0x10c sounds like a game that geeks (like me) would make if they didn't have financial constraints. I doubt it will reach any kind of mass market appeal and the hoards of minecraft fans hanging on Notch's every word will probably be dissapointed. But I'm looking forward to it.
While that is the reason for waiting for a new block, note however, that nodes won't relay transactions that would cause a double spend. Therefore you would have to do the double spend at the exact same time.
If you can get a direct connection to the recieving nodes, so that the transactions only take one step to go from your machine to the receiving machine, you still have to be fast enough that the receiving machine won't see the first transaction on the network before you do your double spend. In practice, unless you are able to mine the next block(and therefore create a transaction to yourself with those coins, so that the double spent transactions will be invalidated), double spending is impractical. And you have to get away from the scene within a few minutes, impractical if you're buying a beer or fast food.
I tend to disagree. I dislike movie-like setups (I'm a nosy person and keep bumping into "you're not supposed to be here" corners with blatant immersion-breaking obstacles blocking your way). OTOH, I love huge, open-ended single-player sandbox style games. A huge world with a lot to do and with freedom of choice what to do. Events unfold around you and you're often in the middle of things, but you may turn around and do other things if you choose so.
Can you give some recommendations for games? There's minecraft, which I love, but I'd love to hear of any other games you could suggest.
that article is from the 19th of November. Things have moved faster than you know.
Stephens, told AOL News today that Swedish prosecutors told him that Assange is wanted not for allegations of rape, as previously reported, but for something called "sex by surprise," which he said involves a fine of 5,000 kronor or about $715.
***
"We don't even know what 'sex by surprise' even means, and they haven't told us," Stephens said, just hours after Sweden's Supreme Court rejected Assange's bid to prevent an arrest order from being issued against him on allegations of sex crimes.
Your requirements are rather onerous. Why don't you list ALL places where you can exchange USDGBP and what the current exchange rate is. It's just nonsense.
I've made a list, I probably haven't got all of them:
Well regardless of if you think bitcoins or worthless or not, they are currently trading at about 200 bitcoins per dollar. This is because, believe it or not, there is demand for bitcoins.
Trinkets have no "intrinsic value". They are valuable because there is demand for them and there is a limited quantity of them.
Money does not have to be intrinsically valuable. It only has to be difficult to create more of, easily divisible and easily transferable. Bitcoins fulfil this perfectly.
So no, you will not be able to give someone $1 for all 21 million bitcoins. Currently about 3million have been "minted" and are being used in real trade for physical products and services, regardless of your nonsensical idea of a currency requiring "value".
You could also say that the early adopters are risking the energy they are burning up to generate these bitcoins. By taking the risk in an unproven currency, they get a bigger share if it works out well. Basically the same as any other investment.
It's not really any different than prospecting for gold.
Like gold, bitcoins have an upper limit. There is a total absolute maximum of 21million bitcoins. This cannot be changed.
There is no way to print more bitcoins like with cash.
There is no way to create fake bitcoins like is possible with gold.
It is possible to transfer this currency instantly over the net, unlike gold. Although this is kind of possible with an e-gold like service, you have to trust someone actually is holding on to your gold. Bitcoins have no such problem.
In essence, it has all the advantages of using a limited resource, without the disadvantage that you have to carry or store this limited resource physically and without any chance of forgery.
Well, there are Bitcoin exchanges so you can convert to and from USD if you prefer a centralised fiat currency. You're correct, currently there are not so many services available that will accept bitcoin. The hope is that since this is a new, inherently stable, unmanipulatable currency, that we will see more and more services offering bitcoin payment options.
see The marketplace on the forum for places where you could spend your bitcoins.
Since the site is down and the summary is light on information, let me try and summarise this a bit better, from what I've picked up, so I might be wrong on some of the details):
Nodes connect to each other in a P2P network.
The nodes perform hashing problems, attempting to find a number that hashes to a value with a certain number of 0's at the start (binary zero's, aka, the number has to be below a certain value)
The network assigns bitcoins to those nodes who have found solutions to the hashes.
After a certain amount of time the difficulty of finding the hashes increases(an extra 0 is added to the hash solution required)
This increase in difficulty continues until eventually there will be 21million bitcoins and no more can exist.
We are currently in the inflationary stage, so the supply of bitcoins is increasing. once all 21 million have been assigned, then it will become deflationary, as no new coins can ever be created and coins that are lost are lost forever.
bitcoins can be divided into 100 million pieces, so the limit of 21 million coins is not a major stumbling block.
Essentially it's a way to create a decentralised currency with a hard limit on how much is available, ensuring that it cannot be inflated by a central government simply printing more cash or adding some numbers to a computer system.
Disclosure: I work (in-house IT) for a publisher. We publish in physical and ebook formats.
The vast majority of texts that authors give us are incredibly poor. Our editors have an extremely hard job of cleaning these up and rewriting them so that they are generally understandable and professional and are correctly targeted for our audience. To our established authors, we also offer them an advance on their work.
Even if it's just ebooks, getting it into all the available distribution channels and formats for the various stores requires a high level of technical competence, this is likely more than a lone writer wants to learn.
Of course they could pay someone independently to do this for them, just as they could pay someone independently to edit the book. It is a trade off and while some authors will prefer doing it alone, some(many) prefer the relative security of going through an established publisher who has existing links to distributors, printers, editors and the technical know-how to get it into the required formats to ensure the maximum market for the book.
Well of course, if the gun can't be remotely disabled then it is safer to try and get it off them(gender-neutral singular them) as soon as possible.
In this case however, if they've got a hold of your gun then you can simply back off and then the attacker may attempt to shoot, before discovering that it's disabled and that will give the LEO an advantage.
It makes sense that police officers would behave differently with a weapon like this.
Well sure, if governments bought products like regular buyers do then it wouldn't be a problem. But governments are not subject to any of the same constraints that standard citizens do (i.e. essentially unlimited budgets, no market feedback, can increase income without any change in output or behaviour) so given that, you undermined your own argument.
Privatisation isn't privatisation when your primary customers and sources of funding come from the government. There is in fact no difference, just an illusion of competition. What is needed is for them to remove the regulations that exist against private space travel. Remove the monopolistic government funded NASA entirely, leaving the playing field completely open for private firms to build a true spot in the marketplace. That is the only way space exploration, tourism and travel will be able to survive.
The easiest way to do this is to write an app that intercepts connections to the server and just responds to them the same as the server does. I expect they will be using encryption and things(but the encryption can be figured out through disassembly) but it's certainly not as hard as finding unused areas of the PE and compiling in these features directly into the executable.
And as a bonus, your law just legalised contract killing, prostitution, drug dealing, etc...
Oops, you're right about the contract killing part. I guess in my mind the right to life comes before anything else and is an assumption I make without noticing. My error.
I have no problem with prostitution or drug dealing though.
I don't see patents as capital. They are restriction, essentially, having a patent is like "owning" a law restricting other people. The cost of gaining a patent is minimal and has no relation to the cost(or lack of cost) of producing the original item or idea.
So then, it will no longer be possible to forbid sale of too powerful weapons, spoiled food, unsafe toys, etc. either. Not good.
Yes, that's correct. And that's a good thing in my opinion. What's the point of a weapon if the opponent you need it to defend yourself from is able to get a more powerful weapon illegally?
Unsafe toys and spoiled food don't get discovered until they are already out in the wild, even under your system of laws and restrictions. Any response to that is basically going to be the same whether you then "Ban" the sale of that item or not. Media is interested in these stories and so people will find out. It's very likely that in order to keep customers, the companies responsible will withdraw the products and if they don't then the company will fail.
Slashdot Mirror
0x10c sounds like a game that geeks (like me) would make if they didn't have financial constraints. I doubt it will reach any kind of mass market appeal and the hoards of minecraft fans hanging on Notch's every word will probably be dissapointed. But I'm looking forward to it.
While that is the reason for waiting for a new block, note however, that nodes won't relay transactions that would cause a double spend. Therefore you would have to do the double spend at the exact same time.
If you can get a direct connection to the recieving nodes, so that the transactions only take one step to go from your machine to the receiving machine, you still have to be fast enough that the receiving machine won't see the first transaction on the network before you do your double spend. In practice, unless you are able to mine the next block(and therefore create a transaction to yourself with those coins, so that the double spent transactions will be invalidated), double spending is impractical. And you have to get away from the scene within a few minutes, impractical if you're buying a beer or fast food.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCmudUDv3GA
From about 10minutes in IIRC. I'm actually pretty impressed with the device(s).
I tend to disagree. I dislike movie-like setups (I'm a nosy person and keep bumping into "you're not supposed to be here" corners with blatant immersion-breaking obstacles blocking your way). OTOH, I love huge, open-ended single-player sandbox style games. A huge world with a lot to do and with freedom of choice what to do. Events unfold around you and you're often in the middle of things, but you may turn around and do other things if you choose so.
Can you give some recommendations for games? There's minecraft, which I love, but I'd love to hear of any other games you could suggest.
Stephens, told AOL News today that Swedish prosecutors told him that Assange is wanted not for allegations of rape, as previously reported, but for something called "sex by surprise," which he said involves a fine of 5,000 kronor or about $715.
***
"We don't even know what 'sex by surprise' even means, and they haven't told us," Stephens said, just hours after Sweden's Supreme Court rejected Assange's bid to prevent an arrest order from being issued against him on allegations of sex crimes.
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/12/sex-charges-and-arrest-warrant-against.html
He isn't accused of rape, reminder available here.
He also voluntarily turned himself in at a police station.
If you're in London and can make it out NOW, please consider protesting.
Your requirements are rather onerous. Why don't you list ALL places where you can exchange USDGBP and what the current exchange rate is. It's just nonsense.
/. publicity.
I've made a list, I probably haven't got all of them:
https://www.bitcoinexchange.com/
http://www.buybitcoins.com/
http://www.sellbitcoins.com/
http://www.bitcoin4cash.com/ (appears to be down)
https://www.bitcoinmarket.com/ (appears to be down)
The exchange rate normally hangs around 200BTC per USD. but the price has gone up recently because of the
This site used to offer exchange but not at the moment: http://newlibertystandard.wetpaint.com/page/Exchange+Rate
Well regardless of if you think bitcoins or worthless or not, they are currently trading at about 200 bitcoins per dollar. This is because, believe it or not, there is demand for bitcoins.
Trinkets have no "intrinsic value". They are valuable because there is demand for them and there is a limited quantity of them.
Money does not have to be intrinsically valuable. It only has to be difficult to create more of, easily divisible and easily transferable. Bitcoins fulfil this perfectly.
So no, you will not be able to give someone $1 for all 21 million bitcoins. Currently about 3million have been "minted" and are being used in real trade for physical products and services, regardless of your nonsensical idea of a currency requiring "value".
You could also say that the early adopters are risking the energy they are burning up to generate these bitcoins. By taking the risk in an unproven currency, they get a bigger share if it works out well. Basically the same as any other investment.
It's not really any different than prospecting for gold.
Like gold, bitcoins have an upper limit. There is a total absolute maximum of 21million bitcoins. This cannot be changed.
There is no way to print more bitcoins like with cash.
There is no way to create fake bitcoins like is possible with gold.
It is possible to transfer this currency instantly over the net, unlike gold. Although this is kind of possible with an e-gold like service, you have to trust someone actually is holding on to your gold. Bitcoins have no such problem.
In essence, it has all the advantages of using a limited resource, without the disadvantage that you have to carry or store this limited resource physically and without any chance of forgery.
Well, there are Bitcoin exchanges so you can convert to and from USD if you prefer a centralised fiat currency. You're correct, currently there are not so many services available that will accept bitcoin. The hope is that since this is a new, inherently stable, unmanipulatable currency, that we will see more and more services offering bitcoin payment options.
see The marketplace on the forum for places where you could spend your bitcoins.
Since the site is down and the summary is light on information, let me try and summarise this a bit better, from what I've picked up, so I might be wrong on some of the details):
Nodes connect to each other in a P2P network.
The nodes perform hashing problems, attempting to find a number that hashes to a value with a certain number of 0's at the start (binary zero's, aka, the number has to be below a certain value)
The network assigns bitcoins to those nodes who have found solutions to the hashes.
After a certain amount of time the difficulty of finding the hashes increases(an extra 0 is added to the hash solution required)
This increase in difficulty continues until eventually there will be 21million bitcoins and no more can exist.
We are currently in the inflationary stage, so the supply of bitcoins is increasing. once all 21 million have been assigned, then it will become deflationary, as no new coins can ever be created and coins that are lost are lost forever.
bitcoins can be divided into 100 million pieces, so the limit of 21 million coins is not a major stumbling block.
Essentially it's a way to create a decentralised currency with a hard limit on how much is available, ensuring that it cannot be inflated by a central government simply printing more cash or adding some numbers to a computer system.
(We discussed the beginnings of this project in 2007.)
Well, that is incorrect. You've linked to an article about Peach and Apricot projects, both of which were completed.
This is a seperate, 4th project, Durian (Orange being the first)
Disclosure: I work (in-house IT) for a publisher. We publish in physical and ebook formats.
The vast majority of texts that authors give us are incredibly poor. Our editors have an extremely hard job of cleaning these up and rewriting them so that they are generally understandable and professional and are correctly targeted for our audience. To our established authors, we also offer them an advance on their work.
Even if it's just ebooks, getting it into all the available distribution channels and formats for the various stores requires a high level of technical competence, this is likely more than a lone writer wants to learn.
Of course they could pay someone independently to do this for them, just as they could pay someone independently to edit the book. It is a trade off and while some authors will prefer doing it alone, some(many) prefer the relative security of going through an established publisher who has existing links to distributors, printers, editors and the technical know-how to get it into the required formats to ensure the maximum market for the book.
40 man-years.
One guy's been using it since it was invented. Someone else found out about it eleven years ago and has been using it since them.
Syntax error line 4. Expected )), got EOF.
Well of course, if the gun can't be remotely disabled then it is safer to try and get it off them(gender-neutral singular them) as soon as possible.
In this case however, if they've got a hold of your gun then you can simply back off and then the attacker may attempt to shoot, before discovering that it's disabled and that will give the LEO an advantage.
It makes sense that police officers would behave differently with a weapon like this.
Well sure, if governments bought products like regular buyers do then it wouldn't be a problem. But governments are not subject to any of the same constraints that standard citizens do (i.e. essentially unlimited budgets, no market feedback, can increase income without any change in output or behaviour) so given that, you undermined your own argument.
In other words, actual free-market capitalism.
It's not free market capitalism when the government's doing the buying.
Privatisation isn't privatisation when your primary customers and sources of funding come from the government. There is in fact no difference, just an illusion of competition. What is needed is for them to remove the regulations that exist against private space travel. Remove the monopolistic government funded NASA entirely, leaving the playing field completely open for private firms to build a true spot in the marketplace. That is the only way space exploration, tourism and travel will be able to survive.
Ah ninja'd with a much superior sibling post.
Its actually not as hard as you might think.
The easiest way to do this is to write an app that intercepts connections to the server and just responds to them the same as the server does. I expect they will be using encryption and things(but the encryption can be figured out through disassembly) but it's certainly not as hard as finding unused areas of the PE and compiling in these features directly into the executable.
And as a bonus, your law just legalised contract killing, prostitution, drug dealing, etc...
Oops, you're right about the contract killing part. I guess in my mind the right to life comes before anything else and is an assumption I make without noticing. My error.
I have no problem with prostitution or drug dealing though.
I don't see patents as capital. They are restriction, essentially, having a patent is like "owning" a law restricting other people. The cost of gaining a patent is minimal and has no relation to the cost(or lack of cost) of producing the original item or idea.
So then, it will no longer be possible to forbid sale of too powerful weapons, spoiled food, unsafe toys, etc. either. Not good.
Yes, that's correct. And that's a good thing in my opinion. What's the point of a weapon if the opponent you need it to defend yourself from is able to get a more powerful weapon illegally?
Unsafe toys and spoiled food don't get discovered until they are already out in the wild, even under your system of laws and restrictions. Any response to that is basically going to be the same whether you then "Ban" the sale of that item or not. Media is interested in these stories and so people will find out. It's very likely that in order to keep customers, the companies responsible will withdraw the products and if they don't then the company will fail.