From my personal experience, a great example would be the MySQL documentation. Those docs are very complete, all possible commands and options are given, but as a result it's also often totally unreadable to me - those SQL reference parts are about as readable as a line of Perl, or a regex. Yet it's needed, and often does give the info I need.
Python docs are much more readable (the module documentation at least; the language reference is too technical and not needed for normal programming tasks) but also sometimes lacking, particularly on examples. But then you can't expect the official docs to have examples for everything.
To get started, sites like stackoverflow with their real-world examples do the job very well. And it's really rare to have a question that's not already been asked before. And of course useful to find out that you're hitting a bug...
Interesting you mention expiry dates on passwords as plenty of security people will argue that having expiry dates on passwords tends to decrease the security of passwords, as people select easier ones.
Having a multi-year expiry date pretty much beats the purpose: after falling in the wrong hands the certificate is useful only until it's detected that it's in the wrong hands. And that's usually not very long after it's being used.
And a short expiry date (weeks, months) where it may actually have an effect on stopping unauthorised people to use it, is so inconvenient that no-one uses such short periods. In case of passwords that have to change monthly, expect many users to have a password like "March03" for this month. Or "March!03". Dictionary word? Well "hcraM!03" should circumvent that one, too. So much for security. And yes, first-hand experience on that part.
I still wonder why those certificates need an expiry date. And why they just don't put it like 100 years in the future.
But first of all, why have expiry dates at all?
I have seen often enough certificates being revoked for being compromised or whatever; and I have seen quite some trouble due to expired certificates leaving web sites inaccessible, for example.
It doesn't seem to add much if any security (if it's compromised, you'll want to revoke it now, and not wait until it expires months or years later). When setting up a Google Play developer's account they advised to have my certificate expire 10 years in the future - making me again feel like it is just an inconvenience, and I'm sure 8 or 9 years from now (when it expires - I already forgot when) I will have forgotten about it and it's going to cause all kinds of issues with my apps not working any more or whatever.
I climb many mountains - for the view. That's the reason I want to be there. I'm not going to climb when there is no view to be had.
Same for going to Mars. You go there to visit Mars - not to have a close-up look, but to really get personal with the planet. If it is just a fly-by, it's like climbing that mountain on a cloudy day: sure you can do it, and if the only point is "because you can do it" then it's fine. But the clouds take away the best part of the climb: the view from up there. Just like a fly-by over a landing would take away the best part of a flight to Mars: actually setting foot on that planet.
That's what I would totally expect. Yet submitter mentions he can get only v4 on mobile data (and with the expectation of using it to log in to a home server I would expect it's at least 3G that he uses).
I have heard before that Groupon takes a 50% cut of most actions (as in: 50% of the amount spent by the customer when buying a Groupon). Sounds big, must vary per product as mostly margins are not that great.
Then the "original price" is of course fake. That's just a feel-good number.
Groupon collects the money the moment you spend it, and pays the company that provides the service/goods three months later. Great for Groupon's cash flow, of course! And the risk is wholly at their partner's side as if Groupon goes bankrupt it's not likely the already sold deals are cancelled. Customers will demand their goods or their dinner they have a Groupon for.
Actually I have no idea what Groupon's costs are but it should not be too high, unless they have a huge and overcompensated sales force around. The business model at least sounds very profitable from Groupon's pov, and very bad for the company whose products they promote.
I think that for the most part, the people who bought the groupons were quite happy.
I have bought a few groupons (mostly fancy dinner offers) and was quite happy with the deals. So yes, I can confirm that. My wife has bought several more and I've never heard any complains from her about it.
However after buying a few of those Groupons, you quickly realise that the price you pay is a good price for the dinner the restaurant serves you. It is not a very special deal, really. You get maybe 10-20% discount on what such a meal would normally cost, but then the restaurant only sells it on their slow weekdays and has the restaurant full of people that all have the choice of just four meals.
The "original price" on which you get 50-70% discount is just hugely overpriced for what you get, and doesn't make any sense. I've also seen laptops offered on Groupon, at 30% discount, well a quick Google search turned up the exact same laptop with a regular price only marginally higher than the Groupon price ($10-30 on a $7000 (US$900) laptop).
Serious question, no interest in flamebait or trolls. Why is mobile not on IPv6?
It's a place where I would expect it. Quick turnaround of devices, new networks all the time. It made sense for 2G and GRPS to be IPv4 at the time. But 3G and even 4G apparently are still using IPv4.
It's hard to believe the phones are not up to the task. It's all in the software, not too hard to require v6 on 3G and later, Older devices that are v4 only can't use 3G networks anyway. Users don't need to know their IP address, ever. This are devices, and there is a huge number of it, exactly what v6 was meant to support. Carriers have full control over their networks, start to finish, so that part of switching to v6 is also not an issue. They of course have to provide a gateway to access v4-only web sites, but that shouldn't be too much harder than maintaining a NAT like they have to do now to keep everyone on v4.
Honestly, I just don't get it.
It's such a stark contrast with that fibre provider that is basically IPv6, while providing a v4 compatibility layer for older devices that still need it.
Some hoard, others spend. There is more than one player, there is more than one bitcoin. If everyone hoards the price may start to collapse due to lack of liquidity in the market.
Hoarding and spending are not mutually exclusive. There are plenty of players in the market, and some will just use it as alternative payment method (buy bitcoin to buy certain services).
The whole bitcoin economy is currently in its infancy, and with more and more websites using it, for at least the first years you should be looking for triple-digit if not quadruple-digit growth rates. The bitcoin infrastructure itself is now slowly maturing with several exchanges that make it easy to buy and sell them, and more and more sites start to accept them, and this may easily cause an explosion in bitcoin use before tapering off.
And even at 5% growth, that's a very good return. Not many investments can give you that kind of returns nowadays.
10.5 million bitcoin at USD 32 each, that's about USD 335 mln worth of bitcoin in the system. In comparison, some quick googling gave me a value of USD2.3 trillion for the Internet economy in 2010, estimated to double by 2016. That is turnover of course, so one would need say USD 230 bln worth of money to support that turnover. To even do 10% of that, the value of a single bitcoin should go up like 100-fold over the couple year or two, without accounting for large-scale hoarding. Now if that isn't attractive for speculators, I don't know what is!
Hoarding cash = putting cash in a mattress, or in a safe at home, not keeping in the bank and not receiving interest. Then it loses value at inflation rate (or gains value at deflation rate!).
People want to make a profit - of course. But making profit means the total amount of money in the system must increase, otherwise this is not possible. Just look at the amount of money in this world now, compared to 100 years ago. It's a lot more. Bitcoin can not do this, as there are limits on it.
And for losing bitcoins, that I said only increases the effect. Of course people minimise losses, yet they will happen.
And while it may not be intended to be deflationary, it's just an inherent result of the limit to available coins.
One of the key issues with bitcoin is the ultimately limited supply.There are about 10.5 mln into existence, mining continues, and over the upcoming century or so it's going to grow to 21 mln. So that means the first half is there already.
Normal money (USD, EUR, whatever) can be created by banks through lending. This keeps the value of currencies in check, and actually over time decreases the value of a currency, as seen by inflation. The good thing of inflation is that it keeps people from hoarding cash, as hoarding cash means you're losing value.
Assuming uptake of use of bitcoin continues to increase, there is more and more demand for the coins, and there is limited new supply. Supply goes down over time (by design), and more uptake will naturally cause more loss: people keeping bitcoins on their computer, not properly keeping backups, computer breaks down, bitcoins lost. Not sure if there is any way to recover them. And people may take bitcoins and forget about them, another cause of loss. So more and more people want bitcoins, but there is only a limited number available - and that number may indeed decrease over time - causing the price to go up.
Now there are two problems this almost guaranteed increase in value of the bitcoins.
First: people start hoarding them, as speculative investment. This takes more bitcoins out of the payments market, pushing up the value.
Second: it is going to cause deflation in the value of services that charge bitcoin. Imagine a web site sells accounts for 1 bitcoin. That is currently $32 in real money. So people will have to buy bitcoin at $32 each, and the web site can sell those bitcoins at $32. But next year the bitcoin is at maybe $64. That would double the price of the account, which is probably not good for business, so the website compensates for this by changing their price to 0,5 bitcoin. Especially if such a site gives an option of paying in bitcoin or paying in USD, they must adjust prices to keep them equivalent.
People owning bitcoin see the value of the bitcoin in USD (money they can actually spend) go up, while at the same time for everything they could use bitcoin for, the prices go down. Where a donation of 1 bitcoin now would be worth $32, the equivalent donation next year would be only 0,5 bitcoin. Buy a bitcoin now, and the web site account next year would effectively cost you only $16. And the other half bitcoin you could sell at $32, making the account free.
And this is how I call bitcoin an interesting concept, but terribly defective by design.
Is it in all civil cases so that loser pays winner's cost, and court cost?
In that case it would indeed be quite reasonable that when initiating a law suit, the plaintiff should post some kind of guarantee that they will pay loser's cost (preferably a fixed amount based on type of lawsuit etc, so that this is known before the suit is initiated and not dependent on the mood of the judge). That might make actually getting the money afterwards a little less impossible.
OTOH this can not reasonably be asked from defendant, who usually doesn't even want to go to court to begin with.
OpenOffice/LibreOffice wiht all their awesomeness (and actual editing capabilities!) still did not put a dent in MS Office's dominance. That alone makes me doubt that Google can suddenly do this.
For evolution it is enough that certain individuals have a better CHANCE to survive and a better CHANCE to reproduce. No need for the less-fit individuals to actually die, or not reproduce at all.
I have that add-on, but YouTube is one of the very few sites that is on my allowed list as that's a site where flash is actually functional (yes, you read that correctly, "flash" and "functional" in one sentence). I got bored with having to click every time...
Ideal for YouTube would be that the video would start loading (buffering) but not playing when the tab is in the background, so when I get to watch it, it's ready to go.
I always wondered why FF insists on starting to play video on tabs that are in the background. It is so irritating that when browsing YouTube I always have to move to other tabs to pause videos (I often CTRL-click to open a video for later watching). Just not playing is much nicer. Just load that Flash thing, but don't run it unless it's in the foreground.
Well, as other repliers pointed out to you, people are not totally reluctant to change - if it adds something to the experience, if it is something totally different, allowing to do things they could not do before.
And another thing that should be added: change is OK if the new thing works at least as easy as the previous version. Example: people happily switch from WinXP to Win7, but not Win8. They also happily pick up a smart phone, as both Android and iOS operate very easily and mostly quite intuitively.
One thing that held back Linux for a long time was that you can not run Windows software. Well many people now have bitten that bullet and walk around with tablets, which suit their needs quite well. Except maybe for the lack of MS Office or an equivalent. Web browsing, e-mailing, watching videos, playing Angry Birds, it all works just fine. There is no compelling need for Windows any more, and the general computer buyers are learning that, too, but likely very slowly if only for the lack of alternatives on display in the shops.
Also, for the desktop there is still no serious competitor. Linux with all its distributions has the technical quality, no doubt. However there is no big (enough) company that can push their offering to hardware makers (e.g. HP, Dell, etc), to install their OS on computers for sale, instead of Windows. Restrictive licensing contracts my MS may also be a problem there, plenty of allegations in that direction at least.
Ditching Windows and going Linux-only is a very risky strategy for those computer makers. Even if they can make their offerings cheaper (they could add crapware with Linux just like they do with Windows for the kickbacks) it is not sure whether the market would accept it. The linux distro makers are also not big and strong enough to support them - and who is going to pay for all that support anyway, if the distro can be installed for free?
Slashdot Mirror
I second that.
From my personal experience, a great example would be the MySQL documentation. Those docs are very complete, all possible commands and options are given, but as a result it's also often totally unreadable to me - those SQL reference parts are about as readable as a line of Perl, or a regex. Yet it's needed, and often does give the info I need.
Python docs are much more readable (the module documentation at least; the language reference is too technical and not needed for normal programming tasks) but also sometimes lacking, particularly on examples. But then you can't expect the official docs to have examples for everything.
To get started, sites like stackoverflow with their real-world examples do the job very well. And it's really rare to have a question that's not already been asked before. And of course useful to find out that you're hitting a bug...
Interesting you mention expiry dates on passwords as plenty of security people will argue that having expiry dates on passwords tends to decrease the security of passwords, as people select easier ones.
Having a multi-year expiry date pretty much beats the purpose: after falling in the wrong hands the certificate is useful only until it's detected that it's in the wrong hands. And that's usually not very long after it's being used.
And a short expiry date (weeks, months) where it may actually have an effect on stopping unauthorised people to use it, is so inconvenient that no-one uses such short periods. In case of passwords that have to change monthly, expect many users to have a password like "March03" for this month. Or "March!03". Dictionary word? Well "hcraM!03" should circumvent that one, too. So much for security. And yes, first-hand experience on that part.
I still wonder why those certificates need an expiry date. And why they just don't put it like 100 years in the future.
But first of all, why have expiry dates at all?
I have seen often enough certificates being revoked for being compromised or whatever; and I have seen quite some trouble due to expired certificates leaving web sites inaccessible, for example.
It doesn't seem to add much if any security (if it's compromised, you'll want to revoke it now, and not wait until it expires months or years later). When setting up a Google Play developer's account they advised to have my certificate expire 10 years in the future - making me again feel like it is just an inconvenience, and I'm sure 8 or 9 years from now (when it expires - I already forgot when) I will have forgotten about it and it's going to cause all kinds of issues with my apps not working any more or whatever.
Why read the article when you can get all hte info you need from the comments?
The more a country says "We are the greatest and the very best" the less it usually does to support those claims.
A truly great country doesn't use those claims, but lets the rest of the world come to that conclusion by simply being great.
A fly-by of Venus may be not so pointless, as it may very well decrease overall travel time due to the slingshot effect.
I climb many mountains - for the view. That's the reason I want to be there. I'm not going to climb when there is no view to be had.
Same for going to Mars. You go there to visit Mars - not to have a close-up look, but to really get personal with the planet. If it is just a fly-by, it's like climbing that mountain on a cloudy day: sure you can do it, and if the only point is "because you can do it" then it's fine. But the clouds take away the best part of the climb: the view from up there. Just like a fly-by over a landing would take away the best part of a flight to Mars: actually setting foot on that planet.
Well most if not all of the customers of the healthcare industry do have some kind of planned obsolescence built in.
Then I have a better question for you. Albeit a longer one.
Why not?
Considering they use an Arduino, the actual trigger for destruction is quite easy to adjust. Just add a GPS board, and reprogram it a bit.
That's what I would totally expect. Yet submitter mentions he can get only v4 on mobile data (and with the expectation of using it to log in to a home server I would expect it's at least 3G that he uses).
I have heard before that Groupon takes a 50% cut of most actions (as in: 50% of the amount spent by the customer when buying a Groupon). Sounds big, must vary per product as mostly margins are not that great.
Then the "original price" is of course fake. That's just a feel-good number.
Groupon collects the money the moment you spend it, and pays the company that provides the service/goods three months later. Great for Groupon's cash flow, of course! And the risk is wholly at their partner's side as if Groupon goes bankrupt it's not likely the already sold deals are cancelled. Customers will demand their goods or their dinner they have a Groupon for.
Actually I have no idea what Groupon's costs are but it should not be too high, unless they have a huge and overcompensated sales force around. The business model at least sounds very profitable from Groupon's pov, and very bad for the company whose products they promote.
I think that for the most part, the people who bought the groupons were quite happy.
I have bought a few groupons (mostly fancy dinner offers) and was quite happy with the deals. So yes, I can confirm that. My wife has bought several more and I've never heard any complains from her about it.
However after buying a few of those Groupons, you quickly realise that the price you pay is a good price for the dinner the restaurant serves you. It is not a very special deal, really. You get maybe 10-20% discount on what such a meal would normally cost, but then the restaurant only sells it on their slow weekdays and has the restaurant full of people that all have the choice of just four meals.
The "original price" on which you get 50-70% discount is just hugely overpriced for what you get, and doesn't make any sense. I've also seen laptops offered on Groupon, at 30% discount, well a quick Google search turned up the exact same laptop with a regular price only marginally higher than the Groupon price ($10-30 on a $7000 (US$900) laptop).
Serious question, no interest in flamebait or trolls. Why is mobile not on IPv6?
It's a place where I would expect it. Quick turnaround of devices, new networks all the time. It made sense for 2G and GRPS to be IPv4 at the time. But 3G and even 4G apparently are still using IPv4.
It's hard to believe the phones are not up to the task. It's all in the software, not too hard to require v6 on 3G and later, Older devices that are v4 only can't use 3G networks anyway. Users don't need to know their IP address, ever. This are devices, and there is a huge number of it, exactly what v6 was meant to support. Carriers have full control over their networks, start to finish, so that part of switching to v6 is also not an issue. They of course have to provide a gateway to access v4-only web sites, but that shouldn't be too much harder than maintaining a NAT like they have to do now to keep everyone on v4.
Honestly, I just don't get it.
It's such a stark contrast with that fibre provider that is basically IPv6, while providing a v4 compatibility layer for older devices that still need it.
Some hoard, others spend. There is more than one player, there is more than one bitcoin. If everyone hoards the price may start to collapse due to lack of liquidity in the market.
Hoarding and spending are not mutually exclusive. There are plenty of players in the market, and some will just use it as alternative payment method (buy bitcoin to buy certain services).
The whole bitcoin economy is currently in its infancy, and with more and more websites using it, for at least the first years you should be looking for triple-digit if not quadruple-digit growth rates. The bitcoin infrastructure itself is now slowly maturing with several exchanges that make it easy to buy and sell them, and more and more sites start to accept them, and this may easily cause an explosion in bitcoin use before tapering off.
And even at 5% growth, that's a very good return. Not many investments can give you that kind of returns nowadays.
10.5 million bitcoin at USD 32 each, that's about USD 335 mln worth of bitcoin in the system. In comparison, some quick googling gave me a value of USD2.3 trillion for the Internet economy in 2010, estimated to double by 2016. That is turnover of course, so one would need say USD 230 bln worth of money to support that turnover. To even do 10% of that, the value of a single bitcoin should go up like 100-fold over the couple year or two, without accounting for large-scale hoarding. Now if that isn't attractive for speculators, I don't know what is!
Your arguments fail too many ways.
Hoarding cash = putting cash in a mattress, or in a safe at home, not keeping in the bank and not receiving interest. Then it loses value at inflation rate (or gains value at deflation rate!).
People want to make a profit - of course. But making profit means the total amount of money in the system must increase, otherwise this is not possible. Just look at the amount of money in this world now, compared to 100 years ago. It's a lot more. Bitcoin can not do this, as there are limits on it.
And for losing bitcoins, that I said only increases the effect. Of course people minimise losses, yet they will happen.
And while it may not be intended to be deflationary, it's just an inherent result of the limit to available coins.
Of course they're being hoarded.
One of the key issues with bitcoin is the ultimately limited supply.There are about 10.5 mln into existence, mining continues, and over the upcoming century or so it's going to grow to 21 mln. So that means the first half is there already.
Normal money (USD, EUR, whatever) can be created by banks through lending. This keeps the value of currencies in check, and actually over time decreases the value of a currency, as seen by inflation. The good thing of inflation is that it keeps people from hoarding cash, as hoarding cash means you're losing value.
Assuming uptake of use of bitcoin continues to increase, there is more and more demand for the coins, and there is limited new supply. Supply goes down over time (by design), and more uptake will naturally cause more loss: people keeping bitcoins on their computer, not properly keeping backups, computer breaks down, bitcoins lost. Not sure if there is any way to recover them. And people may take bitcoins and forget about them, another cause of loss. So more and more people want bitcoins, but there is only a limited number available - and that number may indeed decrease over time - causing the price to go up.
Now there are two problems this almost guaranteed increase in value of the bitcoins.
First: people start hoarding them, as speculative investment. This takes more bitcoins out of the payments market, pushing up the value.
Second: it is going to cause deflation in the value of services that charge bitcoin. Imagine a web site sells accounts for 1 bitcoin. That is currently $32 in real money. So people will have to buy bitcoin at $32 each, and the web site can sell those bitcoins at $32. But next year the bitcoin is at maybe $64. That would double the price of the account, which is probably not good for business, so the website compensates for this by changing their price to 0,5 bitcoin. Especially if such a site gives an option of paying in bitcoin or paying in USD, they must adjust prices to keep them equivalent.
People owning bitcoin see the value of the bitcoin in USD (money they can actually spend) go up, while at the same time for everything they could use bitcoin for, the prices go down. Where a donation of 1 bitcoin now would be worth $32, the equivalent donation next year would be only 0,5 bitcoin. Buy a bitcoin now, and the web site account next year would effectively cost you only $16. And the other half bitcoin you could sell at $32, making the account free.
And this is how I call bitcoin an interesting concept, but terribly defective by design.
Is it in all civil cases so that loser pays winner's cost, and court cost?
In that case it would indeed be quite reasonable that when initiating a law suit, the plaintiff should post some kind of guarantee that they will pay loser's cost (preferably a fixed amount based on type of lawsuit etc, so that this is known before the suit is initiated and not dependent on the mood of the judge). That might make actually getting the money afterwards a little less impossible.
OTOH this can not reasonably be asked from defendant, who usually doesn't even want to go to court to begin with.
OpenOffice/LibreOffice wiht all their awesomeness (and actual editing capabilities!) still did not put a dent in MS Office's dominance. That alone makes me doubt that Google can suddenly do this.
For evolution it is enough that certain individuals have a better CHANCE to survive and a better CHANCE to reproduce. No need for the less-fit individuals to actually die, or not reproduce at all.
I have that add-on, but YouTube is one of the very few sites that is on my allowed list as that's a site where flash is actually functional (yes, you read that correctly, "flash" and "functional" in one sentence). I got bored with having to click every time...
Ideal for YouTube would be that the video would start loading (buffering) but not playing when the tab is in the background, so when I get to watch it, it's ready to go.
I always wondered why FF insists on starting to play video on tabs that are in the background. It is so irritating that when browsing YouTube I always have to move to other tabs to pause videos (I often CTRL-click to open a video for later watching). Just not playing is much nicer. Just load that Flash thing, but don't run it unless it's in the foreground.
Well, as other repliers pointed out to you, people are not totally reluctant to change - if it adds something to the experience, if it is something totally different, allowing to do things they could not do before.
And another thing that should be added: change is OK if the new thing works at least as easy as the previous version. Example: people happily switch from WinXP to Win7, but not Win8. They also happily pick up a smart phone, as both Android and iOS operate very easily and mostly quite intuitively.
One thing that held back Linux for a long time was that you can not run Windows software. Well many people now have bitten that bullet and walk around with tablets, which suit their needs quite well. Except maybe for the lack of MS Office or an equivalent. Web browsing, e-mailing, watching videos, playing Angry Birds, it all works just fine. There is no compelling need for Windows any more, and the general computer buyers are learning that, too, but likely very slowly if only for the lack of alternatives on display in the shops.
Also, for the desktop there is still no serious competitor. Linux with all its distributions has the technical quality, no doubt. However there is no big (enough) company that can push their offering to hardware makers (e.g. HP, Dell, etc), to install their OS on computers for sale, instead of Windows. Restrictive licensing contracts my MS may also be a problem there, plenty of allegations in that direction at least.
Ditching Windows and going Linux-only is a very risky strategy for those computer makers. Even if they can make their offerings cheaper (they could add crapware with Linux just like they do with Windows for the kickbacks) it is not sure whether the market would accept it. The linux distro makers are also not big and strong enough to support them - and who is going to pay for all that support anyway, if the distro can be installed for free?