I this was an interesting article. It touches a little bit on the day to day practical reasons people are using BTC. Will it ever settle down to the point where these uses are practical enough to see wider adoption? I don't know.
How are they taking advantage of the city without paying for it? All these employees who live in the city will continue to pay taxes, parking fees, patronize city businesses, etc.
How do international vendors deal with this issue now? The value of currencies fluctuate against each other (except where pegged by fiat) every day. If you are saying it is the degree of instability that is the problem, that's true enough. Aside from illegal applications, how are BTC being used today? It seems a lot of people are finding some use for it outside of speculating on exchange rates.
Not to mention log files with less noise are more likely to be monitored and have an effective response in place for incidents. A noisy log file full of Internet-wide scripted attacks will likely be ignored even if there is a more dangerous attack buried in there.
I have thought the same thing about Google's marketing, but I think it is their general strategy not anything to do with making affordable technology. They try to make it seem like invitations are scarce or exclusive, for example during the roll out of Google mail, or Google+. When Plus was coming out and people were all aflutter about garnering an invite, I quipped (ironically, on Facebook) that I could write 'Google' on my garbage bags and people would line up for invitations.
True, persuasion is an art, and sometimes it takes a lot of patience. I think we see similar behavior on a lot of subjects (hello Libertarians who like to say "sheeple"). We can hope that over time and repetition something resembling the truth will emerge. But considering that there are still people today who insist the Earth is flat, we will never reach 100% consensus. Probably having 100% would be a bad thing for the species anyway, a massive groupthink trap that would send us into extinction. Hope that helps.
It isn't puzzling if you realize it is a function, in part, of statistics. No one can accurately predict a single coin flip. But they can accurately predict that, the more coin flips you repeat the more the observed frequency converges on 50/50.
From what I have observed, pay rates generally are in line with how hard the company believes it is to replace the person. They feel it is pretty hard to find a suitable new CEO, so the pay rates go way up since the prospect has a lot of leverage. There's no inherent reason why this number should be linked to company performance any more than what the company will pay for water is. Now, bear in mind I am not saying this is how it should be, just observing that this is what happens.
"Regularly" is vague. HIPAA was passed in what, 1996? The first fines weren't levied until after 2010. So I think the parent's point is still valid, the act was pretty toothless as far as consequences for quite some time. The ratio of incidents to fines is still very heavily in favor of the careless. If you had a choice between paying $2 million in security or a remote chance of a $1 million fine, which would you take?
I've been there. The organizations just don't care, it is more important to keep doctors happy. There is very little appreciation for IT and its value. And since there are limited consequences for breaches, there is no motivation to change.
It seems we disagree about what constitutes a combination. I would consider dealing a new hand of cards, for example, to be just another combination. The birthday problem is only a surprise to some because they do not realize the number of combinations, i.e. the number of discrete 1/365 events that are repeated. Regardless, I never said anything about having any evidence of multiple universes, I said "do not know".
It doesn't matter "how many repetitions exist" -- it only matters what the odds are
Incorrect, this was the point of the article. If the odds are one in a billion, but you have a billion repetitions of the event, the odds of a hit are much higher than one in a billion. I agree there is little reason to lend credence to any given estimate of how likely or unlikely a human-friendly universe is. My point was that, even if you had a good measure of the odds, saying "the odds of a human friendly universe are a trillion to one against" is not illuminating since you do not know how many universes exist, or have existed. If there are an infinite number of them, chances of finding a human-friendly one are pretty good. The SAP assumes a single universe and then tries to say it is more likely it was designed than exists by chance.
Along the same lines, I remember first encountering this concept of probability during the "Bible Code" craze many years ago. The credulous gushed that the odds of this or that secret message being in the Bible by chance are some billions to one against, and the rebuttal was that there were many billions of places in the Bible to look for it, so the odds were actually pretty good that you would find it somewhere. I think ultimately someone made a page demonstrating how to find Shakespeare using the same technique. Or maybe finding the same messages in the works of Shakespeare.
This has always been my answer to the "Strong Anthropic Principle" which claims that some agency must have tuned the universe to be able to support conscious life. Since no one knows how many repetitions exist, the SAP has no legs to stand on.
Spot on! What many security people don't get is that a business (or any person) accepts all kinds of risk every day. Just because a vulnerability exists does not mean it is wise to do something about it. There are always factors like cost and other types of resource contention. There are an infinite number of vulnerabilities, this does not mean that every one that isn't addressed is a "brush off"
Fair, I did not mean to say that the ones paying their own way were rich kids, I actually meant the opposite. The students who had to dig up loans and other funding were the ones who worked hard and valued it, the ones whose parents were paying were the useless ones. I admit that I wasn't clear on that. The article is suggesting that everyone who wants to go should get a free ride at everyone else's expense, which was the target of my objection.
I am assuming that the tax is going to the selected University, not some general fund
An interesting idea, in some ways this is what the US has now, but in other keys ways not. Universities could offer payment plans, and compete over cost/reward ratios.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but this does not look to me to be the same thing at all. The proposal in the article is that ALL students would qualify, and ALL graduates would be required to pay. The HELP scheme, it looks to me, is only for students who qualify, and only students who participated are required to pay back.
I agree, this is a horrible idea. The rate of students actually graduating in 4 years is already low, it will just go down as soon as students are attending for "free". There might be some minor improvement if there were a competitive process and only the students who gave a crap about their education would qualify. But this notion that every slacker has a "right" to attend and fart around for six years is a disaster. When I went to graduate school, anyone could tell, with a high degree of accuracy, which students were paying their own way and which were not. The ones paying for it were the ones who worked hard and tried to get something out of even the easy classes. The other just wasted everyone's time. A couple times I had to get one of the latter removed from my team projects since they weren't worth anything.
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I this was an interesting article. It touches a little bit on the day to day practical reasons people are using BTC. Will it ever settle down to the point where these uses are practical enough to see wider adoption? I don't know.
How are they taking advantage of the city without paying for it? All these employees who live in the city will continue to pay taxes, parking fees, patronize city businesses, etc.
So how do you explain the growing list of perfectly legal vendors that are accepting payments in BTC? Just a marketing gimmick?
How do international vendors deal with this issue now? The value of currencies fluctuate against each other (except where pegged by fiat) every day. If you are saying it is the degree of instability that is the problem, that's true enough. Aside from illegal applications, how are BTC being used today? It seems a lot of people are finding some use for it outside of speculating on exchange rates.
He may have meant "ripping what they sew"
Many people seem to forget, bitcoin is not inherently an investment vehicle. It is a currency. Using it as an investment is risky.
Not to mention log files with less noise are more likely to be monitored and have an effective response in place for incidents. A noisy log file full of Internet-wide scripted attacks will likely be ignored even if there is a more dangerous attack buried in there.
I have thought the same thing about Google's marketing, but I think it is their general strategy not anything to do with making affordable technology. They try to make it seem like invitations are scarce or exclusive, for example during the roll out of Google mail, or Google+. When Plus was coming out and people were all aflutter about garnering an invite, I quipped (ironically, on Facebook) that I could write 'Google' on my garbage bags and people would line up for invitations.
True, persuasion is an art, and sometimes it takes a lot of patience. I think we see similar behavior on a lot of subjects (hello Libertarians who like to say "sheeple"). We can hope that over time and repetition something resembling the truth will emerge. But considering that there are still people today who insist the Earth is flat, we will never reach 100% consensus. Probably having 100% would be a bad thing for the species anyway, a massive groupthink trap that would send us into extinction. Hope that helps.
It isn't puzzling if you realize it is a function, in part, of statistics. No one can accurately predict a single coin flip. But they can accurately predict that, the more coin flips you repeat the more the observed frequency converges on 50/50.
They are exporting all their products, including emissions, to the west.
From what I have observed, pay rates generally are in line with how hard the company believes it is to replace the person. They feel it is pretty hard to find a suitable new CEO, so the pay rates go way up since the prospect has a lot of leverage. There's no inherent reason why this number should be linked to company performance any more than what the company will pay for water is. Now, bear in mind I am not saying this is how it should be, just observing that this is what happens.
"Regularly" is vague. HIPAA was passed in what, 1996? The first fines weren't levied until after 2010. So I think the parent's point is still valid, the act was pretty toothless as far as consequences for quite some time. The ratio of incidents to fines is still very heavily in favor of the careless. If you had a choice between paying $2 million in security or a remote chance of a $1 million fine, which would you take?
I've been there. The organizations just don't care, it is more important to keep doctors happy. There is very little appreciation for IT and its value. And since there are limited consequences for breaches, there is no motivation to change.
Thinking about it, your refutation is probably better. An improbable event happened, this doesn't prove anything related to design.
It seems we disagree about what constitutes a combination. I would consider dealing a new hand of cards, for example, to be just another combination. The birthday problem is only a surprise to some because they do not realize the number of combinations, i.e. the number of discrete 1/365 events that are repeated. Regardless, I never said anything about having any evidence of multiple universes, I said "do not know".
It doesn't matter "how many repetitions exist" -- it only matters what the odds are
Incorrect, this was the point of the article. If the odds are one in a billion, but you have a billion repetitions of the event, the odds of a hit are much higher than one in a billion. I agree there is little reason to lend credence to any given estimate of how likely or unlikely a human-friendly universe is. My point was that, even if you had a good measure of the odds, saying "the odds of a human friendly universe are a trillion to one against" is not illuminating since you do not know how many universes exist, or have existed. If there are an infinite number of them, chances of finding a human-friendly one are pretty good. The SAP assumes a single universe and then tries to say it is more likely it was designed than exists by chance.
Along the same lines, I remember first encountering this concept of probability during the "Bible Code" craze many years ago. The credulous gushed that the odds of this or that secret message being in the Bible by chance are some billions to one against, and the rebuttal was that there were many billions of places in the Bible to look for it, so the odds were actually pretty good that you would find it somewhere. I think ultimately someone made a page demonstrating how to find Shakespeare using the same technique. Or maybe finding the same messages in the works of Shakespeare.
This has always been my answer to the "Strong Anthropic Principle" which claims that some agency must have tuned the universe to be able to support conscious life. Since no one knows how many repetitions exist, the SAP has no legs to stand on.
Information wants to be free.
This isn't new, although the application with gene sequencing might be.
Spot on! What many security people don't get is that a business (or any person) accepts all kinds of risk every day. Just because a vulnerability exists does not mean it is wise to do something about it. There are always factors like cost and other types of resource contention. There are an infinite number of vulnerabilities, this does not mean that every one that isn't addressed is a "brush off"
Fair, I did not mean to say that the ones paying their own way were rich kids, I actually meant the opposite. The students who had to dig up loans and other funding were the ones who worked hard and valued it, the ones whose parents were paying were the useless ones. I admit that I wasn't clear on that. The article is suggesting that everyone who wants to go should get a free ride at everyone else's expense, which was the target of my objection.
I am assuming that the tax is going to the selected University, not some general fund
An interesting idea, in some ways this is what the US has now, but in other keys ways not. Universities could offer payment plans, and compete over cost/reward ratios.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but this does not look to me to be the same thing at all. The proposal in the article is that ALL students would qualify, and ALL graduates would be required to pay. The HELP scheme, it looks to me, is only for students who qualify, and only students who participated are required to pay back.
I agree, this is a horrible idea. The rate of students actually graduating in 4 years is already low, it will just go down as soon as students are attending for "free". There might be some minor improvement if there were a competitive process and only the students who gave a crap about their education would qualify. But this notion that every slacker has a "right" to attend and fart around for six years is a disaster. When I went to graduate school, anyone could tell, with a high degree of accuracy, which students were paying their own way and which were not. The ones paying for it were the ones who worked hard and tried to get something out of even the easy classes. The other just wasted everyone's time. A couple times I had to get one of the latter removed from my team projects since they weren't worth anything.