Acidus wrote:
] A great way to protect all types of transactions. The Credit
] Card companies refuse to adopt it because it anonymizes people
] and their transactions, and thus they would no longer be able
] to sell the data.
]
] Hashing is your friend

I need to vent.

This sounds interesting, however I can't open the documents. The HTML protocol description isn't that helpful for getting the big picture, and the word documents crash my copy of MS's OSX Word. MS's formats are not cross platform, even using their own products on both platforms. I have the same problem with some WMA using OSX Windows Media Player. All this MS crap simply DOES NOT WORK.

Are PDFs that hard to make? Seriously. There is a place for non-editable formats, they remove complexity and platform dependent issues that causes problems. A few weeks ago, I had someone talking my ear off with shit about how Postscript is evil. News flash! Postscript works, there is a place for it, this is it. At least I can read the document on every platform, and have it display properly without having all the same fonts installed as the person who authored it. I'm not saying that editable formats shouldn't be distributed also, that's asinine. However, something I can display on all platforms would very helpful in situations like these.

Update: This is similar in some ways to the problem posed by source only licenses. You can lay the argument on me all day about how having (and knowing how to build from) the source empowers the user, but its just a flawed argument. The user is concerned with the app working, and that's it. The developer is who you need to empower. As long as the only thing that differentiates a user and a developer is a decision and another download, its all good.

RE: Secure Electronic Transaction Specification