Real machines have a command line and obscure commands you have to guess be cause there's no documentation provided.
The 90s called and suggested you upgrade from Mac OS 9. Since they switched to Unix, Macs have been seriously real machines: start up Terminal on OS X and you'll be in Unix heaven with all your obscure command line friends. You can vi, troff and yacc to your heart's content and (joy of joys) use proper symlinks. Install the free developer tools and you can haz gcc. Install MacPorts and you can have all the usual FOSS subjects compiled to your taste.
Seriously? From the first link: "I have no seen anyone say it's impossible to launch a MITM attack with a certificate that is verified, but it's much harder.". All the rest are saying that, without a CA, https: offers no protection against MITM. That is not remotely the same as "guaranteeing" (your words) that there is no MITM.
Perhaps people shouldn't bother locking their doors: a locked door is no guarantee that you won't get burgled.
- bullshit. I mistrust every single CA signed certificate and I want a fingerprint.
Hurrah for you. Now, how do you know that the fingerprint is valid? Did your bank send you a fingerprint by mail when you signed up to their online banking service? No? Complaints on a postcard to your bank - not Mozilla. How do you think online shopping would go if the store had to snail-mail you a fingerprint on headed paper before you could buy anything? You'd do background checks on the store to check that they weren't a bunch of phishers with a room over a fish shop in Somwherzistahn and a big box of letterhead, of course,
If you run a website with a self-signed certificate, it means you are asking your users to unconditionally trust your identity.
- nonsense, I am providing the fingerprint information and instructions on how to compare the data when accepting the certificate.
Dear Mr Reman Mur,
At Megabank we are valuing your continuing security. Please logging in immediately to your acnount at [a href="www.phisherland.xxx?url=www.megabank.com"]www.megabank.com[/a] to confirming your status.
To value your scurity we are use a "Self Sined Certificat" which is more scure than usual. You should checking the Certificate Fingerprint as A6:16:23:91:16:91:BE:82:F3:9A:22:45:C7:19:37:19:CC:AF:11:44 to ensuring it is validated.
...yeah, that works. The most reliable security feature should be the crook's inability to spell and/or not spam people with phishing attacks for banks they don't use. Somehow, that doesn't seem to be the case.
(Since I've had emails from perfectly legitimate companies who thought it would be a jolly good idea to send out emails with URLs redirected via some sort of analytics company - so the URLs looked pretty much like that - and my bank regularly cold-calls me and asks me to answer security questions - its hard to be too critical of people who can't spot bogosity).
Its the banks and major e-commerce sites' job to fix this situation, not the browser authors who have to adapt to what is out there. However, if you're looking for a usable identity verification system that doesn't rely, at some stage, on people paying an intermediary to vouch for their online identity, you'll have a long search.
That battle was lost on Slashdot thanks to Apple fans and Microsoft haters.
Hmm.
One of these companies pioneered "product activation" whereby, if your OS thought you had changed your hardware enough to pass some (secret) threshold it bricked itself until you phoned the publisher for an activation code.
One of these companies, until recently, charged you 3x the OEM price for a "Full Retail" copy of its OS that wasn't perpetually locked to the first machine you installed it on
One of these companies released something called "plays for sure"...
One of these companies produced something called "Genuine Advantage"...
On the other hand...
One of these companies actually managed to get the record companies to allow a legal online music store with reasonable prices
One of these companies managed to drop DRM on its music offerings once they acquired some music industry muscle
One of these companies left you the option of burning the audio to disc.
One of these companies lets you buy software from its online store once, and install it on all of your computers/devices.
One of these companies actually charges significantly less when you buy software by download
One of these companies has told the Blu Ray consortium to go fish (I know somone with a BluRay player in their PC - after one year it refused to play newly released discs unless you bought an upgrade to the player software).
Both of these companies could distribute non-DRMd movies, but their catalog would only consist of a handful of indy/creative commons films which you can download for free anyway (and which play quite nicely on a non-jailbroken iDevice after a quick format shift) because the studios won't budge without DRM.
Well how much longer will the opinions can stay the same with all the evidence that CAs do not in fact guarantee that there is no MITM?
Total straw man. Nobody who remotely understands the system thinks that CAs guarantee no MITM. You could go and see the webmaster in person, shake their hand, look them in the eye, meet their parents, run a background security check, ask for three forms of photo ID and proof of address and then ask for their certificate fingerprint. That would reassure you that, if you are being scammed, you are at least being scammed by the professionals, but it would still represent the weakest link in any chain using decent strong encryption.
So, it boils down to risk. CAs are a million miles short of being a perfect, secure solution but they are far, far better than self-signed certificates. There may be better solutions in theory, but they're not available in practice - and none of them are going to be perfect. In a perfect world, banks and credit card companies would have stepped up to the plate and created a better secure system for banking and ecommerce, but they haven't. What the clients and customers want is a "transparent" identity verification system - and that is impossible to make totally secure. CAs are the best game in town.
More importantly: who is talking about browser being responsible to figure out whether there is MITM or not with a https and a self signed cert?
If they're ever going to display "the padlock" they need to perform both encryption and identity checking to check off on the "due diligence". That's de-facto established practice for browsers. If the ID check is invalid because of a corrupt CA, its not their fault.
Browsers aren't written for you - they're written for non-technical users who will mostly be visiting professional websites, and who certainly aren't qualified to judge whether a MITM attack is a significant danger to whatever they are doing. The best advice to such people is to avoid websites with self-signed certificates like the plague. If you tried to log on to your bank, and were warned that it was using a self-signed certificate, you'd run a mile - someone's personal blog, maybe not so much. The browser can't distinguish those scenarios so it offers its user the "least worst" advice.
If you run a website with a self-signed certificate, it means you are asking your users to unconditionally trust your identity. If your users know you personally, fine, but if you are dealing with strangers then that is a bloody irresponsible thing to do: thank the browser writers for covering your back. Either get a proper certificate; create your own CA and persuade your users to add the root cert to their browsers; or - when users call you to ask why their browser is warning them - smile and talk them through checking the fingerprint.
If you can dream up a better solution than CAs and get it widely adopted then the world will thank you. Currently, though, they're better than nothing.
They lost a court case in the UK over this a couple of years back - for strange historical reasons, you pay VAT on crisps, but not on cakes.
The strange historical reasons being that some bright spark thought they could be really clever by only charging VAT on "non-essential" items, thus creating endless work for lawyers and committees arguing over what was "essential".
...and as anybody who watches QI knows, the official definition is that "cakes" go hard when they are stale, whereas biscuits* go soft.
* That's biscuits as in British English, i.e. cookies or crackers - not scones (which I guess are cakes).
The issue is that studies have shown that a tablet actually doesn't give you eye strain
...but the comparison isn't tablet vs. laptop, it is reflective e-ink vs. illuminated LCD.
I have both a tablet and a Kindle: the tablet is better for reference books, because it has a larger screen, color, and the navigation/zooming/panning/following links is far better with a touchscreen and a rapidly updateable display.
However, for sitting down and reading a novel, the kindle is far more restful: apart from any "eyestrain" issues, it has better visibility in sunlight (tablets aren't brilliant outdoors) is smaller, lighter and the battery lasts far longer than a tablet. You could add a touchscreen - but because e-ink is so slow to update you couldn't make it as tactile as iOS/Android.
Tablets and readers aren't going to converge until there is a display that combines the clarity and power consumption of e-ink with the speed and colour reproduction of LCD (e.g. the electrowetting system that is in development). I haven't tried an OLPD-style hybrid display - if Amazon go for that they might have something.
Does anyone make a tablet that allows you to create things like music/art/literature?
That's not what they are for, although I don't see anything to stop you writing a book on a tablet and there are music/sequencer and sketchpad Apps around.
The overwhelmingly useful application of a tablet is an instant-on email terminal and web browser that you can use while sitting in a comfy chair. For creative work, you'll soon be reaching for the "proper" computer.
Your problem is that you are looking at a tablet as a replacement for a computer. Thats not what they are the for, unless you are a very light computer user.
There are very few laptops that I'd care to use while sitting in a comfy chair, checking email and browsing the web. The web and email experience is incomparably better than using a smartphone - and is also better than on the smaller "true" netbooks (because tablet OSs are better tailored to the screen size), the ergonomics (for comfy chair mode) are incomparably better than a laptop. The battery life is vastly better than laptops, and the instant on/off is actually instant.
The keyboard is fine for short emails and note taking at meetings. They're much less obtrusive at meetings than laptops, and you're not scrabbling for a mains socket after the first hour.
I'm not sure what you think the alternative is for mobile movie watching - unlike a laptop you can use a tablet on your lap, and there are plenty of cases that act as stands.
Game wise, tablets are not hot for FPS shooters, but they are great for other sorts of games (you may have missed the memo about casual gaming). RTS, tower defense, puzzle games, card/board games can all be great. Think "Plants v Zombies" rather than "Call of Duty".
I bought the original netbook, the EEE PC, when it came out, hoping that it would be good for the above. It wasn't, mainly because of battery life, crappy ergonomics and trying to run a desktop operating system on a small screen - turned out, even the iPod Touch was better (even though it had a small screen, the UI was designed to maximise it). The saving grace would have been that the first netbooks were impulse-buy cheap. Instead of solving those problems, the netbook market morphed into small, entry level Windows laptops, and the price crept up. Tablets replace the original netbook concept, and while they are more expensive, they do the job far better.
Only because (shocking, I know) there is nothing distinctive enough in Apple's design.
There's plenty distinctive about the iPhone's design. Looks like the page I linked to above is blocked outside the UK, but try looking at the range of smartphones on the websites of some local vendors. There are plenty of competing smartphones that are, basically, dark colored rectangles with a large screen (as determined by function) yet still look nothing like an iPhone. There are a few, predominantly Samsung, that look remarkably like an iPhone, at least in the publicity photos.
It looks like Apple's problem is that its actual "community design" registration needed to be a bit more specific, and has come over as an attempt to "patent" a black slab.
Samsung gets away with copying the distinctive look of the iPhone* to an extent that most other smartphone vendors have managed to avoid.
Then they get done for infringing a stupid software patent about scrolling photos, which shouldn't even exist in Europe but has been sneaked in dressed up as a hardware patent, which could be a royal pain for anybody trying to make a smartphone.
* Forget Apple's allegedly doctored/cherry-picked images - just have a look at a random phone vendor's page and see which ones look just like the iPhone... and blow me down, why are O2 using Apple's "fake" image of the Galaxy S: you know, the one that displaying the grid of icons instead of the Android home screen? Apart, perhaps, from the HTC HD7, all the other phones manage to incorporate the essential features of a touchscreen smartphone without looking just like an iPhone.
Seriously though, after paying shitload of money, you still have to buy dongles and addons for basic functionalities?? Fuck that.
So which of the competing tablets comes with a full size SD card port (which you need for cameras) and a full-sized USB port as standard? The Samsung is just as bad as the iPad in terms of needing extra dongles, the Asus Transformer only has these in the optional keyboard/dock, the Xoom has microUSB (OK if you're camera also has a standard socket so you can use a standard cable, but you'd need an adaptor for a USB stick or SD card). Some have microSD slots, but those are intended for semi-permanent memory expansion & often a fiddle to remove (and didn't work when, e.g. the Xoom was first launched).
Its also sensible if you're trying to keep your tablet small: if you include dongles, the iPad has pretty good connectivity: VGA, HDMI, component, composite, SD card and limited USB (photo transfer or USB keyboard) not to mention iPod dock-compatible devices. Very few people are going to need all of those, so why bulk up the tablet with the connectors?
If the competitors were seriously pushing Apple on price then Apple might have to sweeten the deal by bundling more adapters - but they aren't , so they don't.
I wonder if that's why Apple is trying to physically get Samsung off the shelves in Europe. There doesn't seem to be much danger of competing Android tablets decimating iPad sales - its pretty clear now that they are not going to succeed unless they are (a) significantly cheaper than the iPad and/or (b) offer something obviously different (not just incrementally better specs such as a slightly faster processor or higher res camera which will be leapfrogged by Apple in a few months time).
So why is Apple trying to block them? Whatever the rights/wrongs of their case, I can't see it succeeding long-term (at most, it will just establish what combination of features make something an iPad lookalike rather than just a tablet so competitors can work around it) - and it risks a Streisand effect. But if the Android Tablet train is about to hit the buffers, getting them off the shelves for a few months now would prevent any more fire sales in the run-up to Xmas.
Personally, I'm still waiting for this which actually seems to tick the "offer something clearly distinct from an iPad" box - but its been "coming soon" for ever and, from the link, I see they've brilliantly decided to up the minimum memory and push up the price. Otherwise, I'll stick with my iPad 1 until we see (a) what MotoGoogle will do or (b) whether the rumors of an Amazon tablet are true.
2) "Innovative iPad" (yep, rounded corners, rectangular shape, large screen, it's such a hard concept...)
Seriously?
Did you even read what you linked to?
Did you look at what was sitting next to it in the review photo? Did you look at the date of the review (9-10 months after the iPhone was shown to the world, and long after rumours of an Apple phone started)? Did you bother to click as far as this link in which you can clearly see that it looks nothing like an iDevice.? As well as the slide out-keyboard and built in stand (which at least shows a bit of thinking different), it has a wide, raised bezel and an inset screen - nothing like the iPhone/iPad's totally flat glass front.
And it seems this is a standard practice at Apple, they aren't afraid of blatantly lying in ads as well:
http://i.imgur.com/huWri.jpg [imgur.com]
You think that Apple grabbed a still from their Star Trek DVD, pimped it, and stuck it in their ad? Not a chance - it would look like crap (by professional typesetting standards, MPEG grabs always do - see the left-hand imgaes) and the studio wouldn't tolerate that.
Far more likely it was one of a pack of publicity stills sent out by the studio to multiple TV/computer manufacturers, retail stores, catalog firms who were in on a product placement deal, and you can bet that the 4:3 version was pimped to look good before it left the studio. Note the position of the "Star Trek" logo (again, the studios wouldn't trust licensees to do that right) - that's not a crop & zoom on a widescreen still.
So, yeah, that picture will have been pimped to hell, but not necessarily by Apple. Everything in adverts has been manipulated to look good (there will have been a "simulated image" disclaimer somewhere on the page) deal with it.
Yes, Apple have had their wrists slapped for false advertising in the past (they were banged to rights when they said the iPhone could access "all of the web" conveniently ignoring the bits that were in Flash or Java). Did anybody say they were angels?
No, its the ones who think that the Galaxy Tab looks more like a Palm Pilot or Star Trek PADD than an iPad who need to listen to what their eyes are telling them.
- Abusing an Apple critic. Check.
They started it with their "fanboi detector" troll.
Congrats. You are the Mactard of the week. How does it feel to be a douchebag?
Well, you've just called me out for abusing people, so how does it feel to be a total hypocrite?
For those that want to, the instructions are readily available (Search for "create lion installation disk") from reputable sites.
Yes - I know all about that and it Worked For Me. So, the question is, why didn't Apple stick a nice friendly "Create Lion Installation Disk" button in the installer? That would make it useful for people who are quite capable of inserting a blank DVD but not technical enough to dig inside an app bundle and find an obscurely-named.dmg file. Instead, you have to remember to stop the installer auto-running because it deletes itself after a successful install. Then you're back on Google trying to find out how to get the App Store to let you re-download it.
Anyway, that's my home machines sorted out - now, there's the 3 people at work for whom I will, at some time in the future, need to purchase Lion for - legitimately. Currently the options seem to be: (a) Bulk licensing: $29 per seat - sounds fine but minimum order 20 seats - and you still get to download and make your own disc, or (b) buy 5 USB sticks at $69 a pop or (c) buy everybody a $30 iTunes voucher and get them to buy it on their personal App Store accounts (which is fine until someone leaves, or gets upgraded, and you want to pass their Mac on to someone else). None of them are totally unworkable, but it doesn't make life easy - Apple clearly have forgotten their roots in the garage and subscribed to the "Small business = less than 100 employees" nonsense (plus, lots of people in large businesses will have relatively small, often self-supporting, groups of Mac users).
You do realize that without (literal) original sin, garden of Eden, etc., Christianity turns into "some guy a long time ago said to be good or else"... right?
Yeah, but a few years ago there was a remake in which a cute kid convinced Keanau Reeves to let us off provided we agreed to cycle to work.
see how much piss can be extracted from a horse without repercussions.
You've been to an American beer factory before...
God no. At least horse piss tastes of something.
Disclaimer: the USA contains many fine smaller breweries producing really nice beer (although some of the microbreweries do seem to serve it before it has matured properly, but then a beer that tastes of malt is still better than a Bud).
And anyone who thinks Apple was the one who invented the "black slab" falls right back into the prior category.
Where did I say "Apple invented the black slab"?
Apple didn't invent the black slab. Prior to the iPhone, black slabs existed but most popular smartphones looked more like blackberries or downsized IPAQs. Apple popularized a particular style of black slab with two hugely successful products. After this, several major manufactures come up with competing devices which had rather similar black-slab designs.
If you think these manufacturers got their inspiration from some conceptual model from Xerox in 1978, Lt Uhura's black Bakelite notepad from Star Trek, or a 2003 electronic picture frame, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might like to buy.
Except that the iPad and iPhone were not the first to use the design and certainly won't be the last.
Pre-iPhone, popular smartphones tended to look like this (HTC) or this (Blackberry), this (Nokia), this, or even this (HTC touch, roughly contemporary with the first iPhone). Now, I'm not saying that there were no black slab phones before that, but I certainly didn't have to conveniently ignore any when I looked quickly on Wikipedia for some pre-iPhone smartphones. It confirms what everybody really knows: pre-iPhone smartphones mainly looked like Blackberries or shrunken HP IPAQs, Even post-iPhone Androids started off with a distinctive "chin" design. As for the iPad, well, everybody knows it is "just a big iPhone". No, sorry, the current crop of high-end smartphones have self-evidently taken massive inspiration from the iPhone - a few examples of (not very successful) pre-iPhone black slabs don't change that. Whether that entitles Apple to legal protection, I'm not so sure.
Of course, ultimately, Arthur C Clarke has prior art on black slabs (excuse me while I re-scale an image of the iPhone to 4:9 aspect ratio).
And anybody who thinks that the current spate of "black slab" touchscreen tablets and phones were original creations and not derivative in any way from the iPad/iPhone has a bigger reality distortion field than Steve Jobs. Whether it makes sense for the courts to try and draw the line here is another matter - there doesnt seem to be much evidence of people going out to buy an iPad and coming home with a Galaxy.
Also, anybody who thinks that re-sizing two images out of dozens (when the sizes of the devices are given accurately elsewhere and the claims dont even hinge on size) - or showing a screen one click away from the homescreen - will get Apple's case thrown out should go and read Groklaw to see how much piss can be extracted from a court without repercussions.
Finally (note to the editors) anybody who describes merely re-sizing an image as "Photoshopping" is in no position to lecture people about overstating their claim.
NB: Lion Server is a joke, 100% mark up to get Lion on physical media is a ripoff, I'm not ready to give up my DVD drive just yet, and I'd like to be able to upgrade my own hard drive please. So don't call me a fanboi.
Slashdot Mirror
Real machines have a command line and obscure commands you have to guess be cause there's no documentation provided.
The 90s called and suggested you upgrade from Mac OS 9. Since they switched to Unix, Macs have been seriously real machines: start up Terminal on OS X and you'll be in Unix heaven with all your obscure command line friends. You can vi, troff and yacc to your heart's content and (joy of joys) use proper symlinks. Install the free developer tools and you can haz gcc. Install MacPorts and you can have all the usual FOSS subjects compiled to your taste.
how about you talk to them, before talking about 'straw man'?
Seriously? From the first link: "I have no seen anyone say it's impossible to launch a MITM attack with a certificate that is verified, but it's much harder.". All the rest are saying that, without a CA, https: offers no protection against MITM. That is not remotely the same as "guaranteeing" (your words) that there is no MITM.
Perhaps people shouldn't bother locking their doors: a locked door is no guarantee that you won't get burgled.
- bullshit. I mistrust every single CA signed certificate and I want a fingerprint.
Hurrah for you. Now, how do you know that the fingerprint is valid? Did your bank send you a fingerprint by mail when you signed up to their online banking service? No? Complaints on a postcard to your bank - not Mozilla. How do you think online shopping would go if the store had to snail-mail you a fingerprint on headed paper before you could buy anything? You'd do background checks on the store to check that they weren't a bunch of phishers with a room over a fish shop in Somwherzistahn and a big box of letterhead, of course,
If you run a website with a self-signed certificate, it means you are asking your users to unconditionally trust your identity.
- nonsense, I am providing the fingerprint information and instructions on how to compare the data when accepting the certificate.
Dear Mr Reman Mur,
At Megabank we are valuing your continuing security. Please logging in immediately to your acnount at [a href="www.phisherland.xxx?url=www.megabank.com"]www.megabank.com[/a] to confirming your status.
To value your scurity we are use a "Self Sined Certificat" which is more scure than usual. You should checking the Certificate Fingerprint as A6:16:23:91:16:91:BE:82:F3:9A:22:45:C7:19:37:19:CC:AF:11:44 to ensuring it is validated.
Yours
NBWANGI ONITALI
Megabnak Online Scurity Officer
...yeah, that works. The most reliable security feature should be the crook's inability to spell and/or not spam people with phishing attacks for banks they don't use. Somehow, that doesn't seem to be the case.
(Since I've had emails from perfectly legitimate companies who thought it would be a jolly good idea to send out emails with URLs redirected via some sort of analytics company - so the URLs looked pretty much like that - and my bank regularly cold-calls me and asks me to answer security questions - its hard to be too critical of people who can't spot bogosity).
Its the banks and major e-commerce sites' job to fix this situation, not the browser authors who have to adapt to what is out there. However, if you're looking for a usable identity verification system that doesn't rely, at some stage, on people paying an intermediary to vouch for their online identity, you'll have a long search.
That battle was lost on Slashdot thanks to Apple fans and Microsoft haters.
Hmm.
One of these companies pioneered "product activation" whereby, if your OS thought you had changed your hardware enough to pass some (secret) threshold it bricked itself until you phoned the publisher for an activation code.
One of these companies, until recently, charged you 3x the OEM price for a "Full Retail" copy of its OS that wasn't perpetually locked to the first machine you installed it on
One of these companies released something called "plays for sure"...
One of these companies produced something called "Genuine Advantage"...
On the other hand...
One of these companies actually managed to get the record companies to allow a legal online music store with reasonable prices
One of these companies managed to drop DRM on its music offerings once they acquired some music industry muscle
One of these companies left you the option of burning the audio to disc.
One of these companies lets you buy software from its online store once, and install it on all of your computers/devices.
One of these companies actually charges significantly less when you buy software by download
One of these companies has told the Blu Ray consortium to go fish (I know somone with a BluRay player in their PC - after one year it refused to play newly released discs unless you bought an upgrade to the player software).
Both of these companies could distribute non-DRMd movies, but their catalog would only consist of a handful of indy/creative commons films which you can download for free anyway (and which play quite nicely on a non-jailbroken iDevice after a quick format shift) because the studios won't budge without DRM.
Well how much longer will the opinions can stay the same with all the evidence that CAs do not in fact guarantee that there is no MITM?
Total straw man. Nobody who remotely understands the system thinks that CAs guarantee no MITM. You could go and see the webmaster in person, shake their hand, look them in the eye, meet their parents, run a background security check, ask for three forms of photo ID and proof of address and then ask for their certificate fingerprint. That would reassure you that, if you are being scammed, you are at least being scammed by the professionals, but it would still represent the weakest link in any chain using decent strong encryption.
So, it boils down to risk. CAs are a million miles short of being a perfect, secure solution but they are far, far better than self-signed certificates. There may be better solutions in theory, but they're not available in practice - and none of them are going to be perfect. In a perfect world, banks and credit card companies would have stepped up to the plate and created a better secure system for banking and ecommerce, but they haven't. What the clients and customers want is a "transparent" identity verification system - and that is impossible to make totally secure. CAs are the best game in town.
More importantly: who is talking about browser being responsible to figure out whether there is MITM or not with a https and a self signed cert?
If they're ever going to display "the padlock" they need to perform both encryption and identity checking to check off on the "due diligence". That's de-facto established practice for browsers. If the ID check is invalid because of a corrupt CA, its not their fault.
Browsers aren't written for you - they're written for non-technical users who will mostly be visiting professional websites, and who certainly aren't qualified to judge whether a MITM attack is a significant danger to whatever they are doing. The best advice to such people is to avoid websites with self-signed certificates like the plague. If you tried to log on to your bank, and were warned that it was using a self-signed certificate, you'd run a mile - someone's personal blog, maybe not so much. The browser can't distinguish those scenarios so it offers its user the "least worst" advice.
If you run a website with a self-signed certificate, it means you are asking your users to unconditionally trust your identity. If your users know you personally, fine, but if you are dealing with strangers then that is a bloody irresponsible thing to do: thank the browser writers for covering your back. Either get a proper certificate; create your own CA and persuade your users to add the root cert to their browsers; or - when users call you to ask why their browser is warning them - smile and talk them through checking the fingerprint.
If you can dream up a better solution than CAs and get it widely adopted then the world will thank you. Currently, though, they're better than nothing.
They lost a court case in the UK over this a couple of years back - for strange historical reasons, you pay VAT on crisps, but not on cakes.
The strange historical reasons being that some bright spark thought they could be really clever by only charging VAT on "non-essential" items, thus creating endless work for lawyers and committees arguing over what was "essential".
...and as anybody who watches QI knows, the official definition is that "cakes" go hard when they are stale, whereas biscuits* go soft.
* That's biscuits as in British English, i.e. cookies or crackers - not scones (which I guess are cakes).
The issue is that studies have shown that a tablet actually doesn't give you eye strain
...but the comparison isn't tablet vs. laptop, it is reflective e-ink vs. illuminated LCD.
I have both a tablet and a Kindle: the tablet is better for reference books, because it has a larger screen, color, and the navigation/zooming/panning/following links is far better with a touchscreen and a rapidly updateable display.
However, for sitting down and reading a novel, the kindle is far more restful: apart from any "eyestrain" issues, it has better visibility in sunlight (tablets aren't brilliant outdoors) is smaller, lighter and the battery lasts far longer than a tablet. You could add a touchscreen - but because e-ink is so slow to update you couldn't make it as tactile as iOS/Android.
Tablets and readers aren't going to converge until there is a display that combines the clarity and power consumption of e-ink with the speed and colour reproduction of LCD (e.g. the electrowetting system that is in development). I haven't tried an OLPD-style hybrid display - if Amazon go for that they might have something.
Does anyone make a tablet that allows you to create things like music/art/literature?
That's not what they are for, although I don't see anything to stop you writing a book on a tablet and there are music/sequencer and sketchpad Apps around.
The overwhelmingly useful application of a tablet is an instant-on email terminal and web browser that you can use while sitting in a comfy chair. For creative work, you'll soon be reaching for the "proper" computer.
You don't have to buy one if you don't want it.
Your problem is that you are looking at a tablet as a replacement for a computer. Thats not what they are the for, unless you are a very light computer user.
There are very few laptops that I'd care to use while sitting in a comfy chair, checking email and browsing the web. The web and email experience is incomparably better than using a smartphone - and is also better than on the smaller "true" netbooks (because tablet OSs are better tailored to the screen size), the ergonomics (for comfy chair mode) are incomparably better than a laptop. The battery life is vastly better than laptops, and the instant on/off is actually instant.
The keyboard is fine for short emails and note taking at meetings. They're much less obtrusive at meetings than laptops, and you're not scrabbling for a mains socket after the first hour.
I'm not sure what you think the alternative is for mobile movie watching - unlike a laptop you can use a tablet on your lap, and there are plenty of cases that act as stands.
Game wise, tablets are not hot for FPS shooters, but they are great for other sorts of games (you may have missed the memo about casual gaming). RTS, tower defense, puzzle games, card/board games can all be great. Think "Plants v Zombies" rather than "Call of Duty".
I bought the original netbook, the EEE PC, when it came out, hoping that it would be good for the above. It wasn't, mainly because of battery life, crappy ergonomics and trying to run a desktop operating system on a small screen - turned out, even the iPod Touch was better (even though it had a small screen, the UI was designed to maximise it). The saving grace would have been that the first netbooks were impulse-buy cheap. Instead of solving those problems, the netbook market morphed into small, entry level Windows laptops, and the price crept up. Tablets replace the original netbook concept, and while they are more expensive, they do the job far better.
Only because (shocking, I know) there is nothing distinctive enough in Apple's design.
There's plenty distinctive about the iPhone's design. Looks like the page I linked to above is blocked outside the UK, but try looking at the range of smartphones on the websites of some local vendors. There are plenty of competing smartphones that are, basically, dark colored rectangles with a large screen (as determined by function) yet still look nothing like an iPhone. There are a few, predominantly Samsung, that look remarkably like an iPhone, at least in the publicity photos.
It looks like Apple's problem is that its actual "community design" registration needed to be a bit more specific, and has come over as an attempt to "patent" a black slab.
Typical.
Samsung gets away with copying the distinctive look of the iPhone* to an extent that most other smartphone vendors have managed to avoid.
Then they get done for infringing a stupid software patent about scrolling photos, which shouldn't even exist in Europe but has been sneaked in dressed up as a hardware patent, which could be a royal pain for anybody trying to make a smartphone.
* Forget Apple's allegedly doctored/cherry-picked images - just have a look at a random phone vendor's page and see which ones look just like the iPhone... and blow me down, why are O2 using Apple's "fake" image of the Galaxy S: you know, the one that displaying the grid of icons instead of the Android home screen? Apart, perhaps, from the HTC HD7, all the other phones manage to incorporate the essential features of a touchscreen smartphone without looking just like an iPhone.
There's an app for that! (NSFW)
Seriously though, after paying shitload of money, you still have to buy dongles and addons for basic functionalities?? Fuck that.
So which of the competing tablets comes with a full size SD card port (which you need for cameras) and a full-sized USB port as standard? The Samsung is just as bad as the iPad in terms of needing extra dongles, the Asus Transformer only has these in the optional keyboard/dock, the Xoom has microUSB (OK if you're camera also has a standard socket so you can use a standard cable, but you'd need an adaptor for a USB stick or SD card). Some have microSD slots, but those are intended for semi-permanent memory expansion & often a fiddle to remove (and didn't work when, e.g. the Xoom was first launched).
Its also sensible if you're trying to keep your tablet small: if you include dongles, the iPad has pretty good connectivity: VGA, HDMI, component, composite, SD card and limited USB (photo transfer or USB keyboard) not to mention iPod dock-compatible devices. Very few people are going to need all of those, so why bulk up the tablet with the connectors?
If the competitors were seriously pushing Apple on price then Apple might have to sweeten the deal by bundling more adapters - but they aren't , so they don't.
I wonder if that's why Apple is trying to physically get Samsung off the shelves in Europe. There doesn't seem to be much danger of competing Android tablets decimating iPad sales - its pretty clear now that they are not going to succeed unless they are (a) significantly cheaper than the iPad and/or (b) offer something obviously different (not just incrementally better specs such as a slightly faster processor or higher res camera which will be leapfrogged by Apple in a few months time).
So why is Apple trying to block them? Whatever the rights/wrongs of their case, I can't see it succeeding long-term (at most, it will just establish what combination of features make something an iPad lookalike rather than just a tablet so competitors can work around it) - and it risks a Streisand effect. But if the Android Tablet train is about to hit the buffers, getting them off the shelves for a few months now would prevent any more fire sales in the run-up to Xmas.
Personally, I'm still waiting for this which actually seems to tick the "offer something clearly distinct from an iPad" box - but its been "coming soon" for ever and, from the link, I see they've brilliantly decided to up the minimum memory and push up the price. Otherwise, I'll stick with my iPad 1 until we see (a) what MotoGoogle will do or (b) whether the rumors of an Amazon tablet are true.
I can't wait to see the reviews!
What a shameless load of BS.
1) "Innovative iPhone" Nokia Maemo, 2007: http://www.engadget.com/photos/nokia-n810-hands-on/#443985
2) "Innovative iPad" (yep, rounded corners, rectangular shape, large screen, it's such a hard concept...)
Seriously?
Did you even read what you linked to?
Did you look at what was sitting next to it in the review photo? Did you look at the date of the review (9-10 months after the iPhone was shown to the world, and long after rumours of an Apple phone started)? Did you bother to click as far as this link in which you can clearly see that it looks nothing like an iDevice.? As well as the slide out-keyboard and built in stand (which at least shows a bit of thinking different), it has a wide, raised bezel and an inset screen - nothing like the iPhone/iPad's totally flat glass front.
And it seems this is a standard practice at Apple, they aren't afraid of blatantly lying in ads as well: http://i.imgur.com/huWri.jpg [imgur.com]
You think that Apple grabbed a still from their Star Trek DVD, pimped it, and stuck it in their ad? Not a chance - it would look like crap (by professional typesetting standards, MPEG grabs always do - see the left-hand imgaes) and the studio wouldn't tolerate that.
Far more likely it was one of a pack of publicity stills sent out by the studio to multiple TV/computer manufacturers, retail stores, catalog firms who were in on a product placement deal, and you can bet that the 4:3 version was pimped to look good before it left the studio. Note the position of the "Star Trek" logo (again, the studios wouldn't trust licensees to do that right) - that's not a crop & zoom on a widescreen still.
So, yeah, that picture will have been pimped to hell, but not necessarily by Apple. Everything in adverts has been manipulated to look good (there will have been a "simulated image" disclaimer somewhere on the page) deal with it.
Yes, Apple have had their wrists slapped for false advertising in the past (they were banged to rights when they said the iPhone could access "all of the web" conveniently ignoring the bits that were in Flash or Java). Did anybody say they were angels?
I think Palm had "black slab touchscreen tablets" covered in the mid 90's.
Do you really want to play that game?
Palm Pilot (~1996)
Able Neutron Massage Pod (~1993)
...and, of course, the real motherlode, like half of modern personal computing, dates back to PARC in the 70s and the Dynabook which probably did influence Apple - but would not otherwise have seen the light of day, and Apple paid for access to the PARC work (hope Xerox held on to those shares).
...but you'd need some real photoshopping to make any of them look like an iPad.
- Blind defense of Mac Originality. Check.
No, its the ones who think that the Galaxy Tab looks more like a Palm Pilot or Star Trek PADD than an iPad who need to listen to what their eyes are telling them.
- Abusing an Apple critic. Check.
They started it with their "fanboi detector" troll.
Congrats. You are the Mactard of the week. How does it feel to be a douchebag?
Well, you've just called me out for abusing people, so how does it feel to be a total hypocrite?
For those that want to, the instructions are readily available (Search for "create lion installation disk") from reputable sites.
Yes - I know all about that and it Worked For Me. So, the question is, why didn't Apple stick a nice friendly "Create Lion Installation Disk" button in the installer? That would make it useful for people who are quite capable of inserting a blank DVD but not technical enough to dig inside an app bundle and find an obscurely-named .dmg file. Instead, you have to remember to stop the installer auto-running because it deletes itself after a successful install. Then you're back on Google trying to find out how to get the App Store to let you re-download it.
Anyway, that's my home machines sorted out - now, there's the 3 people at work for whom I will, at some time in the future, need to purchase Lion for - legitimately. Currently the options seem to be: (a) Bulk licensing: $29 per seat - sounds fine but minimum order 20 seats - and you still get to download and make your own disc, or (b) buy 5 USB sticks at $69 a pop or (c) buy everybody a $30 iTunes voucher and get them to buy it on their personal App Store accounts (which is fine until someone leaves, or gets upgraded, and you want to pass their Mac on to someone else). None of them are totally unworkable, but it doesn't make life easy - Apple clearly have forgotten their roots in the garage and subscribed to the "Small business = less than 100 employees" nonsense (plus, lots of people in large businesses will have relatively small, often self-supporting, groups of Mac users).
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/PADD#General_Specifications
Very funny. What's even funnier is that precisely none of those images look remotely like either an iPad or a Galaxy Tab. Do try again.
You do realize that without (literal) original sin, garden of Eden, etc., Christianity turns into "some guy a long time ago said to be good or else"... right?
Yeah, but a few years ago there was a remake in which a cute kid convinced Keanau Reeves to let us off provided we agreed to cycle to work.
see how much piss can be extracted from a horse without repercussions.
You've been to an American beer factory before...
God no. At least horse piss tastes of something.
Disclaimer: the USA contains many fine smaller breweries producing really nice beer (although some of the microbreweries do seem to serve it before it has matured properly, but then a beer that tastes of malt is still better than a Bud).
And anyone who thinks Apple was the one who invented the "black slab" falls right back into the prior category.
Where did I say "Apple invented the black slab"?
Apple didn't invent the black slab. Prior to the iPhone, black slabs existed but most popular smartphones looked more like blackberries or downsized IPAQs. Apple popularized a particular style of black slab with two hugely successful products. After this, several major manufactures come up with competing devices which had rather similar black-slab designs.
If you think these manufacturers got their inspiration from some conceptual model from Xerox in 1978, Lt Uhura's black Bakelite notepad from Star Trek, or a 2003 electronic picture frame, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might like to buy.
Except that the iPad and iPhone were not the first to use the design and certainly won't be the last.
Pre-iPhone, popular smartphones tended to look like this (HTC) or this (Blackberry), this (Nokia), this, or even this (HTC touch, roughly contemporary with the first iPhone). Now, I'm not saying that there were no black slab phones before that, but I certainly didn't have to conveniently ignore any when I looked quickly on Wikipedia for some pre-iPhone smartphones. It confirms what everybody really knows: pre-iPhone smartphones mainly looked like Blackberries or shrunken HP IPAQs, Even post-iPhone Androids started off with a distinctive "chin" design. As for the iPad, well, everybody knows it is "just a big iPhone". No, sorry, the current crop of high-end smartphones have self-evidently taken massive inspiration from the iPhone - a few examples of (not very successful) pre-iPhone black slabs don't change that. Whether that entitles Apple to legal protection, I'm not so sure.
Of course, ultimately, Arthur C Clarke has prior art on black slabs (excuse me while I re-scale an image of the iPhone to 4:9 aspect ratio).
And anybody who thinks that the current spate of "black slab" touchscreen tablets and phones were original creations and not derivative in any way from the iPad/iPhone has a bigger reality distortion field than Steve Jobs. Whether it makes sense for the courts to try and draw the line here is another matter - there doesnt seem to be much evidence of people going out to buy an iPad and coming home with a Galaxy.
Also, anybody who thinks that re-sizing two images out of dozens (when the sizes of the devices are given accurately elsewhere and the claims dont even hinge on size) - or showing a screen one click away from the homescreen - will get Apple's case thrown out should go and read Groklaw to see how much piss can be extracted from a court without repercussions.
Finally (note to the editors) anybody who describes merely re-sizing an image as "Photoshopping" is in no position to lecture people about overstating their claim.
NB: Lion Server is a joke, 100% mark up to get Lion on physical media is a ripoff, I'm not ready to give up my DVD drive just yet, and I'd like to be able to upgrade my own hard drive please. So don't call me a fanboi.
Well, if they cast Nathan Fillion as Deckard and Summer Glau as Rachael they'll have all the Browncoats turn up to see it.