exactly, but you're getting warm...
Thank you for shopping with us, and enjoying the milk. Our cows trust us with our oxytocin linked hormones, and so will you...
Yes, there seem to be medications getting into the water supply, but don't worry, we've optimized them. When you get your new remotely read digital water meter, we'll be able to optimize by address.
Thank you for putting on that tin-foil hat, we've found the resonant frequency and it helps us track you... by detecting incidental phase modulation of microwave signals reflected from it, we can hear what you hear.
Please get that TV/monitor with 240 Hz refresh. It's so much better for flashing subliminal messages... uhhh I mean WoW explosions and digital artifacts.
Don't worry... none of this is real. It's all a dream. Unfortunately that means you aren't real either. Oh well... you can wake up now
I really think you're severely underestimating people's resistance to change. Nobody is going to want to throw away 10 years of experience coding Flash to learn something else. Many will do it anyway, but not many of them will be happy about it.
It's a safe bet that many DOS 3.3 developers weren't happy about needing to get up to speed on Windows or Mac GUIs either. No doubt there were many people using DOS for a long time. But how much were they spending?
Which users are most likely to be new buyers of either software or advertised products?
If one can say anything significant about Apple's user base, it's that they're among the most desirable buyers to have. Would you rather have an ad seen by 1000 Flash-free Apple customers, or 5000 IE 6 users? Of course choices depend on what you're selling, but most will go after those that are spending.
No need to kill a site while it is still serving a purpose, but don't neglect supporting a prime and rapidly growing userbase too long or it'll cost you.
Of course advertisers often don't know if/how to reach the people they want most. Expect them to embrace iAds wholeheartedly and find them good value while paying more per viewer. Android buyers are likely a desirable group too, but don't be surprised if they shy away from things that eat battery life.
It's kind of annoying to burn down your own house every time.
Makes ya wonder where the Fire in Firefox came from, doesn't it...
So now Flash only stalks users and shares what Flash sites they've visited with other Flash sites the rest of the time? Normal browser cookie controls can't prevent/delete those either. That's still not much respect for privacy. It's nasty behavior most users don't know about.
Some Firefox users use the BetterPrivacy plugin for dealing with Flash cookies,
ideally most would also disable Flash by default and enable it only on specific sites.
(several plugins allow such control)
Browser settings, including private browsing, zero-size or auto cache delete, and no-cookie or delete-cookie settings DO NOT prevent JAVA content from saving cookies, cached images and other data. (not kept with similar browser files)
Among other uses, the NoScript plugin can disable Flash, JAVA, and Silverlight on untrusted sites. It can also be set to block clear-GIFs aka web-beacons (stalking via tiny invisible images you can't see loading from third-party servers).
Of course if it only removes the key, the data is still there. The user may not be able to access it but who says someone else can't?
Maybe they should make flash drives designed to be put in a microwave oven.
Even browsers that allow disabling cookies usually still have both Flash cookies (some trail every Flash site) and JAVA cookies. JAVA also may cache images outside the browser cache.
As memory intensive as modern browsers are, and with them seemly able to go back endlessly with that back button, it should also be assumed that every page you visit it swapped into the virtual memory swap file.
At this point, Private Browsing mode seems to do little more than hide the browser history from a tech-illiterate spouse.
Safari does deserve a small amount of credit for the disallow third-party cookies setting being the default.
It seems the problem is that we're not idealistic enough. Instead of constantly comparing against what logic would lead us to believe to be ideal, we sometimes accept what we're surrounded with as "normal" no matter how screwed up it is. Our perceptions tend to be relative instead of absolute. Even the algorithms in software rating risk were making the assumption that normal meant okay.
We get used to our own stink. If we stare at that blueish-green cast of a c.r.t. with a weak red gun a while, it's the white walls of our rooms that we'll see with a reddish cast. If we swim in a slowly warming pot.... you get the idea.
We need to shift out activities around and politely slap some sense into each other.
If we don't, it'll seem normal to spend much more than we earn, being a few pounds heavier than the obese neighbor becomes average, having 20 minutes an hour of ads on commercial tv will be "normal", that percentage of bugs and rodent droppings in your food will be normal, frequent malware on your computer will be normal, having corrupt politicians will be just the way it is...
"We have done everything we could think of" Dick Cheney on Meet the Press September 10. 2006.
They sure did. What can the rest of us think of?
As an end user, I'd like to see an app store where liability insurance is mandatory to cover damages that users may experience from misleading or malicious closed-source apps. The insurance companies should still require source. For totally open source apps, the store should indicate if/what independent volunteer group (or one funded by a small per-app fee) has reviewed the app.
I think that OS / software vendors that take the entire burden of security debugging on themselves by failing to provide source code to all should be liable for all direct or indirect damages that result from vulnerabilities others might have found and fixed (or reported for fixing).