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back to article RIM gets thumbs up from Visa for pay-by-bonk security tech

RIM is hoping its reputation for superior security will smooth its path into wallet management as it gains Visa approval for the TSM platform that it is pushing to network operators. Everyone planning secure NFC apps needs a Trusted Service Management (TSM) platform, but the four big SIM providers already have approved TSM …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Am I the only person who does not like the Americanism to 'bonk' your mobile phone in any context other than of a sexual nature.

    'Want a bonk' was a much friendlier sounding colloquialism than 'want a shag to want a Fcuk'.

    Can we please find a different term of paying with mobile.

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    1. auburnman
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      You may be the only person to think bonk in any context other than sexual is an Americanism...

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      You must be new around here. Did it not occur to you that the choice of "bonk" by the Reg was a deliberate one?

      I presume you've not come across "fondleslab" yet. I await your terminological protestations on that subject, too.

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    3. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Years ago I worked for an engineering company which had a number of small presses. The verb used for a press operation was "to bonk". Nobody thought it was even mildly amusing.

      I believe that bonking in a sexual context was invented by the Sun, as Rupe had no objection to pictures of bare ladies but had every objection to the use of the associated terminology. So, given his nationality change, it is a vile Americanism.

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  2. Matt_payne666

    Come on orange... allow secure nfc equipped nokia's to use your secure tap payment system! Don't be the last to the party!

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  3. Alastair Dodd 1
    Thumb Down

    BOFHs and Blackberry?

    Do BOFHs love blackberry? Horrible proprietary mail server crap, doesn't play well with standard systems... I don't think so. We won't have them on our systems due to the pain they cause.

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    1. bazza Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: BOFHs and Blackberry?

      @Alistair Dodd 1

      They've been able to do MS Active Sync for quite some time now. If you're running anything like a new-ish Exchange server you can point a BB phone directly at that, no BES needed at all.

      BES is still there if really required.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "NFC has loads of potential"

    Not according the the "i" owners!

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Well not yet, but just wait until the next idevice, or maybe the one after that. Once they have NFC it will be the greatest thing Apple ever invented :)

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      1. Lusty
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        "Once they have NFC it will be the greatest thing Apple ever invented :)"

        Probably more like once NFC is any use Apple will add it to the devices. Currently it does pretty much nothing for the user so there is no reason to waste money adding it to the phone, especially if you're in the position where you don't need to add features to sell your phones.

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        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          "once NFC is any use Apple will add it to the devices"

          Once upon a time, Apple was the first to introduce new stuff to their computers - SCSI, USB, Firewire - and create the demand. They now have a product which is thin, light, quite fast, but technically is well behind some of the competition. You can go elsewhere and get bigger screens, accurate styli, NFC, water resistance, hot swap micro SD cards and wireless charging. Not all at once, but give it time.

          "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair"

          Nothing beside remains..."

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          1. Lusty
            Reply Icon

            Re: "once NFC is any use Apple will add it to the devices"

            "Once upon a time, Apple was the first to introduce new stuff to their computers - SCSI, USB, Firewire - and create the demand. They now have a product which is thin, light, quite fast, but technically is well behind some of the competition. You can go elsewhere and get bigger screens, accurate styli, NFC, water resistance, hot swap micro SD cards and wireless charging. Not all at once, but give it time."

            SCSI firewire and USB all have something in common - they were useful and people needed them before Apple added them. Same goes for the Retina screen which others are now copying, showing that Apple do in fact still innovate in areas they deem it necessary.

            Bigger screens are a preference rather than a requirement. Personally I don't want a bigger phone and thing they look silly but can see the attraction. A stylus is only useful if your other input methods aren't working, I've never felt the need for one on the iPhone but it would be nice on the iPad. Apple tried this on the Newton though so they are hardly behind the curve. NFC has no use and no prospect of usefulness. Geeks like the idea of it but the reality is it hasn't taken off because the "normal people" (those Apple are targeting) don't have any use for it. Even wireless payment isn't really taking off, if it was then banks other than Barclays would have started using it. Hot swap SD cards are unnecessary on a phone if the phone has decent storage in the first place. HTC put no storage in their phones so you need an SD card. Apple put 16-64GB of very fast storage in their phones so you don't need an SD card. On phones where I've had SD cards I never ever swapped them (same for the battery) and I don't know anyone who did.

            Wireless charging...really? You see that as a good feature? It's not really harder to plug in a cable than it is to put your phone on the charging zone. The difference is that the cable doesn't cost a fortune and is very efficient while the charging pads will cost lots and are terribly inneficient.

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      2. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        There will be a special iPhone only version that will work with iTunes and will be incompatible with everybody else's. It will be adopted by Starbucks.

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  5. bazza Silver badge

    @Lusty

    "Same goes for the Retina screen which others are now copying, showing that Apple do in fact still innovate in areas they deem it necessary."

    Putting more pixels on a display is hardly 'innovation'. Putting a single pixel on a screen was the innovative bit, but that was done many decades ago. Putting lots of pixels together to form a display was merely an obvious development from that. Moreover Apple don't actually do any of their own work on displays, they just buy them in.

    "NFC has no use and no prospect of usefulness."

    You need to go to Tokyo (and lots of other places in Japan) where they've had it for years. It's fantastic and pretty much indispensible now. You've hardly any need to carry a wallet at all. Of course iPhones don't work with Japanese NFC, and that holds back their sales there a lot. [I do find the NFC debate puzzling - why is the 'West' inventing a new NFC standard when the Japanese have for years had a fully functioning and very useful standard of their own? I"m sure they'd let us use it]

    "Apple put 16-64GB of very fast storage in their phones so you don't need an SD card"

    And charge hundreds of dollars for it, where the equivalent micro SD card would be just tens of dollars. Apple claim all sorts of technical and asthetic reasons to do this, but actually it's pretty transparent market exploitation. I've no problem with that, I've no desire to buy one in the first place. Also I strongly dispute "very fast" - they've no special magical Flash memory that's any better or worse than anyone elses. And who'd want to hot swap an SD card when you can just buy a big one for a fraction of the price Apple charge to solder the thing down to the PCB?!

    "The difference is that the cable doesn't cost a fortune and is very efficient while the charging pads will cost lots and are terribly inneficient."

    It's only inefficient if you don't design it right. Efficient magnetic coupling (which is what we're talking about here) has been around since Nikola Tesla's days in the shape of transformers. Ok, so a charge pad isn't likely to be as efficient as a well designed transformer. However if they're clever enough to know that there's no phone on them and switch off they'd save a lot of electricity over the wired charger that gets left plugged in and switched on most of the time.

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