I wrote an article about long-term storage *hardware* in CACM -- "The Forever Disc".
My favorite musing had to do with writing the data into a population's genetics, and letting redundancy correct errors/mutations..
Microsoft's Pear Street office across the street houses at least two ACM A.M. Turing Award winners: Leslie Lamport and Chuck Thacker (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/lamport-031814.aspx). I wonder what the company will do with them, if anything....
(I had the honor of interviewing Dr. Lamport when he won: See http://vimeo.com/95177539 . Nice guy!)
I'm disappointed by the many people (all Americans, as far as I can tell) who post here to say, "fuck no! I'd never be so stupid!!!". This, I think, shows an extremely narrow understanding of the world. Because:
a) America is not the world. There are *many* places where you're expected to pay for your job, in one way or another. Sometimes it's above-board, sometimes not. I don't know about Malaysia, but wouldn't be surprised at all if that was the custom there.
b) Oh, wait, we have this in America, too! I paid LOTS of money to my managing broker when I was a real-estate agent. These are standard fees: Everyone at every agency pays them. And let's not forget the *MINIMUM WAGE* workers forced to pay for their uniforms and so forth.
So stop with the high-and-mighty. You're speaking from ignorance, not strength.
I converted a few tapes with a a $40 gadget (Diamond One Touch Video Capture VC500MAC) and was happy with the results.
By comparison, the one service I checked out charges $12 each tape, plus shipping etc. -- and takes three weeks!
If you have more than a half dozen tapes to convert, you may do well buying a converter. You could let it run at night, then pay somebody $15/hour to do the finishing work (conversion to ProRes or whatever).
(I realize that this doesn't directly answer your question... but is an option worth considering.)
One thing I couldn't put in the article (because of space limitations): According to one of my interview sources, the majority of computer science positions in Malaysia are held by women. It's considered a clean and safe occupation for them.
Wow, how could I have missed this Slashdotting? Nobody tells me nuthin'.
Anyway. I'm the author of this article -- my list of recent work, which includes it, is http://tomgeller.com/portfolio.
I haven't read the comments yet, and am about to (with trepidation).
One quick note: I take exception with the headline. "ACM" didn't blame anybody for anything. Interview subject Valerie Barr "believes the retreat was caused partly by the growth of personal computers". I've asked for it to be changed.
"Something isn't more or less safe if money changes hands."
No, but:
a) Other factors come into play when money changes hands -- issues of liability, scale, entitlements, conversion of public benefits....
b) Commercial exceptions are well-established in U.S. law.. If you want to argue they shouldn't be, you'll have to go back something like a hundred years. These restrictions have been very good for the country, though, so you'd have an uphill battle.
The Nike swoosh and McDonalds yellow M are very specific geometric depictions. Anyone can use a swoosh logo, as a Google image search for "swoosh logo -nike" shows.
Further, each of these examples represents (at least) hundreds of thousands of dollars of development, and hundreds of millions of dollars in direct investment to reinforce through advertising.
Malls? MALLS? I'm guessing you don't actually live in San Francisco.;)
But seriously. If Google had easy access to such private spaces, and they were convenient to their employees (in the crowded Haight, Mission, etc.), I'm sure they'd use those options. But convenient stops big enough for a bus to pull into are quite rare there.
There are two potentially huge markets. I, for one, would like to be able to take a few (360-degree) photos of my house and have SketchUp (formerly owned by Google) deliver a 3D version that prospective buyers could "walk around in" via their browsers.
Similarly, construction works spend a lot of effort making site measurements to create estimates, order materials, etc.. If that could be automatically produced via 3D renderings, all the better.
Some developers predicted that China's new Tianhe-2 supercomputer would be the first to break through.
Wait... *what* uninformed developer(s) predicted that? The previous record (six months ago) was set by Titan, at 17.59 Petaflop/s. So to pass the exaflop barrier this time around would require over a fifty-fold improvement -- something never before seen in the history of the Top500 list.
Did someone *really* make this prediction, or is author Kevin Fogarty just making shit up?
The mapping from your pseudonyms to your "real" identity can be done as soon as you trade your bitcoins for anything not bitcoin.
That's a good point, assuming that government regulations will require exchanges to record traders' identities (which seems likely). On the other hand, one could use the money to buy something with the Bitcoin and remain anonymous.
Tangentially: I used to think that Bitcoin couldn't be anonymous because one could build an identifying profile based on a series of purchases or exchanges. Then I learned that quite a few holders of Bitcoin use a *different address for each transaction*. That really does muddy the waters!
I think you're underestimating the coordination and effort required in that "administration and such". That's the central authority.
Decentralized authority works for some things -- the Bitcoin system demonstrates that. But some (such as judging insurance payouts) require the human touch.
We disagree on what "identity" means. A cryptographic token that stands for "Tom Geller" isn't the same as the meatspace Tom Geller. Heck, even the name "Tom Geller" isn't the same -- it's just a token as well.
The meatspace Tom Geller can be arrested and held. He has to personally show up at the bank to verify his identity when he opens an account. He has a picture on his driver's license that more or less matches his face.
<quote>bitcoins are not anonymous.</quote>
That's true in a technical sense. But practically speaking, they can be mostly so.
<quote>No. Pseudonyms with private keys can achieve the same thing.</quote>
We disagree. I think you're underestimating the reasonable requirements of governance.
<quote>This is done in bitcoin today without any centralized authority.</quote>
No, it's not. The spender is never identified in a real-world way.
What makes are the units? This sounds quite out of line with what others have reported.
(Consider that Blockchain.info reports a net *loss* for mining -- see https://blockchain.info/stats . Maybe that includes only transaction fees or something?)
Hi, AC -- thanks for your comment. I understand why you think there's a contradiction, but I don't believe there is.
I think that future Coin will be based on essentially the same specs, procedures, and algorithms Satoshi described -- in that sense, it's decentralized. However, I think there'll be a layer above that which *isn't* decentralized. And there will be a tie between the two layers.
Here's an example. Let's say that Bitcoin continues to be the leading cryptocurrency -- anonymous and decentralized. However, if you want to insure deposits in it, you have to submit to some kind of identity proof through a central authority. People who need that service will submit, thereby taking part in a system with elements of both decentralization (the Coin) and centralization (the services supporting it).
It could also be that the centralization has deeper roots, making it essentially impossible to work in Coin without taking part in the layer of centralization. For example, what if merchants could only accept coin if it was authenticated to its identified spender? Then everybody would use the "top" layer, or be unable to spend their Coin.
Slashdot Mirror
I wrote an article about long-term storage *hardware* in CACM -- "The Forever Disc". My favorite musing had to do with writing the data into a population's genetics, and letting redundancy correct errors/mutations..
Microsoft's Pear Street office across the street houses at least two ACM A.M. Turing Award winners: Leslie Lamport and Chuck Thacker (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/lamport-031814.aspx). I wonder what the company will do with them, if anything....
(I had the honor of interviewing Dr. Lamport when he won: See http://vimeo.com/95177539 . Nice guy!)
I'm disappointed by the many people (all Americans, as far as I can tell) who post here to say, "fuck no! I'd never be so stupid!!!". This, I think, shows an extremely narrow understanding of the world. Because:
a) America is not the world. There are *many* places where you're expected to pay for your job, in one way or another. Sometimes it's above-board, sometimes not. I don't know about Malaysia, but wouldn't be surprised at all if that was the custom there.
b) Oh, wait, we have this in America, too! I paid LOTS of money to my managing broker when I was a real-estate agent. These are standard fees: Everyone at every agency pays them. And let's not forget the *MINIMUM WAGE* workers forced to pay for their uniforms and so forth.
So stop with the high-and-mighty. You're speaking from ignorance, not strength.
I converted a few tapes with a a $40 gadget (Diamond One Touch Video Capture VC500MAC) and was happy with the results.
By comparison, the one service I checked out charges $12 each tape, plus shipping etc. -- and takes three weeks!
If you have more than a half dozen tapes to convert, you may do well buying a converter. You could let it run at night, then pay somebody $15/hour to do the finishing work (conversion to ProRes or whatever).
(I realize that this doesn't directly answer your question... but is an option worth considering.)
One thing I couldn't put in the article (because of space limitations): According to one of my interview sources, the majority of computer science positions in Malaysia are held by women. It's considered a clean and safe occupation for them.
(I'm the article's author.)
Wow, how could I have missed this Slashdotting? Nobody tells me nuthin'.
Anyway. I'm the author of this article -- my list of recent work, which includes it, is http://tomgeller.com/portfolio.
I haven't read the comments yet, and am about to (with trepidation).
One quick note: I take exception with the headline. "ACM" didn't blame anybody for anything. Interview subject Valerie Barr "believes the retreat was caused partly by the growth of personal computers". I've asked for it to be changed.
To me, UEA = Universala Esperanto-Asocia, the organization tasked with assisting speakers of the language Esperanto.
I thought maybe they'd branched out in a totally unexpected way.
...Slot car racing!
"Something isn't more or less safe if money changes hands."
No, but:
a) Other factors come into play when money changes hands -- issues of liability, scale, entitlements, conversion of public benefits....
b) Commercial exceptions are well-established in U.S. law.. If you want to argue they shouldn't be, you'll have to go back something like a hundred years. These restrictions have been very good for the country, though, so you'd have an uphill battle.
From the post:
"This is a troubling development in an ongoing saga over the FAA's rules which punish the safe commercial use of drones."
Nope. It's a completely appropriate action according to the FAA's mandate and charter. It's their exact *job*.
Whether it's an appropriate restriction is to be debated.
Melanin. Melatonin would just put him to sleep.
Apples and oragnes.
The Nike swoosh and McDonalds yellow M are very specific geometric depictions. Anyone can use a swoosh logo, as a Google image search for "swoosh logo -nike" shows.
Further, each of these examples represents (at least) hundreds of thousands of dollars of development, and hundreds of millions of dollars in direct investment to reinforce through advertising.
Congresspeople, many of whom are not men. Get with the 20th century, submitter.
Malls? MALLS? I'm guessing you don't actually live in San Francisco. ;)
But seriously. If Google had easy access to such private spaces, and they were convenient to their employees (in the crowded Haight, Mission, etc.), I'm sure they'd use those options. But convenient stops big enough for a bus to pull into are quite rare there.
There are two potentially huge markets. I, for one, would like to be able to take a few (360-degree) photos of my house and have SketchUp (formerly owned by Google) deliver a 3D version that prospective buyers could "walk around in" via their browsers. Similarly, construction works spend a lot of effort making site measurements to create estimates, order materials, etc.. If that could be automatically produced via 3D renderings, all the better.
There's also Primecoin, which proves the concept that mining energy can be put to a useful goal (for some value of "useful").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primecoin
Some developers predicted that China's new Tianhe-2 supercomputer would be the first to break through.
Wait... *what* uninformed developer(s) predicted that? The previous record (six months ago) was set by Titan, at 17.59 Petaflop/s. So to pass the exaflop barrier this time around would require over a fifty-fold improvement -- something never before seen in the history of the Top500 list. Did someone *really* make this prediction, or is author Kevin Fogarty just making shit up?
The mapping from your pseudonyms to your "real" identity can be done as soon as you trade your bitcoins for anything not bitcoin.
That's a good point, assuming that government regulations will require exchanges to record traders' identities (which seems likely). On the other hand, one could use the money to buy something with the Bitcoin and remain anonymous.
Tangentially: I used to think that Bitcoin couldn't be anonymous because one could build an identifying profile based on a series of purchases or exchanges. Then I learned that quite a few holders of Bitcoin use a *different address for each transaction*. That really does muddy the waters!
I think you're underestimating the coordination and effort required in that "administration and such". That's the central authority.
Decentralized authority works for some things -- the Bitcoin system demonstrates that. But some (such as judging insurance payouts) require the human touch.
We disagree on what "identity" means. A cryptographic token that stands for "Tom Geller" isn't the same as the meatspace Tom Geller. Heck, even the name "Tom Geller" isn't the same -- it's just a token as well.
The meatspace Tom Geller can be arrested and held. He has to personally show up at the bank to verify his identity when he opens an account. He has a picture on his driver's license that more or less matches his face.
<quote>bitcoins are not anonymous.</quote>
That's true in a technical sense. But practically speaking, they can be mostly so.
<quote>No. Pseudonyms with private keys can achieve the same thing.</quote>
We disagree. I think you're underestimating the reasonable requirements of governance.
<quote>This is done in bitcoin today without any centralized authority.</quote>
No, it's not. The spender is never identified in a real-world way.
Oh, duh -- I guess your units are from Butterfly Labs. (Sorry, was reading comments in non-threaded mode and got confused.)
Thanks for the details! Always welcome.
What makes are the units? This sounds quite out of line with what others have reported.
(Consider that Blockchain.info reports a net *loss* for mining -- see https://blockchain.info/stats . Maybe that includes only transaction fees or something?)
Good lord, why are the two of you spending so much time and effort on this? Go play.
Hi, AC -- thanks for your comment. I understand why you think there's a contradiction, but I don't believe there is.
I think that future Coin will be based on essentially the same specs, procedures, and algorithms Satoshi described -- in that sense, it's decentralized. However, I think there'll be a layer above that which *isn't* decentralized. And there will be a tie between the two layers.
Here's an example. Let's say that Bitcoin continues to be the leading cryptocurrency -- anonymous and decentralized. However, if you want to insure deposits in it, you have to submit to some kind of identity proof through a central authority. People who need that service will submit, thereby taking part in a system with elements of both decentralization (the Coin) and centralization (the services supporting it).
It could also be that the centralization has deeper roots, making it essentially impossible to work in Coin without taking part in the layer of centralization. For example, what if merchants could only accept coin if it was authenticated to its identified spender? Then everybody would use the "top" layer, or be unable to spend their Coin.
Thanks for all the details! Great summary.
So how do your numbers jibe with BFL's homepage claims of 5GH/s?