NFC just can't be "secure" like that. The whole thing about security on NFC is the proximity needed to communicate. You can easily eavesdrop on the communication by sitting in between the devices communicating. So there is really no security work needed here. What they need is to just implement the standard that all the other phones have had for years. It's that simple. The only reason that they don't start in that end is that they see this thing as serving their own purposes first and foremost. If they spend an entire year "polishing the stack" then they get a bigger piece of the pie. If they started by implementing this thing properly right away and then building their service on top of that - that's another story. All they really needed to do in order to get this right for the rest of the world was to follow the standard. The Android implementation is completely open source so getting that done would be a matter of weeks not years.

There are similar apps all over the place. It's only in america that this thing hasn't already started. Sure they want to make it secure. But they could still sell their ApplePay as a "premium unhackable product" and allow other actors to use the chip for other purposes. Their approach is great for Apple in the US. But for the consumers it just means another level of lockin. The rest of the world; well they just got one more reason for buying something else.

Your PN532 would probably detect it's presence. But what to do about that? Unless they support the standards that triggers events on the phone then you have nothing. Seeing that they will not even allow people to create custom applications for at least a year - well; even though the chip is there you can't use it for nothing. Say that they open up the chip for use in custom applications after a year - well dang - it's still not supporting the standards - so it's going to behave very differently from every other NFC-enabled device out there. I'll buy a Samsung Galaxy S5 now. I've had it with waiting for Apple to start supporting this tech.

Very interesting indeed. It's also going to be interesting to see just how much this will impact their sales in any other country than the US. They want to eat the whole cake but they are missing the bigger picture. The cake is far bigger than contactless payments in the US. If they loose their position in the global devices game - well - it will be a very different world to conquer by the time they lift their heads.

I've been a long time iPhone user (every model since it's inception) and I have liked all those phones a lot. I've made some apps and have made myself completely tied down to the platform by spending money on apps and music. This NFC-thing is kind of like magic. I have a friend with that capability on his phone and it seems to me that this NFC-thing is a complete no-brainer in terms of interconnecting devices. I was actually waiting for the moment that Apple finally introduced this NXP-chip into the iPhone. Apple want to restrict the use of the chip to ApplePay? Guess what: In the country where I live - there is already an NFC-infrastructure and the banks have apps that use it - just not on iOS. What to do? Should I ditch the whole Apple universe and go for a Linux-phone and at the same time leave my wallet at home. Yeah. I think I might just do that. One year of waiting for Apple to "maybe" get their shit together and realize that the world is larger than the US; that's a long time for something that's been around for years now. Bye bye Apple. It's been good. iOS is the best OS and the iPhone is catching up. But this is it for me. I want that wallet-killer right now - not "when Apple decides that it has enough monopoly in the US to maybe open it up for other actors".

There may be differences between the continents here but at least in Europe I don't see a future with enough staff to warrant an IT department. Consider that most of the stuff we do today are actually being done by computers: robotic assembly in industry, online retail, digital video workflow in journalism & entertainment, online learning, learning algorithms on big data replacing analysts with spreadsheets, bureaucracy moving from people to algorithms and databases with web front-ends, hell even driverless cars replacing taxis and goods transports. We will need the "common Joe" to be as proficient with a computer as the baseline in any IT shop today. Sure for old companies stuck in the pre-internet world that have to answer phones, do spreadsheets and carry crates - there will be a place for an IT shop but a company starting up today has to vacuum up the able people so IT shops in old companies will experience brain drain. If you start a company today and think you need a fax-machine, a printer, a mail-server, a laptop per employee with the office on it - you are looking at it the wrong way. Hell if you need employees you are probably not thinking it through. Sure history is cyclical. Everything will happen again. But the internet and the huge dent it has made on every possible business out there - we are just seeing the start of a transition to another way of structuring companies. People say that "ze cloud" is too expensive for IT. That might be true for an old shop. But if you don't have whitespace, techies, cables, a good power deal, servers or even a building - that's a hefty price tag right there to get to a place where scaling the sucker is an even bigger investment. Buying IaaS and SaaS makes sense in the same way as not creating your own electricity and not building your own servers. Things are going to change but for most people it just means being employed somewhere else doing the same thing but for more customers.

seriously - have you seen windows 8? It's at best a shadow of XP and at worst an utterly horrible mess based on a brilliant idea that nobody wants. It's like ubuntu's unity - it's shit and it's the final nail in the coffin that is MS. Sure they'll be around for non-tech management types to buy crappy products from - but for the web-generation they don't really mean anything anymore. When I was a kid I had a poster of Bill Gates in my room. Then I listened to Linus pronounce Linux Linux and then I basically stopped worrying and now do most of my off-work stuff on iThings. Bill Gates was a long time ago - and kids today don't really care about it anymore. Linuxish things will be around for a while until somebody does that proper and then it will probably dominate - come on - it's unix - it was the best idea - only the suits and the marketing made MS - the plan was crap the minute they stopped xenix.

It's sad to say it, but considering the crap they spend the next 10 years on building I'd rather bet on continued support after the supposed 1000 days. If people seriously believe that XP won't be the majority amongst the MS desktops - even in 2014 - then think again. It's a good OS - the only one that's usable. The other crap is as pretentious as it is error-prone. We even have real serious systems running XP instead of 2k3-server - just because it's more stable. 2k3+,vista,win7 are jokes - utter travesties. If I where given 10$ every time I saw a Microsoft Server blue-screen-of-death.. XP right now - never see it anymore. At last it's a proper OS.

The story is full of fud. 1: DVD-burner? Who needs that now - really - come on. 2: Get a bluetooth keyboard won't you 3: Start streaming from your NAS-box or from the Web - use home sharing to play your music from the computer 4: Ports for what? AirPrint or what it's called - mouse on a touch screen? My mother syncs here DSLR with the iPad so I guess that can be done 5: It does multitask 6: The "limits" of the iTunes is backup, restore and update - he can have his 200$ laptop for that and be happy. 7: The battery is so much better on the iPad compared to the run of the mill laptop's that replacing it isn't really going to happen.

Get a small (4-5 piece) lockpicking kit. That way you don't have to carry any keys with you :)

Considering the hardware I find it peculiar that they kill so many civilians. I guess the people meant to limit the amount of false positives are basically hillbillies. I guess good hardware has no effect as long as you do not train your forces to fight fair. No amount of "freedom" or technology can explain away the fact that the largest army on the planet are still basically just killing for fun / at random. I hope those stupid oil-/gass-wars end soon. I wonder if they would have if we invested all the money we currently invest in those wars in alternative energy. Considering that they evidentially have the needed technology to avoid civilian casualties; I guess not. :/

I hate flash for burning my nuts to a cinder. That is all it really does. In the winter it can be a little cozy to have a laptop running full speed ahead, burning a hole in my pants, but now spring is coming and it is time it died and left something equally closed-source but more effective in it's wake.

I couldn't agree with you more. I used to have a wintel-box at work and it demanded to be booted almost daily. That boot effectively stopped me from working and the machine was slow running system-specific closed-source crap that I basically have no interest in for a good 15 minutes after booting (often just to produce another forced reboot). I replaced the thing with ubuntu - just to be able to work (have booted ubuntu twice in 6 months). Linux works for me as I do mostly coding. But for a home computer I don't really code so I use a Mac because what I do at home is listening to music, watching pictures (arhem..), editing home movies, surfing the intertubes, record some music. Sure I could use linux for that - but that would suck up a lot of time I could be spending on my primary activities.

How long till they hax0r /. ???

I remember starting back in the old days where a modem connection would require days of downloading just to get a bootable system. Back them I bought a CD with Slackware 1.0 (accompanied by a book). After fiddling around with that for some time (to get it booting I guess) I was hooked and started using Redhat when that eventually came out. After that I have been on and off the linux bandwagon (having a seperate wintel-box for all those nasty games and BS needs). For me that all ended with the arrival of Mac OS X. After that I bought a Mac and have used Macs as my primary computers ever since. I kept the wintel-box around until the Mac's started appearing with Intel-processors. After that the only time I ever use windows or linux is if I dual boot or run them in VMs. At work I have always upgraded the wintel-boxes I have been handed to ubuntu or Kubuntu or Fedora. I don't really see why people would need a physical wintel-box (except for gaming). So now I am a ubuntu user at work and mac user at home. Perfect combo. Before going mac on my private boxes I tried a myriad of linux-based OS's at home. I would guess I am in the >100. Now, when doing IT-stuff at work, I tend to stick with Fedora for server-installations and ubuntu for workstations. Don't really know why but I liked a flavour of ubuntu called Workbench. Just another OS in the pile of burnt CD/DVD's now.