That would defeat the purpose, as most people would just yank the batteries out immediately.
Why? Also, how about making the batteries hard to remove (or disable the gun mechanically if the battery is not present)? The idea would be that 1) the kid may not be able to figure out how to do it and that 2) removing the batteries would take time so wold make the gun useless if it was taken from you by the attacker. Add a requirement to keep the batteries in the gun to the law and it will have the desired result - 100% chance that the owner can fire the gun and >0% chance that someone not authorized cannot fire the gun.
Plus all this mess actually isn't trying to add anything to guns, it's all just gun prohibition in the disguise of technology that is not available or possible.
Agree, but the technology is still interesting to think about and IMO would be useful if it would possible.
Just how do you propose you do that. The trouble isn't about false positives or negatives in the mechanism. The trouble is that there is any mechanism at all.
Well, it's "fail open" vs "fail closed". What about a mechanism that disables the gun if it detects that an unauthorized person is trying to use it? If the mechanism is not operational (no power etc), the gun works as normal.
It also can be used over a terminal (ssh or whatever) to verify whether it is possible to open some web page. Useful when there is a problem in an ISPs network.
Generally speaking, new stuff is built by people who genuinely wanted to improve on the old stuff, and often they get that right, if only in minor ways.
And often they get it wrong - the example is the Windows 8 Metro interface. One program window at a time, really? That's like DOS, since Windows 1 had the ability to display multiple windows at once (the windows could not overlap though).
Also, often the target for improvement is different than what I (or someone else) considers an improvement. An example would be Apple phones and their non-removable batteries. Yes, the phones are a bit smaller, but I'd like to be able to replace the battery when it inevitably dies (and not pay additional money for someone to replace it for me). Currently the primary target for improvement is power consumption, size and lower price instead of higher quality. What is the point of making the TV really thin but at the same time making it run hotter and (when the caps blow up sooner because of the heat) harder to repair? There really isn't that much difference whether the (1m diagonal) TV is 5cm or 15cm thick.
But he is secretly wishing he could murder all the fans of the other team, smash all the store windows when his team wins and punch somebody when his team loses. Stereotypes all the way! After all, it is impossible to like watching a sport without being a hooligan, just like it is impossible to like a TV show that was made to be suitable for kids without wishing to be a kid.
I am similar - I like the show, like some of the fanfics, have a few figures but that's it. I'd rather buy a good tape deck than some expensive (custom) figure etc. Don't know of any meetups within ~30km of where I live, but I would probably go to one if there was one and I had time.
Oh, and Twilight is best pony. And now she is best princess too (Luna is a really close second though).
Not everybody can remember many different passwords that do not follow some pattern (like "asd!@#slashdot"). So, you either need to use some sort of password database (hope it's accessible from any device and that its password is not compromised) or only a few passwords.
My native language uses additional characters in addition to the ASCII ones. When I want to write in my language, I switch the keyboard layout so the additional symbols are in place of the number row. So, I can type the password and it will match, but later when I try to type it with the default layout on, it won't match if I used the number row keys when creating the password.
When I type somewhere else, I can immediately see that I'm writing nonsense because of the wrong layout and just switch it. I don't always remember to look at the layout indicator before typing a password.
I actually buy phones without a contract. I bought a Nokia N93 just after its release for 724EUR and 7 years later, when it started to fall apart, I bough a used Nokia E90 (for less than 100EUR) because I dislike the touchscreen-only phones - my E90 has a standard keypad (perfect for using with one hand) and a full keyboard (for browsing the net, writing messages using both hands).
It's deceptive because that was not mentioned in the ad. I mean they could advertize the no-contract service (without phone) and it would be true. They could advertize the payment plan for the phone and it would be true. But when you add no-contract service and payment plan for the phone and call the result "no-contract service" that's no longer true.
And this is a big business, not some small company that cannot hire ad designers (where you could say that this was an honest mistake) - a team of specialists in advertizing came up with this, so I'm sure that is was intended to mislead people into not understanding that the payment plan for the phone is not part of the "no-contract service" even if the phone is mentioned in the same as as the service.
The difference is that there will be a limited total amount of bitcoins compared to the unlimited amount of dollars (or euros) that the government can print whenever it wants. So your bitcoins would not lose their worth as fast as your dollars or euros.
So once 21 million is hit...no more power is needed, because you can't generate more?
The mining will continue - at that time the transaction fees will pay for the mining. The new coins are just an early starters incentive.
When I read that, I thought 21 million is not a lot of coins for the whole world to use. It seems screwy to me. You run into the issue that you run into with gold, if that is the case. You can't buy a loaf of bread with gold because it is worth so much.
Gold is really inconvenient to divide. 1g of gold is wort quite a lot, but is physically really small and easy to lose. And we would need to trade in 0.1g or even 0.01g of gold. That's really really small and inconvenient. It is also why in the past people used other metals (solver, copper) in addition to gold to pay for cheaper items.
On the other hand, you can divide a bitcoin as much as you want (IIRC currently you can divide 1BTC to 100000000 parts, but a client update may increase that number if bitcoin becomes expensive enough) and it won't become inconvenient. just set your client to display mBTC or uBTC or even pBTC and you won't have to deal with fractions. Also, since a bitcoin is digital, it does not have the inherent inconvenience of trying to weigh really small amounts of gold and then having to do an analysis to determine whether this is really gold.
2) There are so many better ways to monetize CPU usage!...There are plenty of companies out there, biochemical, the military, Google, who would probably jump at the chance of being able to "rent" out some sort of distributed system ala SETI@Home.
And yet, nobody offers that. It has always been "donate your CPU/GPU time for this good cause". Only bitcoin (and other crypto currencies) promises at least a chance to sell the CPU time and maybe actually make a profit.
Also, over the long term, currently the bitcoin price is increasing. When I started mining a couple of years ago, the price peaked at around $30 and then crashed to less than $10 (at which point I stopped mining, stupid decision). Recently the price peaked at around 200EUR (at which point I sold a couple of bitcoins mined previously) and then crashed to 70EUR. Maybe a couple years alter the price will peak to 1000EUR... I also ordered an ASIC miner. and will resume my mining.
Probably a lot, but the thing is that the bitcoin network is not concentrated in one area. It is distributed all over the planet. The total world electricity production in 2008 was on average 16TW. So the bitcoin network uses ~0.00026% of that.
So, to answer your question, if nobody mined bitcoin (and did not switch to other distributed computing projects, like SETI@Home), there would be enough electricity left to power 0.00026% more businesses and homes.
Google is actually useful to hundreds of millions of people.
I guess so are bitcoins. They are useful enough for people to pay for the electricity to mine them, pay for the mining hardware or buy them at the exchange. I mined some bitcoins a couple of years ago (around the first crash). Sold a couple of them at ~200EUR each recently... Paid for the electricity I used to mine them and the video card (which I now use to play games).
Reporters use the units of energy, so that the total would look much bigger than it is. 982MWh/day - I only use 1.2MWh in a month wow that's a lot, but remember that this is for the entire mining network, not for an individual miner. On the other hand, 41MW - that's not a lot, a hydroelectric power plant in my city is 100MW - that single power plant could power two bitcoin mining networks - I bet Google's servers use more power than this...
The PC has keyboard and mouse - much better for FPS (or RTS or point-and-click adventure). While it is possible to connect a keyboard and mouse to a console, it may not be supported by the game and the emulators (that take input from keyboard/mouse and emulate the gamepad) still are limited by the gamepad controls (for example, limited turn speed in FPS).
Because in some cases it is useful. Though in this case zfs is better as it is more stable. Still, there are things that, while not as "well tested" are still quite useful. Fedora/Ubuntu should be limited to the servers that really need them, but they are useful.
Slashdot Mirror
That would defeat the purpose, as most people would just yank the batteries out immediately.
Why? Also, how about making the batteries hard to remove (or disable the gun mechanically if the battery is not present)? The idea would be that 1) the kid may not be able to figure out how to do it and that 2) removing the batteries would take time so wold make the gun useless if it was taken from you by the attacker.
Add a requirement to keep the batteries in the gun to the law and it will have the desired result - 100% chance that the owner can fire the gun and >0% chance that someone not authorized cannot fire the gun.
Plus all this mess actually isn't trying to add anything to guns, it's all just gun prohibition in the disguise of technology that is not available or possible.
Agree, but the technology is still interesting to think about and IMO would be useful if it would possible.
Just how do you propose you do that. The trouble isn't about false positives or negatives in the mechanism. The trouble is that there is any mechanism at all.
Well, it's "fail open" vs "fail closed". What about a mechanism that disables the gun if it detects that an unauthorized person is trying to use it? If the mechanism is not operational (no power etc), the gun works as normal.
It is also useful for proving (not conclusively though) that the email is not phishing.
It also can be used over a terminal (ssh or whatever) to verify whether it is possible to open some web page. Useful when there is a problem in an ISPs network.
Generally speaking, new stuff is built by people who genuinely wanted to improve on the old stuff, and often they get that right, if only in minor ways.
And often they get it wrong - the example is the Windows 8 Metro interface. One program window at a time, really? That's like DOS, since Windows 1 had the ability to display multiple windows at once (the windows could not overlap though).
Also, often the target for improvement is different than what I (or someone else) considers an improvement. An example would be Apple phones and their non-removable batteries. Yes, the phones are a bit smaller, but I'd like to be able to replace the battery when it inevitably dies (and not pay additional money for someone to replace it for me). Currently the primary target for improvement is power consumption, size and lower price instead of higher quality. What is the point of making the TV really thin but at the same time making it run hotter and (when the caps blow up sooner because of the heat) harder to repair? There really isn't that much difference whether the (1m diagonal) TV is 5cm or 15cm thick.
But he is secretly wishing he could murder all the fans of the other team, smash all the store windows when his team wins and punch somebody when his team loses.
Stereotypes all the way! After all, it is impossible to like watching a sport without being a hooligan, just like it is impossible to like a TV show that was made to be suitable for kids without wishing to be a kid.
I am similar - I like the show, like some of the fanfics, have a few figures but that's it. I'd rather buy a good tape deck than some expensive (custom) figure etc. Don't know of any meetups within ~30km of where I live, but I would probably go to one if there was one and I had time.
Oh, and Twilight is best pony. And now she is best princess too (Luna is a really close second though).
Not everybody can remember many different passwords that do not follow some pattern (like "asd!@#slashdot"). So, you either need to use some sort of password database (hope it's accessible from any device and that its password is not compromised) or only a few passwords.
My native language uses additional characters in addition to the ASCII ones. When I want to write in my language, I switch the keyboard layout so the additional symbols are in place of the number row. So, I can type the password and it will match, but later when I try to type it with the default layout on, it won't match if I used the number row keys when creating the password.
When I type somewhere else, I can immediately see that I'm writing nonsense because of the wrong layout and just switch it. I don't always remember to look at the layout indicator before typing a password.
At the moment, you can't have a password field that gives protection against malware that could be on your computer...
...whether it is displayed to the user or not.
Is double-typing the password blind not enough?
Not if you use more than one keyboard layout.
Do any of them use DRM? Do any of them use DRM that has to access some server before it lets you use the file?
I actually buy phones without a contract. I bought a Nokia N93 just after its release for 724EUR and 7 years later, when it started to fall apart, I bough a used Nokia E90 (for less than 100EUR) because I dislike the touchscreen-only phones - my E90 has a standard keypad (perfect for using with one hand) and a full keyboard (for browsing the net, writing messages using both hands).
It's deceptive because that was not mentioned in the ad. I mean they could advertize the no-contract service (without phone) and it would be true. They could advertize the payment plan for the phone and it would be true. But when you add no-contract service and payment plan for the phone and call the result "no-contract service" that's no longer true.
And this is a big business, not some small company that cannot hire ad designers (where you could say that this was an honest mistake) - a team of specialists in advertizing came up with this, so I'm sure that is was intended to mislead people into not understanding that the payment plan for the phone is not part of the "no-contract service" even if the phone is mentioned in the same as as the service.
The difference is that there will be a limited total amount of bitcoins compared to the unlimited amount of dollars (or euros) that the government can print whenever it wants. So your bitcoins would not lose their worth as fast as your dollars or euros.
So once 21 million is hit...no more power is needed, because you can't generate more?
The mining will continue - at that time the transaction fees will pay for the mining. The new coins are just an early starters incentive.
When I read that, I thought 21 million is not a lot of coins for the whole world to use. It seems screwy to me. You run into the issue that you run into with gold, if that is the case. You can't buy a loaf of bread with gold because it is worth so much.
Gold is really inconvenient to divide. 1g of gold is wort quite a lot, but is physically really small and easy to lose. And we would need to trade in 0.1g or even 0.01g of gold. That's really really small and inconvenient. It is also why in the past people used other metals (solver, copper) in addition to gold to pay for cheaper items.
On the other hand, you can divide a bitcoin as much as you want (IIRC currently you can divide 1BTC to 100000000 parts, but a client update may increase that number if bitcoin becomes expensive enough) and it won't become inconvenient. just set your client to display mBTC or uBTC or even pBTC and you won't have to deal with fractions. Also, since a bitcoin is digital, it does not have the inherent inconvenience of trying to weigh really small amounts of gold and then having to do an analysis to determine whether this is really gold.
2) There are so many better ways to monetize CPU usage! ...There are plenty of companies out there, biochemical, the military, Google, who would probably jump at the chance of being able to "rent" out some sort of distributed system ala SETI@Home.
And yet, nobody offers that. It has always been "donate your CPU/GPU time for this good cause". Only bitcoin (and other crypto currencies) promises at least a chance to sell the CPU time and maybe actually make a profit.
Also, over the long term, currently the bitcoin price is increasing. When I started mining a couple of years ago, the price peaked at around $30 and then crashed to less than $10 (at which point I stopped mining, stupid decision). Recently the price peaked at around 200EUR (at which point I sold a couple of bitcoins mined previously) and then crashed to 70EUR. Maybe a couple years alter the price will peak to 1000EUR... I also ordered an ASIC miner. and will resume my mining.
How many houses and businesses could that power?
Probably a lot, but the thing is that the bitcoin network is not concentrated in one area. It is distributed all over the planet. The total world electricity production in 2008 was on average 16TW. So the bitcoin network uses ~0.00026% of that.
So, to answer your question, if nobody mined bitcoin (and did not switch to other distributed computing projects, like SETI@Home), there would be enough electricity left to power 0.00026% more businesses and homes.
Google is actually useful to hundreds of millions of people.
I guess so are bitcoins. They are useful enough for people to pay for the electricity to mine them, pay for the mining hardware or buy them at the exchange. I mined some bitcoins a couple of years ago (around the first crash). Sold a couple of them at ~200EUR each recently... Paid for the electricity I used to mine them and the video card (which I now use to play games).
In my opinion, no.
Reporters use the units of energy, so that the total would look much bigger than it is. 982MWh/day - I only use 1.2MWh in a month wow that's a lot, but remember that this is for the entire mining network, not for an individual miner. On the other hand, 41MW - that's not a lot, a hydroelectric power plant in my city is 100MW - that single power plant could power two bitcoin mining networks - I bet Google's servers use more power than this...
The PC has keyboard and mouse - much better for FPS (or RTS or point-and-click adventure). While it is possible to connect a keyboard and mouse to a console, it may not be supported by the game and the emulators (that take input from keyboard/mouse and emulate the gamepad) still are limited by the gamepad controls (for example, limited turn speed in FPS).
I was just repeating what the previous post said. For me vmware works just fine.
While vmware may be crap, it runs much faster on older CPUs (without hardware virtualization support) than qemu-kvm does.
Because in some cases it is useful. Though in this case zfs is better as it is more stable. Still, there are things that, while not as "well tested" are still quite useful. Fedora/Ubuntu should be limited to the servers that really need them, but they are useful.
Because CentOS and Debian use relatively old packages.
For example, if you want btrfs you either use ubuntu/fedora or compile the kernel.
Everr install a windows xp machine and hook it up to the net without a firewall without updates?
Virus in 3..2..1..
Which is why you shouldn't do that. Even with a newer and fully updated Windows version.