You are right on those points concerning the usability. However, there is another side of the choosing of comodity ATMs (machines) running with Windows-type OSes:
. Driver, driver and driver
Banking is indeed a competitive business. They have a forsight into the "multimedia" presentations on banking devices, i.e. Japanase-style of banking with pictures and sounds of pokemons and what-nots. That is the future of banking.
Multimedia and its offerings require "state of the art" softwares and hardwares. Linux is a fine embedded-type OS, but its maturity and driver-support still have much to desire for.
Old/. posts also mentioned one of the major benefits of Windows 's abundance of software drivers : multi-lingal support circa 1990s.
Other benefits are supporting for touch-screens, sound for the deaf, transition to smaller and newer devices (PDAs, phones), etc...
Everyday Joe and Joan's personal experiences with Windows OSes do not concern the world of Windows-based ATM boxen. They are running many fortified version of Windows, services turned off and fewer drivers loaded. Already, the choice of Windows OS to run ATM proves to be a working success, with international Citibank(s) in the lead.
It's a fairly cool gimmick, but it's like painting useless stripes or graphics on the side of a car and calling it a "Special Edition" and charging $3000 more for it -- it doesn't really make the product any more useful at accomplishing its intended purpose...
You apparently haven't seen the market for "Type-R" goods.
Besides, who said it was targeted toward slashdot geeks? Your intended purpose might solely be the storing data, gettingfrom A to B... However capitalism and the force of market also give subburban SUVs, cars with seat warmers, and cars with those annoying flashy stripes.
I'd vote for white-box, no-frill car.
Really, it just serves to mask that they haven't managed to innovate beyond 54x write speeds.
Why? Is there a need to shave 15 seconds off the time it takes to write a CD?
The car looks faster, but the speed limit on the roads is still the same as if you bought a standard edition car.
Sport car segment, hot rod market would not exist in your universe then. What is the point of 0-to-60 mph in a few seconds if you can't do it on the road?
While we're on the subject, can anyone recommend a good id3 tag editor/mp3-renamer as a replacement for realjukebox? Getting rid of it would cut aobut 20 minutes off of my reinstall times.
http://musicbrainz.org
Unfortunately, there is only a Windows client at this point. I hope they will help more help soon.
Re:Beware of altitutue or extreme temps!!!
on
iPod Mini Sells Out
·
· Score: 1
One of the reasons why I stay away from Microdrives is that I hike a lot in the mountains, and most microdrives don't seem to like being above 10k feet.
I have used my IBM 1GB Microdrive over 10K ft several times and it worked okay, albeit during day trips only: San Gorgonio (11,499 ft) and San Jacinto (10,804 ft). The camera used is a Canon G1.
I do agree with you about the battery life tho. I tend to bring 2 extra with me just in case.
I'm also worried about what happens when it's extremely hot or cold, though that worry has not been proven out as much I think.
I went up San G during March, there was snow but it was not that cold. I donot know if I want to go up when it is extremely cold to know. but I have also been to Las Vegas during DeFCON 9 or something when the temp was 117F, Death Valley during May, and Burningman 2001-2003 during duststorms and winds up to 50-60 miles/hr (2003). Camera has been working fine with the Microdrive in all situations.
I think that IBM build much better devices than many of the companies out there. They do grade it to 10000ft in their specs, but I think it is a conservative spec, just like Intel's chips.
My opinions might change later this fall when I attemp Whitney . Just in case, I will bring an extra CF.:-) Also I will try to live several (2-3) days over 10K ft (San Bernadino 9 Peaks Challenge) to see if the Microdrive works after several days up in the Ten Thousand Feet Range.
My 1 GB IBM microdrive has been working fine in various conditions: extreme heat of Death Valley and Black Rock Desert for period of up to a week of continous heat of 100F+, cold weather, and high elevation up to 11,499 ft of San Gorgonio Peak. I will try 14,000 ft this year and see if it works as well. I believe that it would, pending manufacturer's specs.
I dropped it many many times from the usual hight of 5-6 ft to carpets, sandy desert floors and forest trails. Still clicking and working. I use it mainly in a Canon G1 camera. It has been recording about 9000 pictures during the last 3+ years.
The problem is that I do not recall any of these products being advertised. And I did not run out and purchase any of these items after seeing the movies neither.
I think the advertisement of smaller, less expensive ticket items like soft drinks, food, cigs and drugs are very effective on popular culture. (-;
Diebold sells the hardware and driver supports. Anything else needs to be customized and supported by the banks.
I suspect though, that those machines mentioned in the article might be from some of the newer ATM operators. They are the companies that put up ATMs at 7/11 and other convinient stores. They might have bought generic ATM from Diebold and run stock applciations.
The reason the story has so many FUDs is that the ATM network(s) is very secured. Recent regulation changes allow almost any company to run ATMs like the ones at 7/11 stores. And this is the kind of ATMS that were infected with Nachi.
Had the problem widespread, shouldn't both CNN and Fox already jump on it? Remember, go where the money trail is. (-;
And that brings up another issue: if you withdraw from Citibank and your bank is Fleet, how would you communicate without worrying about falsified "XML" data? I supposed some kind of authentication system of sorts, special encryption and whatnot. That's for the professionals to figure out. I just come up with ideas.;)
Thanks for reminding. You should have trademarked/patented your idea, like 50 years ago. You would have been rich.:-)
Linux would have been a better choice, BSD even more so. And there are tons of smaller OS's that could have been used that are ovscure enough to write viruses off as well.
GNU/Linux is not a good choice, nor is BSD. None of these OSes support the encryption requirements that banks want. They want hardware devices for security. And by chance, none of the forementioned OSes have any decent driver support for them.
BTW, the choice of OS is the bank's. Not Diebold's.
And the banking application is written by the individual bank. Again not Diebold's.
This whole story and thread contain a lot of FUDs.
. Diebold manufactures generic ATMs. . Banks buy them, erase everything, put in their own customized and limited OS (used to be OS/2, now Windows NT/2K) . Banks also put in their in-house software to run the ATM. They want the OS that would support the latest and better encryption hardware module out there. Hence the choice of Windows for its plethora support of almost every piece of hardware. . Banks also use their own intranet, secured and accessed only by approved IPs. . Banks maintain and update the OS/drivers/apps themselves, usually after rigorous testing and certification. It is not likely they would just apply right away any patch-of-the-week from Redmond. Patches would be applied remotely, with encryption.
I do not see any reputable bank in the US would use stocked Diebold provided OS and application. Therefore the blame on Diebold is unfounded.
Despite their shady dealing with the voting machines, Diebold-made ATMs are very stable and solid, hardware-wise. Software problems are the banks' own problems.
Disclaimer: I am not working with/for Diebold. I used to work with ATMs.
The offset code changes every time the PIN changes. Your ATM card only contain the original offset code which is _not_ changed. The changed offset codes are on the server side (for safe keeping). And the server that has your data is not running QNX, or OS/2 or Windows or Unix either.
Every time you log in, both of your CIN and PIN will be encrypted and sent to the server which will compute the offset code and authorize your transactions.
And touchscreens blow for an ATM. What about blind people? Maybe it'll be excusable in the future, with tactile feedback and better touchscreens- fun.
Citibank has ATMS with special screens and audio cues provided with headphones attached to the side of the machines.
"Clients with vision and reading disabilities can get cash and make deposits at our Citibank ATM locations via special screens and audio cues. Ask for instructions at your nearest financial center"
Why on earth would someone buy ATMs based on Windows?
Many readers, and average ATM users do not know much about the ATM machines and their operations. And surely banking institutions prefer it that way.
First of all, there was a revolution in the banking industries about a decade ago. Back then, most of the big banks owned their own little companies to produce their own ATM machines. Those who couldn't afford to design and build their own ordered out, prayed for lucks. The old machines are proprietary, special pieces of hardware to perform a mediocre job over and over again. Every time a bank needs a new feature, it would take forever to fix or change the design. Therefore the industry moved to a generic design, generic OS and specialized software, similar to the IBM compatible model. Hence design cost, development and maintenance cost were all lowered.
There are several generic ATM makers. NCR, Siemens, Diebolds, etc... They all make generic ATM boxes consisting of cash dispenser, card reader, generic display AND a typical AT/ATX box with normal PCI slots, CD-ROM, standard NIC, etc. Each major bank then set their development teams to work on the hardware platform. After OS/2 's demise, the logical choice and the only choice would be running Microsoft Windows NT.
There are several advantages: . Generic drivers are always plentiful. . Special drivers to control specialized hw are supported by the manufacturers, not the banks = less cost. . basically one single standard operating environment = quick change, fix, update = easy management...
That's said. NO bank would trust any 3rd party to develop and maintain their ATMs. They all do it themselves. That means:
. Developing their own NT environments, no stock OS install, limited install (no games, no std apps) . Developing their own platform and applications that talk to the legacy banking networks. . Appending complicate encryption using hardware security module (HSM) via PCI slots. . Setting up their own automated patching and updating system (not SMS) for thousand of machines located across the country...
Hence, Diebold ATM mentioned in the article is all hogwash. The banking institution was not named, and I doubt that it would be any big ones. I believe that the machines could have been running stock OS and generic ATM apps had they belongs to those shady ATM operators that set up machines in 7/11 store and other convenient stores.
For almost all of us out there, we all have put our hard-earned money into some decent banking institutions. Right?
Admittedly the western world uses a ton of resources, but it also uses them as cleanly as possible on a per Joule basis. Check out coal fired plants in China sometime. The air pollution in cities like Beijing and Mexico City makes LA look like a dream.
More or less, the Western world exploits the third world more efficiently. We pollute the third world countries to produce the finished products for us and dirty their places instead of ours (disregard the whole Earth in general). Look around LA, you not see much of coal plants do you? Do you see any electrical plants or any smoke stacks at all? (Besides the oil refineries in Long Beach area). Energy is produced elsewhere, like hundreds if not thousand of miles away.
Not only we exploit the third world for production of goods, we also utilize their land for disposal of used and broken stuff. We use their landfills for dirtied computer parts, and bi-products of our industries.
I would say the "capitalist with controls" western nations are ecologically lighter than the third world in every way except the total amount of greenhouse gas produced.
Everything that is capable of displaying video, that means your video card will be set up to not to play with the flag. It means mplayer, windows media player, and the rest will have to be able reconize the flag
They might have to jail a lot of the geeks who can read, understand and able to modify (OSS) codes.
importation and distribution. you can make ecstasy in foreign countries, but can ya sell it here?
Yes. MDMA pills are sold at many places (all-night clubs and music "festivals"). Not legally, of course. But that is the whole point of the parent post and the rules/regulations mentioned.
Indeed, importation of such devices can be made illegal. However with the current direction of global economy, and the advancement of the general purpose computer (to function as any of these devices via _legal_ hardware modules, [i.e. soundcard, tuner cards] and software), it would be very hard for government to do enforce their not-so-well-thought rules and regulations.
There are many examples: England's TV tax, Canada's data-CD tax, the US Audio-CD tax, etc...
The mentioned research has the tempreature increased at the rate of 2 degree F per minute. It is too fast and not gradually enough, I think. What if the rate of temperature change is slow(er) enough so the frog can acclimate up to a point where it body's fuctions are all messed up for it to jump out?
Of course, I can't do any of suc hresearch on my own, hence the question. Please, pretty?:-)
Data is transmitted encrypted, on a seperate network.
Bank-own AMTs are very secure. Not so with those tiny toyts at 7/11 and convinient stores.
Software on those bank-own ATMs are also developed in-house. I know no banks that actually use any software (except OEM device drivers) from Diebold to drive their own ATMs.
Slashdot Mirror
You are right on those points concerning the usability. However, there is another side of the choosing of comodity ATMs (machines) running with Windows-type OSes: . Driver, driver and driver Banking is indeed a competitive business. They have a forsight into the "multimedia" presentations on banking devices, i.e. Japanase-style of banking with pictures and sounds of pokemons and what-nots. That is the future of banking. Multimedia and its offerings require "state of the art" softwares and hardwares. Linux is a fine embedded-type OS, but its maturity and driver-support still have much to desire for. Old /. posts also mentioned one of the major benefits of Windows 's abundance of software drivers : multi-lingal support circa 1990s.
Other benefits are supporting for touch-screens, sound for the deaf, transition to smaller and newer devices (PDAs, phones), etc...
Everyday Joe and Joan's personal experiences with Windows OSes do not concern the world of Windows-based ATM boxen. They are running many fortified version of Windows, services turned off and fewer drivers loaded. Already, the choice of Windows OS to run ATM proves to be a working success, with international Citibank(s) in the lead.
Feel free to contribute your "codes" into a contribution system(PDF whitepaper).
There are more resource on an "open source" microgrid. In this system, you will get more than a name mentioned in the credit section.
It's a fairly cool gimmick, but it's like painting useless stripes or graphics on the side of a car and calling it a "Special Edition" and charging $3000 more for it -- it doesn't really make the product any more useful at accomplishing its intended purpose...
You apparently haven't seen the market for "Type-R" goods.
Besides, who said it was targeted toward slashdot geeks? Your intended purpose might solely be the storing data, gettingfrom A to B... However capitalism and the force of market also give subburban SUVs, cars with seat warmers, and cars with those annoying flashy stripes.
I'd vote for white-box, no-frill car.
Really, it just serves to mask that they haven't managed to innovate beyond 54x write speeds.
Why? Is there a need to shave 15 seconds off the time it takes to write a CD?
The car looks faster, but the speed limit on the roads is still the same as if you bought a standard edition car.
Sport car segment, hot rod market would not exist in your universe then. What is the point of 0-to-60 mph in a few seconds if you can't do it on the road?
While we're on the subject, can anyone recommend a good id3 tag editor/mp3-renamer as a replacement for realjukebox? Getting rid of it would cut aobut 20 minutes off of my reinstall times.
http://musicbrainz.org
Unfortunately, there is only a Windows client at this point. I hope they will help more help soon.
One of the reasons why I stay away from Microdrives is that I hike a lot in the mountains, and most microdrives don't seem to like being above 10k feet.
:-) Also I will try to live several (2-3) days over 10K ft (San Bernadino 9 Peaks Challenge) to see if the Microdrive works after several days up in the Ten Thousand Feet Range.
I have used my IBM 1GB Microdrive over 10K ft several times and it worked okay, albeit during day trips only: San Gorgonio (11,499 ft) and San Jacinto (10,804 ft). The camera used is a Canon G1.
I do agree with you about the battery life tho. I tend to bring 2 extra with me just in case.
I'm also worried about what happens when it's extremely hot or cold, though that worry has not been proven out as much I think.
I went up San G during March, there was snow but it was not that cold. I donot know if I want to go up when it is extremely cold to know. but I have also been to Las Vegas during DeFCON 9 or something when the temp was 117F, Death Valley during May, and Burningman 2001-2003 during duststorms and winds up to 50-60 miles/hr (2003). Camera has been working fine with the Microdrive in all situations.
I think that IBM build much better devices than many of the companies out there. They do grade it to 10000ft in their specs, but I think it is a conservative spec, just like Intel's chips.
My opinions might change later this fall when I attemp Whitney . Just in case, I will bring an extra CF.
Regards,
You meant Irix/SGI?
Wonderful software and hardware they have/had huh?
Sun must be blind not seeing it. Oh, may be it just the "sun".
Those who would censor ideas might realize that the Internet couldn't tell a good bit from a bad bit if it bit it on its naughty bits.
Best statement ever.
My 1 GB IBM microdrive has been working fine in various conditions: extreme heat of Death Valley and Black Rock Desert for period of up to a week of continous heat of 100F+, cold weather, and high elevation up to 11,499 ft of San Gorgonio Peak. I will try 14,000 ft this year and see if it works as well. I believe that it would, pending manufacturer's specs.
I dropped it many many times from the usual hight of 5-6 ft to carpets, sandy desert floors and forest trails. Still clicking and working. I use it mainly in a Canon G1 camera. It has been recording about 9000 pictures during the last 3+ years.
The problem is that I do not recall any of these products being advertised. And I did not run out and purchase any of these items after seeing the movies neither.
I think the advertisement of smaller, less expensive ticket items like soft drinks, food, cigs and drugs are very effective on popular culture. (-;
You are correct.
Diebold sells the hardware and driver supports. Anything else needs to be customized and supported by the banks.
I suspect though, that those machines mentioned in the article might be from some of the newer ATM operators. They are the companies that put up ATMs at 7/11 and other convinient stores. They might have bought generic ATM from Diebold and run stock applciations.
The reason the story has so many FUDs is that the ATM network(s) is very secured. Recent regulation changes allow almost any company to run ATMs like the ones at 7/11 stores. And this is the kind of ATMS that were infected with Nachi.
Had the problem widespread, shouldn't both CNN and Fox already jump on it? Remember, go where the money trail is. (-;
And that brings up another issue: if you withdraw from Citibank and your bank is Fleet, how would you communicate without worrying about falsified "XML" data? I supposed some kind of authentication system of sorts, special encryption and whatnot. That's for the professionals to figure out. I just come up with ideas. ;)
:-)
Thanks for reminding. You should have trademarked/patented your idea, like 50 years ago. You would have been rich.
Linux would have been a better choice, BSD even more so. And there are tons of smaller OS's that could have been used that are ovscure enough to write viruses off as well.
GNU/Linux is not a good choice, nor is BSD. None of these OSes support the encryption requirements that banks want. They want hardware devices for security. And by chance, none of the forementioned OSes have any decent driver support for them.
BTW, the choice of OS is the bank's. Not Diebold's.
And the banking application is written by the individual bank. Again not Diebold's.
Depends on your definition of secured system. Windows-based ATM are all over the place now that OS/2 had died.
The OS is customized and firewalled from all except its authorized servers.
There is no customer's date on these boxes. They are for authorization and presentation only.
This whole story and thread contain a lot of FUDs.
. Diebold manufactures generic ATMs.
. Banks buy them, erase everything, put in their own customized and limited OS (used to be OS/2, now Windows NT/2K)
. Banks also put in their in-house software to run the ATM. They want the OS that would support the latest and better encryption hardware module out there. Hence the choice of Windows for its plethora support of almost every piece of hardware.
. Banks also use their own intranet, secured and accessed only by approved IPs.
. Banks maintain and update the OS/drivers/apps themselves, usually after rigorous testing and certification. It is not likely they would just apply right away any patch-of-the-week from Redmond. Patches would be applied remotely, with encryption.
I do not see any reputable bank in the US would use stocked Diebold provided OS and application. Therefore the blame on Diebold is unfounded.
Despite their shady dealing with the voting machines, Diebold-made ATMs are very stable and solid, hardware-wise. Software problems are the banks' own problems.
Disclaimer:
I am not working with/for Diebold. I used to work with ATMs.
The offset code changes every time the PIN changes. Your ATM card only contain the original offset code which is _not_ changed. The changed offset codes are on the server side (for safe keeping). And the server that has your data is not running QNX, or OS/2 or Windows or Unix either.
Every time you log in, both of your CIN and PIN will be encrypted and sent to the server which will compute the offset code and authorize your transactions.
And touchscreens blow for an ATM. What about blind people? Maybe it'll be excusable in the future, with tactile feedback and better touchscreens- fun.
Citibank has ATMS with special screens and audio cues provided with headphones attached to the side of the machines.
"Clients with vision and reading disabilities can get cash and make deposits at our Citibank ATM locations via special screens and audio cues. Ask for instructions at your nearest financial center"
Why on earth would someone buy ATMs based on Windows?
..
..
Many readers, and average ATM users do not know much about the ATM machines and their operations. And surely banking institutions prefer it that way.
First of all, there was a revolution in the banking industries about a decade ago. Back then, most of the big banks owned their own little companies to produce their own ATM machines. Those who couldn't afford to design and build their own ordered out, prayed for lucks. The old machines are proprietary, special pieces of hardware to perform a mediocre job over and over again. Every time a bank needs a new feature, it would take forever to fix or change the design. Therefore the industry moved to a generic design, generic OS and specialized software, similar to the IBM compatible model. Hence design cost, development and maintenance cost were all lowered.
There are several generic ATM makers. NCR, Siemens, Diebolds, etc... They all make generic ATM boxes consisting of cash dispenser, card reader, generic display AND a typical AT/ATX box with normal PCI slots, CD-ROM, standard NIC, etc. Each major bank then set their development teams to work on the hardware platform. After OS/2 's demise, the logical choice and the only choice would be running Microsoft Windows NT.
There are several advantages:
. Generic drivers are always plentiful.
. Special drivers to control specialized hw are supported by the manufacturers, not the banks = less cost.
. basically one single standard operating environment = quick change, fix, update = easy management.
That's said. NO bank would trust any 3rd party to develop and maintain their ATMs. They all do it themselves. That means:
. Developing their own NT environments, no stock OS install, limited install (no games, no std apps)
. Developing their own platform and applications that talk to the legacy banking networks.
. Appending complicate encryption using hardware security module (HSM) via PCI slots.
. Setting up their own automated patching and updating system (not SMS) for thousand of machines located across the country.
Hence, Diebold ATM mentioned in the article is all hogwash. The banking institution was not named, and I doubt that it would be any big ones. I believe that the machines could have been running stock OS and generic ATM apps had they belongs to those shady ATM operators that set up machines in 7/11 store and other convenient stores.
For almost all of us out there, we all have put our hard-earned money into some decent banking institutions. Right?
Thank you.
Your post is already modded to 5. But thank you again for schooling such clueless ignorant people.
Admittedly the western world uses a ton of resources, but it also uses them as cleanly as possible on a per Joule basis. Check out coal fired plants in China sometime. The air pollution in cities like Beijing and Mexico City makes LA look like a dream.
More or less, the Western world exploits the third world more efficiently. We pollute the third world countries to produce the finished products for us and dirty their places instead of ours (disregard the whole Earth in general). Look around LA, you not see much of coal plants do you? Do you see any electrical plants or any smoke stacks at all? (Besides the oil refineries in Long Beach area). Energy is produced elsewhere, like hundreds if not thousand of miles away.
Not only we exploit the third world for production of goods, we also utilize their land for disposal of used and broken stuff. We use their landfills for dirtied computer parts, and bi-products of our industries.
I would say the "capitalist with controls" western nations are ecologically lighter than the third world in every way except the total amount of greenhouse gas produced.
This is utterly BS for the same reason.
Everything that is capable of displaying video, that means your video card will be set up to not to play with the flag. It means mplayer, windows media player, and the rest will have to be able reconize the flag
They might have to jail a lot of the geeks who can read, understand and able to modify (OSS) codes.
importation and distribution.
you can make ecstasy in foreign countries, but can ya sell it here?
Yes. MDMA pills are sold at many places (all-night clubs and music "festivals"). Not legally, of course. But that is the whole point of the parent post and the rules/regulations mentioned.
Indeed, importation of such devices can be made illegal. However with the current direction of global economy, and the advancement of the general purpose computer (to function as any of these devices via _legal_ hardware modules, [i.e. soundcard, tuner cards] and software), it would be very hard for government to do enforce their not-so-well-thought rules and regulations.
There are many examples:
England's TV tax, Canada's data-CD tax, the US Audio-CD tax, etc...
The mentioned research has the tempreature increased at the rate of 2 degree F per minute. It is too fast and not gradually enough, I think. What if the rate of temperature change is slow(er) enough so the frog can acclimate up to a point where it body's fuctions are all messed up for it to jump out?
:-)
Of course, I can't do any of suc hresearch on my own, hence the question. Please, pretty?
Data is transmitted encrypted, on a seperate network.
Bank-own AMTs are very secure. Not so with those tiny toyts at 7/11 and convinient stores.
Software on those bank-own ATMs are also developed in-house. I know no banks that actually use any software (except OEM device drivers) from Diebold to drive their own ATMs.
This ain't even funny.
It is Viet Nam. Not the Soviet.
And Viet Nam has been winning wars left and right all these centuries.