...it'll fork, and life will go on. What's the big deal?
The fork is available already. I prefer Mint with KDE. Usable and pleasant to work with. I haven't touched the Ubuntu proper from the day they pushed Unity and I tried it. Since then they carefully coded additional privacy-destroying functions, and of course I am not interested.
How much time, on average, a typical male geek spends in bathroom staring in the mirror?
I'd understand if this mirror were to be aimed at female geeks. But they are few and far between. A non-geeky woman doesn't need stock quotes; she would focus on the only object that is important: her own appearance:-)
Most of your examples are valid. You can refrain from applying mascara or checking a map while driving. However how the hell do you avoid driving while tired? Many people work, you know, and they are tired by the time they are allowed go home.
But I don't know what is more dangerous: the morning commute, when many drivers are still half-asleep, or the evening commute, when many drivers are dog tired. I do my best to avoid both.
the top two reasons girls explicitly give are that it's too hard and that geeks(not geek chic hipster poseurs) are icky
Those are good reasons for girls to stay away from cube farms. Those are also the reasons why geeks love work. Men are not concerned about ickiness of coworkers or the color matching of their clothing.
Where did you get the notion of a million dollars for battery cost?
Extrapolated Tesla's battery costs. Roadster's battery costs $50K, but that car is not a truck. Battery costs can be also lurking in other costs, such as in the purchase price, in leasing fees, or in service fees. Smith's warranty on battery is only 3 years, for example. How much will it cost to replace? One hidden cost is right here.
In general, it's not too surprising that there are companies who undersell Tesla. Electric forklifts and other vehicles are not a new invention - they are a necessity indoors.
As matter of fact, EVs on fixed routes make most sense - you can always be sure that there is enough charge to complete the route. Additionally, an EV fleet allows you to not worry about one or two vehicles being not functional, if need be (lead time of a battery may be long,) and you can put EVs only on routes that they are capable of. This is a valid use of a truck, but one can't say that it will work for a general purpose vehicle - say, of your electrical contractor. Nevertheless, it's a good start.
"So women don't want to program. That's fine." -- Do we know that? I sure don't know that.
I'd understand if you profess your lack of certainty when we are discussing geology of Mars. But, reportedly, a few women are present on Earth, and since they are sentient you can ask them and get an answer:-) Wouldn't that be the most reliable way to find out what their motivation is?
durable power of attorney granted to a trusted younger friend
Not to an individual, but to a law firm or two. Those are immortal, and they are required by law to follow the contract, and your small savings will not be too attractive to them.
I cannot imagine what fun could be in torturing people... but the facts are that the police does these things - and much more that does not get reported. It's very hard to report abuse when your abuser holds in his hand a little plastic bag with white powder. If you resist, this bag will be "discovered on the suspect" - and nothing will save you from that point on.
Only an idiot would want to be a cop, and the job is self-selecting for
control freaks and bullies.
... considering the serious drawbacks of being a cop. Don't you just love to deal with the scum of this Earth all day and all night? Isn't it wonderful to approach, alone, a group of weed-smoking black teenagers at 3am? Isn't it fun to drive your vehicle for hours in pouring, freezing rain, chasing house alarms that are cancelled before you get there? Police job is dirty, repetitive, boring, and dangerous. Your peers are power-mad, steroid-popping, angry people like Chris Dorner. They are all armed; your adversaries are armed too. Nobody loves you. This is a job only for those who are willing to take these drawbacks in exchange for something greater. Often desire for power over others is that "greater" thing. Among other reasons are: ability to extort; ability to use services of criminals; ability to shoot first and ask questions never; ability to feel above the "civilians". And, finally, the desire to clear the society, to help the innocent and to punish the guilty. That last case is far from being common. Many students sign up for Police Academy having those rose-colored ideals. Most of them wash out (or get washed out) within months of service.
Therefore, he's obviously all caught up in drugs, and the police have done a fine service by removing this violent criminal from society.
In the eyes of many of our wardens (LEO,) we are all blacks, and we have no rights, and our existence is worthless.
It may be so that black-skinned blacks are more likely, statistically, to be involved in crime. But that changes nothing. As unemployment spreads, the share of white-skinned blacks will be growing.
If you have a year's supply of oxycodone, and pharmacies only ever give out a two-week bottle, than you have far more than what you will personally use.
What if you are going on a month-long business trip to Sierra Leone? What if the weathermen predict three weeks of hurricanes? What if you are afraid of three weeks of hurricanes, regardless of the forecast? What if you are disabled and cannot go to the pharmacy yourself, and your help is unreliable? What if you have paranoid fears of interruption of supplies? What if you suffer from Alzheimer's disease and simply forgot what you have? What if you lost your bottle and cannot find it?
Massive civil disobedience and campaigns where everyone installs a secret compartment in their vehicles. Like to see them prosecute that shit afterwards...
Unfortunately, the government has already worked out a perfect strategy to defeat mass disobedience. It is called "selective prosecution."
For example, 100% of drivers exceed the maximum posted speed at least by 1 microsecond and by 1 inch per year at least twice per day (on their way to work and back.) There is no technical way to know that you are driving faster than N mph until you see (N+1) displayed. You can't even [trivially] measure the instant speed. The police does not stop anyone for that - unless they want to. Given that everyone drives at about (max+5) mph, this gives them a perfect excuse to stop anyone at any time. Among other excuses are verbal statements of the LEO; trained drug dogs that are ordered by the handler to react; and the old but good "search them all and see what we can hang them with" approach. Are you sure, for example, that your rental car is absolutely free of any traces of any drugs? If drugs are detected, you can be sure that your day is ruined. BTW, I read in the news that nearly all US cash has traces of drugs on them.
As I said elsewhere, my car already has those, made at the factory and described in the user's manual. But what if your car doesn't, and you would like to store money or jewelry while on a road trip? That can't be illegal. Your car will be parked at motels, and that exposes you to the risk of losing your valuables.
Another question is in the word "secret." What does it mean? How secret is secret? What is the threshold of work to classify the compartment as secret? Does a backseat organizer qualify? Does a bag under the seat qualify? Does a $100 shoved under the floor mat qualify?
"intent to distribute" has been in the drug laws for a long time.
And in this case it has to be proven, at least by circumstancial evidence - like by a recent conviction for a drug-related offense, or by presence of drugs elsewhere in the car or with the driver.
My car came with several semi-secret locations built by the manufacturer. They are to be used to store items that you don't want to be stolen if someone breaks into the car. (The car cannot be easily stolen due to RFID security and absence of wires to short.) You can keep your money there, credit cards, checkbook, jewelry (if you have it,) and other such things when you are on a road trip.
I'm sure Chinese generals were asked to model this development; and I am sure China has specific plans for all these scenarios.
Who will win and who will lose in case of an air battle? Who has more control over arbitrary war-like actions - democratic Japan, with their governments falling like dominoes every year, or China, with a monolithic government that does not fall? Finally, who has more airplanes? I do not believe that 10 Japanese airplanes will shoot at 100 Chinese fighters, especially if there are 100 air defense missile warships on the surface.
China even has a sandbox (NK/SK) where they can experiment with such conflicts - and they do so. The belief is that the enlightened West got too soft and too fat to protect a few square miles of land and a few hundred square miles of water in the middle of nowhere. They intend to win this round of saber-rattling. Will they? I cannot be sure; it's always possible that Shinzo Abe manages to wake up his inner Samurai and order an all-out conquest of the islands. But it's not very likely. China is pretty strong in military aspect; Japan, on the other hand, is focusing on defense. It may not even have the necessary equipment.
The role of the USA will be minimal because Xi Jinping will call Obama and order him to stay away. Involvement of the USA is also domestically unacceptable for Obama - the last thing he needs now is to stick a finger in someone else's mess on the other side of the planet. You simply cannot sell fighting over a few uninhabited islands as an attack on Japan; but the US electorate wouldn't care anyway, being already mad at Obama for all these cancellations of health insurances.
The role of UN will be also minimal because Japan now has to act as an invader, probably against already deployed Chinese ship-borne defenses. Besides, the President of the UN Security Council is Liu Jieyi, a Chinese citizen. Must be a pure coincidence, that. China is a permanent member of UN SC; Japan is not there at all.
Enforcement of access to the land is possession. Note that in this case China does not need to physically control every square inch of the claimed territory. They only need to control it better than Japan does.
The obvious next move for the Japanese (or the US) is to flagrantly violate that claimed airspace, pointedly ignoring the procedures the Chinese demand.
I do not believe that there is anyone in Tokyo or Washington that is so much invested in these islands to risk *everything* for them. China already demonstrated that they will be very aggressive with violators. Remember that SIGINT airplane that they forced to land during the reign of W? They will do it again.
I think China made the winning move in this game. Possession is 90% of the law. Japan is too civilized to start bombing. The USA will not act to fight over those small islands and a patch of water around them. A conflict with China would be far more dangerous. The USA has no money in the bank and no weapons to win a war of that type. Japan was too slow, and they lost those islands for now to a more attentive opponent. Given that Japan has very few friends in the area, that's the end of the conflict. Do not be surprised if tomorrow China ships a small number - say, a million - of Chinese citizens to work on those islands. Within a month the islands will become a fortress.
Re:Can someone explain bitcoin banks to me?
on
195K Bitcoin Transaction
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Remeber, if one bank gets ripped off and stolen, there is literally nothing that they can do to get your money back. Hope you're enjoying the ride.
I personally don't own BTC, and consequently don't store them in banks. But as the OP indicates, quite a few people do both. I believe they will be eventually separated from their money - in part because these "banks" are not regulated, and in part because extremely fast deflation of BTC (currently caused by speculation) makes BTC useless as a stable coin. IMO BTC should be compared to tulip bulbs.
Re:Can someone explain bitcoin banks to me?
on
195K Bitcoin Transaction
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Why are people trusting their coins to a bank?
Well, here are the reasons that we have to keep national currencies in the bank:
1) Because it's hard to guard your cash all day and all night.
2) Because the bank pays you interest.
3) Because the bank gives you the ability to send and receive money using checks, transfers, money orders, cards.
All these reasons (except #2) are valid in case of BTC. The more backups of your wallet you make, the more likely it is that one of them gets exposed to a thief. The fewer backups you make, the more likely it is that you will lose your wallet forever. A bank does not keep your money in a wallet, though they have deposit boxes for other items. If you deposit your BTC into an account, the record states that the bank owes you so many BTC. You have a copy of all transfers of that money, in or out. Loss of wallet is immaterial. Theft of wallet is immaterial. If the paper says you have 10 BTC in your account, that's what you will get. If someone sends you 20 BTC, you do not need to fiddle with blockchain and confirmations - as soon as your bank says you have the money, you have the money. The bank isolates the customer from the technicalities of running BTC clients. Add credit cards and checkbooks, and you can pay with BTC just as you pay with USD or GBP. Credit cards will be swept instantly (and not in 15 minutes.) The latter is, actually, very important because the raw BTC is ill-suited for small, numerous transactions that have to complete within seconds.
Also don't forget the hassle of babysitting this truck. Lithium batteries give you about 500 full cycles; more (2,000 in case of Fluence) if they are lightly used - but then you lose capacity accordingly. So not only the up-front cost of batteries has to be counted, but also their replacement cost. The time of the worker who swaps batteries is also expensive. With a gas/diesel vehicle you just turn it off and walk away. This truck would be more like a horse that you need to unharness, feed, water, and clean after each use.
Your proposal may work well if the truck is used on star-like delivery routes from a central point. However, as we know, this is not an efficient strategy for deliveries in general; returning to home base to swap batteries every few hours is just not practical. Many contractors, who use trucks, leave their home in the morning and they don't return until the day's work is done. Some of them drive quite far from the home base to service customers; returning for lunch is not an option.
There are some auto parts delivery services that use star routing; most pizza joints use short non-star routes. But those services require quick turnaround; the driver simply has no time to fiddle with batteries, unless they are swapped automatically - like Better Place (that is now bankrupt.) Also short routes do not incur much of gas cost penalty, and most of those deliveries are done in efficient cars or in light trucks.
Nothing about building it themselves? Or buying from a friendly nation that they trust NOT to spy on them like that?
If if a nation cannot develop computer software then probably you shouldn't even bother spying upon them:-) But even if a target nation is not known for software prowess but still warrants spying (Pakistan, Iran?) they still have F/OSS that can be obtained from multiple servers, compared, reviewed, compiled, and code-signed. Unlike digging ditches, one programmer can supply software for unlimited number of computers, and there are 182 million people in Pakistan, 77 million in Iran - some of them just have to be good at coding.
Not really. I have a large solar array and a 10 kW inverter. The deal was fair when I ordered it. I don't know what prices are today, but I guess they are going down. Yet another reason to not bother with solar - the longer you wait, the cheaper it becomes.
Slashdot Mirror
Vista, of course - a solid failure.
Somehow I got the feeling that the users like Mark/Canonicals decisions... otherwise they'd not be users, no?
To properly determine the answer to that you need to explore the limit of the function \lim_{users \to 0} \frac{likes}{users} :-)
The fork is available already. I prefer Mint with KDE. Usable and pleasant to work with. I haven't touched the Ubuntu proper from the day they pushed Unity and I tried it. Since then they carefully coded additional privacy-destroying functions, and of course I am not interested.
How much time, on average, a typical male geek spends in bathroom staring in the mirror?
I'd understand if this mirror were to be aimed at female geeks. But they are few and far between. A non-geeky woman doesn't need stock quotes; she would focus on the only object that is important: her own appearance :-)
Most of your examples are valid. You can refrain from applying mascara or checking a map while driving. However how the hell do you avoid driving while tired? Many people work, you know, and they are tired by the time they are allowed go home.
But I don't know what is more dangerous: the morning commute, when many drivers are still half-asleep, or the evening commute, when many drivers are dog tired. I do my best to avoid both.
the top two reasons girls explicitly give are that it's too hard and that geeks(not geek chic hipster poseurs) are icky
Those are good reasons for girls to stay away from cube farms. Those are also the reasons why geeks love work. Men are not concerned about ickiness of coworkers or the color matching of their clothing.
Where did you get the notion of a million dollars for battery cost?
Extrapolated Tesla's battery costs. Roadster's battery costs $50K, but that car is not a truck. Battery costs can be also lurking in other costs, such as in the purchase price, in leasing fees, or in service fees. Smith's warranty on battery is only 3 years, for example. How much will it cost to replace? One hidden cost is right here.
In general, it's not too surprising that there are companies who undersell Tesla. Electric forklifts and other vehicles are not a new invention - they are a necessity indoors.
As matter of fact, EVs on fixed routes make most sense - you can always be sure that there is enough charge to complete the route. Additionally, an EV fleet allows you to not worry about one or two vehicles being not functional, if need be (lead time of a battery may be long,) and you can put EVs only on routes that they are capable of. This is a valid use of a truck, but one can't say that it will work for a general purpose vehicle - say, of your electrical contractor. Nevertheless, it's a good start.
"So women don't want to program. That's fine." -- Do we know that? I sure don't know that.
I'd understand if you profess your lack of certainty when we are discussing geology of Mars. But, reportedly, a few women are present on Earth, and since they are sentient you can ask them and get an answer :-) Wouldn't that be the most reliable way to find out what their motivation is?
durable power of attorney granted to a trusted younger friend
Not to an individual, but to a law firm or two. Those are immortal, and they are required by law to follow the contract, and your small savings will not be too attractive to them.
I cannot imagine what fun could be in torturing people... but the facts are that the police does these things - and much more that does not get reported. It's very hard to report abuse when your abuser holds in his hand a little plastic bag with white powder. If you resist, this bag will be "discovered on the suspect" - and nothing will save you from that point on.
Only an idiot would want to be a cop, and the job is self-selecting for control freaks and bullies.
Therefore, he's obviously all caught up in drugs, and the police have done a fine service by removing this violent criminal from society.
In the eyes of many of our wardens (LEO,) we are all blacks, and we have no rights, and our existence is worthless.
It may be so that black-skinned blacks are more likely, statistically, to be involved in crime. But that changes nothing. As unemployment spreads, the share of white-skinned blacks will be growing.
It's a great way to implement mob rule without having a mob at the location.
If you have a year's supply of oxycodone, and pharmacies only ever give out a two-week bottle, than you have far more than what you will personally use.
What if you are going on a month-long business trip to Sierra Leone? What if the weathermen predict three weeks of hurricanes? What if you are afraid of three weeks of hurricanes, regardless of the forecast? What if you are disabled and cannot go to the pharmacy yourself, and your help is unreliable? What if you have paranoid fears of interruption of supplies? What if you suffer from Alzheimer's disease and simply forgot what you have? What if you lost your bottle and cannot find it?
Massive civil disobedience and campaigns where everyone installs a secret compartment in their vehicles. Like to see them prosecute that shit afterwards...
Unfortunately, the government has already worked out a perfect strategy to defeat mass disobedience. It is called "selective prosecution."
For example, 100% of drivers exceed the maximum posted speed at least by 1 microsecond and by 1 inch per year at least twice per day (on their way to work and back.) There is no technical way to know that you are driving faster than N mph until you see (N+1) displayed. You can't even [trivially] measure the instant speed. The police does not stop anyone for that - unless they want to. Given that everyone drives at about (max+5) mph, this gives them a perfect excuse to stop anyone at any time. Among other excuses are verbal statements of the LEO; trained drug dogs that are ordered by the handler to react; and the old but good "search them all and see what we can hang them with" approach. Are you sure, for example, that your rental car is absolutely free of any traces of any drugs? If drugs are detected, you can be sure that your day is ruined. BTW, I read in the news that nearly all US cash has traces of drugs on them.
As I said elsewhere, my car already has those, made at the factory and described in the user's manual. But what if your car doesn't, and you would like to store money or jewelry while on a road trip? That can't be illegal. Your car will be parked at motels, and that exposes you to the risk of losing your valuables.
Another question is in the word "secret." What does it mean? How secret is secret? What is the threshold of work to classify the compartment as secret? Does a backseat organizer qualify? Does a bag under the seat qualify? Does a $100 shoved under the floor mat qualify?
"intent to distribute" has been in the drug laws for a long time.
And in this case it has to be proven, at least by circumstancial evidence - like by a recent conviction for a drug-related offense, or by presence of drugs elsewhere in the car or with the driver.
My car came with several semi-secret locations built by the manufacturer. They are to be used to store items that you don't want to be stolen if someone breaks into the car. (The car cannot be easily stolen due to RFID security and absence of wires to short.) You can keep your money there, credit cards, checkbook, jewelry (if you have it,) and other such things when you are on a road trip.
I'm sure Chinese generals were asked to model this development; and I am sure China has specific plans for all these scenarios.
Who will win and who will lose in case of an air battle? Who has more control over arbitrary war-like actions - democratic Japan, with their governments falling like dominoes every year, or China, with a monolithic government that does not fall? Finally, who has more airplanes? I do not believe that 10 Japanese airplanes will shoot at 100 Chinese fighters, especially if there are 100 air defense missile warships on the surface.
China even has a sandbox (NK/SK) where they can experiment with such conflicts - and they do so. The belief is that the enlightened West got too soft and too fat to protect a few square miles of land and a few hundred square miles of water in the middle of nowhere. They intend to win this round of saber-rattling. Will they? I cannot be sure; it's always possible that Shinzo Abe manages to wake up his inner Samurai and order an all-out conquest of the islands. But it's not very likely. China is pretty strong in military aspect; Japan, on the other hand, is focusing on defense. It may not even have the necessary equipment.
The role of the USA will be minimal because Xi Jinping will call Obama and order him to stay away. Involvement of the USA is also domestically unacceptable for Obama - the last thing he needs now is to stick a finger in someone else's mess on the other side of the planet. You simply cannot sell fighting over a few uninhabited islands as an attack on Japan; but the US electorate wouldn't care anyway, being already mad at Obama for all these cancellations of health insurances.
The role of UN will be also minimal because Japan now has to act as an invader, probably against already deployed Chinese ship-borne defenses. Besides, the President of the UN Security Council is Liu Jieyi, a Chinese citizen. Must be a pure coincidence, that. China is a permanent member of UN SC; Japan is not there at all.
Enforcement of access to the land is possession. Note that in this case China does not need to physically control every square inch of the claimed territory. They only need to control it better than Japan does.
The obvious next move for the Japanese (or the US) is to flagrantly violate that claimed airspace, pointedly ignoring the procedures the Chinese demand.
I do not believe that there is anyone in Tokyo or Washington that is so much invested in these islands to risk *everything* for them. China already demonstrated that they will be very aggressive with violators. Remember that SIGINT airplane that they forced to land during the reign of W? They will do it again.
I think China made the winning move in this game. Possession is 90% of the law. Japan is too civilized to start bombing. The USA will not act to fight over those small islands and a patch of water around them. A conflict with China would be far more dangerous. The USA has no money in the bank and no weapons to win a war of that type. Japan was too slow, and they lost those islands for now to a more attentive opponent. Given that Japan has very few friends in the area, that's the end of the conflict. Do not be surprised if tomorrow China ships a small number - say, a million - of Chinese citizens to work on those islands. Within a month the islands will become a fortress.
Remeber, if one bank gets ripped off and stolen, there is literally nothing that they can do to get your money back. Hope you're enjoying the ride.
I personally don't own BTC, and consequently don't store them in banks. But as the OP indicates, quite a few people do both. I believe they will be eventually separated from their money - in part because these "banks" are not regulated, and in part because extremely fast deflation of BTC (currently caused by speculation) makes BTC useless as a stable coin. IMO BTC should be compared to tulip bulbs.
Why are people trusting their coins to a bank?
Well, here are the reasons that we have to keep national currencies in the bank:
1) Because it's hard to guard your cash all day and all night.
2) Because the bank pays you interest.
3) Because the bank gives you the ability to send and receive money using checks, transfers, money orders, cards.
All these reasons (except #2) are valid in case of BTC. The more backups of your wallet you make, the more likely it is that one of them gets exposed to a thief. The fewer backups you make, the more likely it is that you will lose your wallet forever. A bank does not keep your money in a wallet, though they have deposit boxes for other items. If you deposit your BTC into an account, the record states that the bank owes you so many BTC. You have a copy of all transfers of that money, in or out. Loss of wallet is immaterial. Theft of wallet is immaterial. If the paper says you have 10 BTC in your account, that's what you will get. If someone sends you 20 BTC, you do not need to fiddle with blockchain and confirmations - as soon as your bank says you have the money, you have the money. The bank isolates the customer from the technicalities of running BTC clients. Add credit cards and checkbooks, and you can pay with BTC just as you pay with USD or GBP. Credit cards will be swept instantly (and not in 15 minutes.) The latter is, actually, very important because the raw BTC is ill-suited for small, numerous transactions that have to complete within seconds.
Also don't forget the hassle of babysitting this truck. Lithium batteries give you about 500 full cycles; more (2,000 in case of Fluence) if they are lightly used - but then you lose capacity accordingly. So not only the up-front cost of batteries has to be counted, but also their replacement cost. The time of the worker who swaps batteries is also expensive. With a gas/diesel vehicle you just turn it off and walk away. This truck would be more like a horse that you need to unharness, feed, water, and clean after each use.
Your proposal may work well if the truck is used on star-like delivery routes from a central point. However, as we know, this is not an efficient strategy for deliveries in general; returning to home base to swap batteries every few hours is just not practical. Many contractors, who use trucks, leave their home in the morning and they don't return until the day's work is done. Some of them drive quite far from the home base to service customers; returning for lunch is not an option.
There are some auto parts delivery services that use star routing; most pizza joints use short non-star routes. But those services require quick turnaround; the driver simply has no time to fiddle with batteries, unless they are swapped automatically - like Better Place (that is now bankrupt.) Also short routes do not incur much of gas cost penalty, and most of those deliveries are done in efficient cars or in light trucks.
Nothing about building it themselves? Or buying from a friendly nation that they trust NOT to spy on them like that?
If if a nation cannot develop computer software then probably you shouldn't even bother spying upon them :-) But even if a target nation is not known for software prowess but still warrants spying (Pakistan, Iran?) they still have F/OSS that can be obtained from multiple servers, compared, reviewed, compiled, and code-signed. Unlike digging ditches, one programmer can supply software for unlimited number of computers, and there are 182 million people in Pakistan, 77 million in Iran - some of them just have to be good at coding.
Not really. I have a large solar array and a 10 kW inverter. The deal was fair when I ordered it. I don't know what prices are today, but I guess they are going down. Yet another reason to not bother with solar - the longer you wait, the cheaper it becomes.