Dangerous practices -- sending passwords

[thibaulthalpern]

Originally Posted by Sonist

I suppose ebooks will follow the web model, where initially plain, rather ugly text was the norm, while now much richer and sophisticated options are becoming available.

Oh yes. I remember those days. The internet began gaining public popularity around 1995 or so. It has existed many years before that but not until 1995 or so did it begin to take off in the general public realm. I remember how ugly web pages were but at the same time because it was so unsophisticated, I could code HTML by hand without having to resort to a web design program.

P.S. On the password issue, I'd personally prefer that they send me the password. And in my experience, most e-tailers do. You have to balance convenience and security, and I'd rather not have to reset a password every time I forget the old one. (for something like a bank account, I can see the point, of course

Hmm...do you realise that in some of those e-Retailers account you've stored your credit information? If someone knows your password, they could buy items with your account but have it shipped to a different location.

[cerement]

We have both the technology and software to be able to marry design with reflowable text (the best implementation still being TeX created back in 1978 by Donald Knuth). But then XML came to be and, in the typical arrogance of anything designed by committee, put forth the newest claims to being the inventors of separation of content and design. Whereas LaTeX had already started using semantic and structural markup, letting the engine handle the design and typography, XML solved the problem by throwing the design completely out the window. We have spent the intervening years attempting to reclaim the design aspects, generally through CSS (which still fails at multi-line hypenation), but also with MathML (the current incarnation of which is nothing more than a layout markup of a formula rather than being a content markup of a formula).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by thibaulthalpern

I don't know, Harry. What happens when your Dalek meets the stairs? Or water.

Actually, the Daleks have a way of lifting off the ground so they can traverse rough terrain, water, stairs, etc.

[thibaulthalpern]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Actually, the Daleks have a way of lifting off the ground so they can traverse rough terrain, water, stairs, etc.

depends on which episode and model ;-)