Reading the article I get the impression that this guy would like emacs org mode. Very similar ideas. The added bit is that he wants to embed other files in the document. And to top it all off instead of using a file as an outline, he wants to use a file system. That way you don't have to embed anything. It's just a normal file.
In spite of myself, I think it's a brilliant idea. I'm not sure why he thinks Microsoft will understand it. This is a Un*x idea through and through. Use the file as the lowest level metaphor in the system. Build tools that allow you to operate efficiently on files. I don't think it would be very difficult to implement. And I don't think it has anything to do with tablets. It's just a good idea period.
You really need to read the source code. It's a very well designed system. Some parts are even inspired.
Validation of the block chain is intentionally costly. The intent is to make the cost of forging higher than the cost of participating. It succeeds brilliantly at this point.
From an economics point of view, it stumbles. But the technical design aspect is quite well done.
If you're very careful, you can make it difficult to trace you, but there are a lot of clues in the way that the algorithm works that can point to which bitcoin addresses are owned by the same people. The biggest one is that transactions are always composed of a group of other transactions with the difference refunded to a new bitcoin address owned by the original owner. So If I want to send 100 bitcoins to someone and I have 3 transactions totalling 25, 80 and 15 bitcoins coming into various addresses, I will send all three transactions in a single outgoing transaction and receive a refund for 20 bitcoins in a new incoming transaction to a new address. But this transaction gives a very high probability that all these addresses are owned by the same person.
Because all of the transactions in bitcoin are made public to everyone, it is possible to analyse the transactions to find addresses that are likely linked. The only way you could avoid this is to make sure that you manually split up your transactions to match the amounts you have in each address and request a different receiving address from the person you are sending bitcoins to for each. But even then, you would have to spread those transactions out over a period of time (ideally over several blocks) because if the receivers addresses are determined to belong to a single person, you can assume that bitcoins suddenly appearing in those addresses in a short period of time are probably from the same person.
There are actually some papers discussing tracing techniques and several are actually linked to the Bitcoin website. The website itself warns that Bitcoin is *not* anonymous. It is demonstratably much less anonymous than paper cash.
Well, I think it can be more simply summed up as "act skillfully so as to avoid [bad] consequences". I put the "bad" in brackets because AFAICT (and I'm not an expert) there isn't really a distinction between good and bad consequences.
However, to say that "Buddhism is X" is really a misnomer. The dogma that we are used to seeing in most other religions doesn't really exist. While there are a set of principles, the rest is kind of deliberately left unstated. I once asked someone what I could read to understand Buddhism better and he directed me to a list of several hundred books all with different opinions.
My only real point here is that while I agree it is wrong to say that Buddhism worships life, it is true that there are Buddists who worship life and consider it an essential part of Buddhism.
Is it just me or does the fact that two separate entities develop the same thing, using the same technique, at roughly the same time mean that the thing is probably obvious and unpatentable?
Get rid of first to file. Just deny the patent to both parties when that happens.
It makes Android that much more dangerous for Apple, because it's the antithesis of what Apple stands for, and how Apple operates. A free (speech) and open system will always triumph over a closed system assuming the same features. All parties know this.
Then why are most people's desktops running Windows?
I think the OP is incorrect with the way they stated issue. Free software has potential advantages for customers in many ways. This is especially true for enterprise customers who do not get locked into a single vendor. They can even make modifications themselves if they have development resources. The ability to redistribute freely also lets small customers ride on the coat-tails of large customers in a way that doesn't necessarily hurt the big customer.
From an open source perspective, open source and free software development can be done essentially as large joint ventures with low barriers to entry. This allows the cost of development to be spread across a number of different entities. It also allows entities with dissimilar interests to benefit from each others work while specializing on their own. They end up with a much more comprehensive solution than they could practically manage individually.
There are very few (if any???) advantages to a customer for choosing proprietary software, though there are some advantages to the developer in the ability to lock in their customers and lock out competition with an aim towards a monopoly.
My opinion of why proprietary desktop solutions are ubuquitus while free software destop solutions are rare is that proprietary vendors (both Microsoft and Apple) do a very good job of exploiting the advantages of their business model. In the cases of Microsoft and Apple, they also successfully lobby various governments to make laws that make their advantages easier to maintain. On the other hand, free software vendors do a poor job of exploiting their advantages. We *do* see some good organizations (Apache is an excellent example and there is a reason why they have dominated for a long time). But in terms the desktop, there are very few companies who have figured out how to sell custom development to enterprise cutomers and leverage that development into securing new customers. It happens on the server side, but the desktop has been lagging.
My personal belief is that, barring making it illegal through ridiculous paten law, etc, free and open source software advantages can outcompete proprietary advantages. The main reason is that the advantages to proprietary methods is largely abusive to the customer. If faced with a viable alternatives which comes without the abuse they will choose that (Free software is a consumer protection movement after all). But unlike the OP, I don't believe it will happen automatically. We still need cluefull corporations who know how to build pure-play free software companies. Right now those are rare. Hopefully they will become more common.
If I teacher can't identify a student using their cellphone (or whatever), then that student is obviously not causing a problem in the class. You can't force students to pay attention. There were some crazy ideas back in the 70s to paper over all the windows so that students wouldn't get distracted by things outside the class. We now know that is complete nonsense.
I'm a teacher. If I notice a student using a cellphone, I ask them to put it away. Sometimes the student says, "I'm just looking up a word in my dictionary". Well, school policy says they aren't allowed to use a cellphone for that. That's bollocks. Go ahead and look up the word (ha ha! One day I'll get in trouble for that!) If the student is texting or playing a game and refuses to put it away, I'll talk to them after. Usually I ask them what I can do to improve the class so that they feel like paying atention. I explain that I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to make class interesting for them and that it's disrespectful simply to ignore it. They don't have to like it, but if they don't, they are expected to improve it. I've never had a student fail to understand this.
School isn't jail. We don't have to treat students like criminals.
I'm a Canadian who has lived in the American deep south (and a number of other places to boot). What you are missing is that the people of the American deep south, as people, are virtually indistinguishable from the people of Canada. Indeed, people all over are pretty much the same. You are allowing geographical distance, minor differences in culture and stereotyped misinformation to fuel your own ignorance. In fact, if it weren't assumed that you were a WASP and the people you are talking about were WASPs, someone would have undoubtedly called your statement bigoted long before now.
I don't point this out to try to shame you. I hope that it will make you think about how easy it is for humans to be ignorant. We tend to gloss over details, especially when "everyone" is saying the same thing. It's easy to jump to the wrong conclusion, and even strenuously hold beliefs that are completely (and obviously, from someone else's perspective) wrong. That's being human. I think that you will find that even the deepest thinker makes this mistake from time to time. Even more frustrating is that we often don't realize it is a mistake, even when it is pointed out to us.
The only productive thing I know to do in this case is to patiently try to explain the situation while realizing that you will only be successful occasionally.
This is absolutely terrible advice. Firing you is *not* the worst they can do. That's the absolute *best* outcome that could happen. The worst they can do is fire you and then sue you. Do you know how much lawyers cost? Especially when you explain to them that your contract negotiation technique was to say, "I don't like the terms of my contract, so I'll just ignore them", they aren't going to go pro-bono.
You could easily find yourself unemployed, with a piece of IP that you can't sell because there is an injunction against it, a lawsuit suing you for control of the IP and whatever damages (real or imagined), and a lawyer costing you a couple grand a week. And to top it all off, your lawsuit, being a matter of public record, will show up on any background search forcing you to explain to any potential employer how you didn't like your contract so just decided to ignore it. To say you would be radioactive is putting it mildly.
Basically, you are putting yourself at the mercy of your employer's legal team. Even if they aren't vindictive (and some are), they might just see it as a revenue generating operation. "Hey employee 1234 is being a dick and we can make $10K out of it (and make ourselves seem useful to boot). Let's go for it!"
But it's a winning the battle and losing the war thing.
Try finding a job while your previous employer is suing you for IP infringement. If they have a contract, no matter how unenforceable it is, a judge is likely to hear the case. Your previous employer can then drag it out for a very long time at very little cost to them. You, on the other hand, need to explain to every potential employer why you are being sued and how a similar situation will never happen with them.
The OP is correct. Never sign a contract you don't intend to honor. You are in a terrible situation no matter how unfair the contract is. I was once sued by a former employer for breach of contract. It was completely ridiculous, but they still managed to make my life hell. Luckily I found a job with a gigantic company and their legal team took care of it for me. I'm still unbelievable grateful to that company for their help because without it it would have been a nightmare.
The difference between a cable TV service and an ISP is that the cable TV service chooses which content to carry. The ISP does not. Even though they physically carry the streaming data, they don't actually stream it themselves. CTV, CBC, Global, etc do. Those streaming services should pay. And they do already.
Adding another fee for ISPs is an interesting idea, but it is essentially a new levy. As a consumer that would ultimately have to pay that levy, I want something in return. The internet is more than a broadcasting medium. In fact, I barely use it for that purpose (although Slashdot might qualify). Similar to the levy on blank media for sound recordings, if I'm going to pay the levy (whether I consume the media or not), I want concessions. Allowing private copying for said media would be appropriate I think.
Ha ha ha. OK... I couldn't keep a straight face while typing that. I'd love to see the lobbyists' faces if they were told that was the price of opting in ISPs.
You are right to say that a flat sales tax is simpler than a progressive income tax (and probably that was what the OP was talking about). I just want to point out that consumption tax can, indeed, be more complex than income tax. If you implement a consumption tax similar to Canada's "Goods and Services Tax", everything is taxed at every stage through the process. It is impossible for the consumer to know what percentage of the price is tax.
Here is an example. A farmer produces wheat and sells it to a distributor. The distributor pays 10% flat tax. The distributor then sells the wheat to a mill. The mill pays 10% tax (including 10% of tax that the distributor paid). The mill sells flour to another distributore. The distributor pays 10% tax (includine 10% of the tax that the mill paid), etc. What often happens in this scenario is that the person selling gets a rebate for the tax that they paid on things that they sold. This is somewhat complicated, but what is very complicated is for the government to track all of this to make sure that nobody is cheating. Basically, the cost of implementing the tax goes up.
Much simpler is a flat income tax (including flat corporate tax). Banks withold 10% of returns on investments. Employers withold 10% of paychecks/bonuses/cost of perks. Businesses pay a flat 10% on profit. It is *very* simple for everyone to understand. If you allow no deductions at all, it is incredibly simple.
The advantage over consumption taxes is that everyone pays the same percentage. With a consumption tax, poor people spend every cent they make (often more, since they are in debt). Rich people don't (they have money in investments). Pretty much the definition of poor and rich. Thus, poor people actually pay a greater percentage of their income on tax than the rich (anti-progressive?)
The downside of a flat income tax is that rich people/corporations who are used to fiddling the system to avoid tax will leave the country, taking jobs with them. Also, the cost of implementing the tax is offloaded primarily to businesses, which they don't like.
I've lived in a country which had both flat income tax and a consumption tax. Even though I was poor at the time, I liked the system better than a progressive tax. The consumption tax was also invisible (integrated into prices). Even though this is pretty much the opposite to what anti-poverty groups advocate, I liked it better. It was really easy for me to calculate my income/outgo. My job was advertised with the after-tax amount and my expenses were all advertised with after tax amounts. It is much, much easier to understand what's going on.
Yeah, I really wished the OP had asked, "In which OS projects are talented contributors likely to find employment?" I assume the Linux kernel and Mozilla are good options. Open Office is probably not any more;-) But seriously, I would be interested people's ideas on that topic.
Gold's real value as a physical object isn't really tremendously better than paper money. It has a few uses, but far and away it's major value comes from scarcity in comparison to demand. While it is very true that gold has a much longer tradition than strips of cotton/paper/rubber/plastic as a currency, it's intrinsic value is dwarfed by the value placed on it by society. It isn't particularly more or less suited to being a currency than other traditional physical currency. They all depend on tradition/cooperation to hold their value.
While somewhat beside the point, one of the mistakes that many people make about currency is that its only function is to act as a counter for value. I have made this mistake myself in the past and it wasn't until I started to educate myself on economics that I began to understand fiat currencies. Having a handy counter for value to make trade easy is indeed useful, but a much more important role for currency is to create liquidity in markets. Basically, if someone doesn't have access to money, they can't run their business -- farmers can't delivery their produce to the market, restaurants can't buy vegetables, consumers can't buy finished food products. Basically you will stall growth and create inefficiencies.
The main purpose of currency (and you can prove this to yourself by studying the history of currency) is to create this liquidity. By and large you want everyone to have access to money. With access to money, they can do work, which will enable someone else to do work that relied on that work, etc. If you choose a currency that is physically limited, you restrict access to it. This is the opposite to what you want.
A fiat currency works by making the currency unlimited. But you don't want to hand out money to people that won't produce work with it (otherwise they just devalue the currency). So you lend it to people with the expectation that they pay it back. When you lend it, you create it out of thin air. This creates a reasonable expectation that if you want to produce work, you can get the capital that you need to get you started. It is the basis of a strong economy.
Note that the money supply generally grows monotonically. Money that pays back loans does not disappear as you might think it would. So there is always enough money in supply as long as you have some rules on the amount of money someone can lend. This will usually lead to a slight oversupply of money, which leads to inflation. But inflation is actually desirable as it places an upper limit on loans. If the value of money increases, those with debt will have to pay the interest on their debt *and* deal with the deflation. If you have inflation, those with debt know that they will never have to pay more than the debt plus interest rate in today's dollars. This is an important feature. Runaway inflation happens when people no longer trust the currency (usually if a government falls, or is printing money for reasons other than to create loans, or banking institutions loan money indiscriminently without expectation of being paid back). It is true that a limited physical object at least has some intrinsic worth, but since its value as a currency is inevitably many times that of it's intrinsic worth, physical objects are not immune to hyper inflation either (again, you can look at historical records to see that commodity prices have crashed before).
There are lots of things I don't like about our modern banking system, but fiat currency is not one of them.
Later on in the thread, I noticed that someone said that CDMA *never* worked properly on source only builds of Android. All of the phones require binary blobs for CDMA. Taking the source out of the tree apparently doesn't affect anyone. This makes sense to me as I have a Galaxy S in Japan and I never understood why Cyanogenmod doesn't work for it, while it does on most other Galaxy S platforms. My carrier uses CDMA.
It is very likely logged somewhere. It's been 15 years, but I actually vaguely remember having to work with something like that on DMS when I was at Nortel. It wasn't my primary responsibility, but I think I attended a code review with respect to logging SMS messages. I believe it was an option you could turn on (not per number, but for the whole switch). At that point it was up to the Telcos to decide what to do with it. Probably there is someone around here who could provide better information.
Anyway, having worked in telecommunications for a fair while, I never, ever assume that my traffic isn't stored somewhere. It might not be immediately accessible, but the tools for storing the information have been there for a very long time.
The reason for the project is because Sony's *suppliers* are violating Busybox's license without Sony knowing about it. Sony is afraid (and rightfully so) that it will create liability for them even though they generally have no problem with complying with the GPL license. This project is a replacement for Busybox under the new BSD license which they hope will encourage their suppliers to stop violating the GPL. This will reduce their liability.
GPL compliance does not bother them (and they have quite a few devices on the market with Linux source code availability to prove my point). But in this case, so as to avoid unknowingly violating the license, they want to encourage the use of free software with a more liberal license. It makes complete sense.
You made me RTFA. To imply that Sony doesn't comply with the GPL is incorrect. For example, virtually their entire line of Japanese GPS navigation units use Linux and they offer the source code. And from the FAQ about the BusyBox Replacement project:
"It is not expected to affect Sony directly, because Sony has good compliance practices."
So why are they doing this? Because BusyBox is the defacto toolbox for what it does. And while Sony does a good job meeting it's obligations wrt the GPL, it recognizes that many of its *suppliers* don't. They are worried that one of their suppliers will include BusyBox without their knowing it. They have worries about their liability in that case, not just for the single project that infringes, but on other projects since some litigation has apparently asked for the ability to inspect future projects as part of their relief. That is completely reasonable to me.
This isn't a GPL issue. It could happen with any license. The problem is that BusyBox is being infringed left right and center. So they are thinking, "Hey let's write a replacement with a *more* liberal license". The idea being that people will choose to use the replacement over willfully infringing on BusyBox.
It's a good idea. I'm sorry that there are some BusyBox developers that don't understand. If the project succeeds, then potentially BusyBox won't be able to be used to leverage companies into using the GPL. That's too bad for people hoping to do that. But they *have* succeeded in explaining to a company like Sony (think about it -- Sony!) that they should be writing free software. It's all good.
And if you made all of those discoveries available patent-free, nobody will will want to attack you. You're providing $700 billion a year in free medical research. Why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?
Of course it means you can't muck about in the afairs of other countries. That's no fun. Stupid idea...
In the case of Michael Jackson, I remember a time when he received a billion dollars up front for his next 7 albums (tried to find a link, but google is saturated with current stories...). He hadn't even made them yet. The idea is that they pay him up front and then they receive money afterwards. He gets a reduced payout, but it is also de-risked. No matter what kind of crap he put out, he would still have the money.
Clearly the people who payed him (I believe it was Sony) was expecting to make a profit. The more money they think they will make in the future, the more money they can afford to pay the artist up front. It is true that you can't hurt someone who is dead, but if the studios feel that they will make less money, they will offer less up front. It is also true that reduced sales (for whatever reason) by the recording companies will reduce the amount of money they offer to artists in the future.
I don't like the way the recording industry works. I don't like the current copyright laws (especially the length of copyright). This, despite the fact that for most of my life I have made my living off of copyright (as a programmer). I especially don't like the direction that copyright law seems to be going. I believe there are other, better ways to do business.
But, I also believe it is completely factual to say that artists who rely on the existing system will be hurt by any lack of sales resulting from copyright infringement (whatever that may be).
I think there may be something to what you are saying. To be honest, I was very surprised by this article (I would really like to see the original Nikkei report in Japanese... too bad they don't link it).
I'm on DoCoMo at the moment and I have had nothing but terrific service. I live out in the sticks, but no mater where I am I get good signal, good data availability, *very* good bandwidth and decent ping times. I've even tunnelled X through ssh on it and it was (barely) useable. That's considerably better than anything I would expect. Even on my occasional journeys to Tokyo or Osaka, I've never, ever had even the slightest problem. So if they are struggling, it's definitely not obvious.
However, up until November, the gmail app was seriously draining my battery. I ended up going to manual updates and suddenly all of my battery problems were fixed. Then I upgraded to 2.3 and ended up re-enabling auto-update on gmail. No problem. I attributed it to the OS upgrade, but it definitely could have been an infrastructure problem that they have fixed in my area.
I wonder if this is simply some technical issue that they are having and that the cheapest way for them to fix it would be to make changes to Android. In other words a non-story that some reporter got the wrong end of the stick for...
I agree with you, so after reading all the links down as far as I could, here's the gist of it.
Back at the tail end of 2011 a company in Kenya started to get confusing calls from their customers. The customers were asking about promises to set up websites, which is something that the Kenya company doesn't provide. The company looked at their database and noticed that an IP address belonging to a Google offshoot was scaping their company contact database. So they modified their code to provide their own phone number in a few cases rather than their customer's phone number for just that IP address. Sure enough, someone claiming to be from the Google offshoot called them (thinking they were one of the customer sites) and claimed that they had a joint venture with the Kenyan company, wouldn't they like to buy a website, etc...
The Kenyan company was surprised but figured it must be some rogue operator in the Google offshoot doing something wrong. They figured if they contacted Google it would all clear up. But then something strange happened. The Google offshoot in Kenya stopped scraping their database and another IP address from within Google's network (in India) started up. So they offerred up their own phone number again and got a call from one of Google's call center's in India with the exact same scam.
Thinking this can't just be one rogue operation, they contacted Google and asked WTF. Google apologized, but hasn't furnished any more information about what happened.
Fast forward and the Open Street Maps project started discovering vandalism on their site. Some streets were deleted, one one way streets were edited to have them going the wrong way. A fictitious Olympic stadium was even added. Well, it's an open project, vandalism happens. But the twist here is that the vandalism occurred from the exact same IP address in India that was operating the scam in Kenya.
So Open Stream Maps contacted Google and asked WTF. So far no response as far as I could tell.
Finally, an Indian website offered a reward for a picture or information about the individuals responsible for the OSM vanalism and possibly the Kenyan scam. They had previously offerred a similar reward for getting a picture of Mark Zuckerberg at an Indian wedding, but other than that this posting has nothing to do with Facebook (despite the bizarre summary).
Very interesting topic. Crap summary. The English is fine. It's an indication of what is important to the story that is lacking. Admittedly it's an involved story. Probably someone could summarize it a lot better than me too.
TFA is actually a little light on details, so I'll add a few more. But I am not a psychology researcher, so take my explanation with a sack of salt.
There are basically 3 separate issues that they are looking at with respect to learning.
One is spaced repetition. Spaced repetition is the idea that you forget things over time. The longer you go without recalling something, the higher the odds are that you will not be able to remember it when you try. However, if you remember something, the association will be stronger and the speed at which you forget it is lower (i.e., the drop from 90% recall to 80% recall will take more time). That speed is called the "forgetting curve". The shallower the curve, the less often you have to review something to rememer it. Software like Mnemosyne, Anki and SuperMemo try to time when you are likely to forget something so that you don't waste your time reviewing something that you aren't going to forget.
Another concept is spaced learning. This is different from spaced repetition. It turns out that the space between reviews is actually necessary for long term memory. If you memorize something and then wait for a long time, even if you forget it, you will make a stronger connection the *second* time you learn it. Spaced learning intentionally puts spaces between reviews with the intent that it creates a stronger memory (makes the forgetting curve shallower) the *next* time you learn it. In other words, you intentionally make it difficult to remember the second time around (as opposed to choosing a time when you are likely to remember it). The distinction between spaced repetition and spaced learning is fine but important, I think.
Finally there is interleaved learning. It turns out that time is not the only thing that causes you to forget. As you learn new things, the ability to recall old things gets worse. So if you learn A and that's all, you will forget it slower than if you learn A and then B. Learning B makes it difficult to recall A. You can use this to your advantage. Remember that with spaced learning, if you forget something, it is retained *better* the second time around. So if you learn A and B, and then return to A, you will remember A better than if you spent twice as long on A and then did B.
Basically spaced repetition programs that use SM2 algorithm are implementing spaced repetion. I will argue that they aren't making use of spaced learning, at least intentionally. When you initially try to remember something, you should space repetitions so that it is difficult to remember the item. One of the weaknesses of SM2 is that it doesn't really have any strategy for first learning the item (on the other hand, you are free to adopt your own strategies within the framework of the software). Specifically, there's no concept of getting an item correct and then waiting a short time and reviewing it again. It goes ahead and schedules it for a day or so later. Also, when you get an item wrong, you are back to square one, with the "difficulty" set at the same level it was at before you got it wrong. Spaced learning would suggest that at least the item will get less difficult every time you forget it. So I think there is considerable room for improvement.
SM2 also specifically does not implement interleaving. When learning new material (or even items that you forgot in the review) it would be rather interesting to have it introduce one new fact from 4 or 5 different quizes at a time. It would accellerate the speed at which you forget the item and provide opportunities for spaced learning faster (presuming there was support for spaced learning).
I'm actually the author of another spaced repetition program for studying Japanese, called JLDrill. I use a different algorithm, which I describe here: http://jldrill.rubyforge.org/Strategy.html I'm going to try to implement some of these other ideas in the near future.
Slashdot Mirror
Reading the article I get the impression that this guy would like emacs org mode. Very similar ideas. The added bit is that he wants to embed other files in the document. And to top it all off instead of using a file as an outline, he wants to use a file system. That way you don't have to embed anything. It's just a normal file.
In spite of myself, I think it's a brilliant idea. I'm not sure why he thinks Microsoft will understand it. This is a Un*x idea through and through. Use the file as the lowest level metaphor in the system. Build tools that allow you to operate efficiently on files. I don't think it would be very difficult to implement. And I don't think it has anything to do with tablets. It's just a good idea period.
You really need to read the source code. It's a very well designed system. Some parts are even inspired.
Validation of the block chain is intentionally costly. The intent is to make the cost of forging higher than the cost of participating. It succeeds brilliantly at this point.
From an economics point of view, it stumbles. But the technical design aspect is quite well done.
If you're very careful, you can make it difficult to trace you, but there are a lot of clues in the way that the algorithm works that can point to which bitcoin addresses are owned by the same people. The biggest one is that transactions are always composed of a group of other transactions with the difference refunded to a new bitcoin address owned by the original owner. So If I want to send 100 bitcoins to someone and I have 3 transactions totalling 25, 80 and 15 bitcoins coming into various addresses, I will send all three transactions in a single outgoing transaction and receive a refund for 20 bitcoins in a new incoming transaction to a new address. But this transaction gives a very high probability that all these addresses are owned by the same person.
Because all of the transactions in bitcoin are made public to everyone, it is possible to analyse the transactions to find addresses that are likely linked. The only way you could avoid this is to make sure that you manually split up your transactions to match the amounts you have in each address and request a different receiving address from the person you are sending bitcoins to for each. But even then, you would have to spread those transactions out over a period of time (ideally over several blocks) because if the receivers addresses are determined to belong to a single person, you can assume that bitcoins suddenly appearing in those addresses in a short period of time are probably from the same person.
There are actually some papers discussing tracing techniques and several are actually linked to the Bitcoin website. The website itself warns that Bitcoin is *not* anonymous. It is demonstratably much less anonymous than paper cash.
Well, I think it can be more simply summed up as "act skillfully so as to avoid [bad] consequences". I put the "bad" in brackets because AFAICT (and I'm not an expert) there isn't really a distinction between good and bad consequences.
However, to say that "Buddhism is X" is really a misnomer. The dogma that we are used to seeing in most other religions doesn't really exist. While there are a set of principles, the rest is kind of deliberately left unstated. I once asked someone what I could read to understand Buddhism better and he directed me to a list of several hundred books all with different opinions.
My only real point here is that while I agree it is wrong to say that Buddhism worships life, it is true that there are Buddists who worship life and consider it an essential part of Buddhism.
Is it just me or does the fact that two separate entities develop the same thing, using the same technique, at roughly the same time mean that the thing is probably obvious and unpatentable?
Get rid of first to file. Just deny the patent to both parties when that happens.
It makes Android that much more dangerous for Apple, because it's the antithesis of what Apple stands for, and how Apple operates. A free (speech) and open system will always triumph over a closed system assuming the same features. All parties know this.
Then why are most people's desktops running Windows?
I think the OP is incorrect with the way they stated issue. Free software has potential advantages for customers in many ways. This is especially true for enterprise customers who do not get locked into a single vendor. They can even make modifications themselves if they have development resources. The ability to redistribute freely also lets small customers ride on the coat-tails of large customers in a way that doesn't necessarily hurt the big customer.
From an open source perspective, open source and free software development can be done essentially as large joint ventures with low barriers to entry. This allows the cost of development to be spread across a number of different entities. It also allows entities with dissimilar interests to benefit from each others work while specializing on their own. They end up with a much more comprehensive solution than they could practically manage individually.
There are very few (if any???) advantages to a customer for choosing proprietary software, though there are some advantages to the developer in the ability to lock in their customers and lock out competition with an aim towards a monopoly.
My opinion of why proprietary desktop solutions are ubuquitus while free software destop solutions are rare is that proprietary vendors (both Microsoft and Apple) do a very good job of exploiting the advantages of their business model. In the cases of Microsoft and Apple, they also successfully lobby various governments to make laws that make their advantages easier to maintain. On the other hand, free software vendors do a poor job of exploiting their advantages. We *do* see some good organizations (Apache is an excellent example and there is a reason why they have dominated for a long time). But in terms the desktop, there are very few companies who have figured out how to sell custom development to enterprise cutomers and leverage that development into securing new customers. It happens on the server side, but the desktop has been lagging.
My personal belief is that, barring making it illegal through ridiculous paten law, etc, free and open source software advantages can outcompete proprietary advantages. The main reason is that the advantages to proprietary methods is largely abusive to the customer. If faced with a viable alternatives which comes without the abuse they will choose that (Free software is a consumer protection movement after all). But unlike the OP, I don't believe it will happen automatically. We still need cluefull corporations who know how to build pure-play free software companies. Right now those are rare. Hopefully they will become more common.
If I teacher can't identify a student using their cellphone (or whatever), then that student is obviously not causing a problem in the class. You can't force students to pay attention. There were some crazy ideas back in the 70s to paper over all the windows so that students wouldn't get distracted by things outside the class. We now know that is complete nonsense.
I'm a teacher. If I notice a student using a cellphone, I ask them to put it away. Sometimes the student says, "I'm just looking up a word in my dictionary". Well, school policy says they aren't allowed to use a cellphone for that. That's bollocks. Go ahead and look up the word (ha ha! One day I'll get in trouble for that!) If the student is texting or playing a game and refuses to put it away, I'll talk to them after. Usually I ask them what I can do to improve the class so that they feel like paying atention. I explain that I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to make class interesting for them and that it's disrespectful simply to ignore it. They don't have to like it, but if they don't, they are expected to improve it. I've never had a student fail to understand this.
School isn't jail. We don't have to treat students like criminals.
I'm a Canadian who has lived in the American deep south (and a number of other places to boot). What you are missing is that the people of the American deep south, as people, are virtually indistinguishable from the people of Canada. Indeed, people all over are pretty much the same. You are allowing geographical distance, minor differences in culture and stereotyped misinformation to fuel your own ignorance. In fact, if it weren't assumed that you were a WASP and the people you are talking about were WASPs, someone would have undoubtedly called your statement bigoted long before now.
I don't point this out to try to shame you. I hope that it will make you think about how easy it is for humans to be ignorant. We tend to gloss over details, especially when "everyone" is saying the same thing. It's easy to jump to the wrong conclusion, and even strenuously hold beliefs that are completely (and obviously, from someone else's perspective) wrong. That's being human. I think that you will find that even the deepest thinker makes this mistake from time to time. Even more frustrating is that we often don't realize it is a mistake, even when it is pointed out to us.
The only productive thing I know to do in this case is to patiently try to explain the situation while realizing that you will only be successful occasionally.
This is absolutely terrible advice. Firing you is *not* the worst they can do. That's the absolute *best* outcome that could happen. The worst they can do is fire you and then sue you. Do you know how much lawyers cost? Especially when you explain to them that your contract negotiation technique was to say, "I don't like the terms of my contract, so I'll just ignore them", they aren't going to go pro-bono.
You could easily find yourself unemployed, with a piece of IP that you can't sell because there is an injunction against it, a lawsuit suing you for control of the IP and whatever damages (real or imagined), and a lawyer costing you a couple grand a week. And to top it all off, your lawsuit, being a matter of public record, will show up on any background search forcing you to explain to any potential employer how you didn't like your contract so just decided to ignore it. To say you would be radioactive is putting it mildly.
Basically, you are putting yourself at the mercy of your employer's legal team. Even if they aren't vindictive (and some are), they might just see it as a revenue generating operation. "Hey employee 1234 is being a dick and we can make $10K out of it (and make ourselves seem useful to boot). Let's go for it!"
But it's a winning the battle and losing the war thing.
Try finding a job while your previous employer is suing you for IP infringement. If they have a contract, no matter how unenforceable it is, a judge is likely to hear the case. Your previous employer can then drag it out for a very long time at very little cost to them. You, on the other hand, need to explain to every potential employer why you are being sued and how a similar situation will never happen with them.
The OP is correct. Never sign a contract you don't intend to honor. You are in a terrible situation no matter how unfair the contract is. I was once sued by a former employer for breach of contract. It was completely ridiculous, but they still managed to make my life hell. Luckily I found a job with a gigantic company and their legal team took care of it for me. I'm still unbelievable grateful to that company for their help because without it it would have been a nightmare.
The difference between a cable TV service and an ISP is that the cable TV service chooses which content to carry. The ISP does not. Even though they physically carry the streaming data, they don't actually stream it themselves. CTV, CBC, Global, etc do. Those streaming services should pay. And they do already.
Adding another fee for ISPs is an interesting idea, but it is essentially a new levy. As a consumer that would ultimately have to pay that levy, I want something in return. The internet is more than a broadcasting medium. In fact, I barely use it for that purpose (although Slashdot might qualify). Similar to the levy on blank media for sound recordings, if I'm going to pay the levy (whether I consume the media or not), I want concessions. Allowing private copying for said media would be appropriate I think.
Ha ha ha. OK... I couldn't keep a straight face while typing that. I'd love to see the lobbyists' faces if they were told that was the price of opting in ISPs.
You are right to say that a flat sales tax is simpler than a progressive income tax (and probably that was what the OP was talking about). I just want to point out that consumption tax can, indeed, be more complex than income tax. If you implement a consumption tax similar to Canada's "Goods and Services Tax", everything is taxed at every stage through the process. It is impossible for the consumer to know what percentage of the price is tax.
Here is an example. A farmer produces wheat and sells it to a distributor. The distributor pays 10% flat tax. The distributor then sells the wheat to a mill. The mill pays 10% tax (including 10% of tax that the distributor paid). The mill sells flour to another distributore. The distributor pays 10% tax (includine 10% of the tax that the mill paid), etc. What often happens in this scenario is that the person selling gets a rebate for the tax that they paid on things that they sold. This is somewhat complicated, but what is very complicated is for the government to track all of this to make sure that nobody is cheating. Basically, the cost of implementing the tax goes up.
Much simpler is a flat income tax (including flat corporate tax). Banks withold 10% of returns on investments. Employers withold 10% of paychecks/bonuses/cost of perks. Businesses pay a flat 10% on profit. It is *very* simple for everyone to understand. If you allow no deductions at all, it is incredibly simple.
The advantage over consumption taxes is that everyone pays the same percentage. With a consumption tax, poor people spend every cent they make (often more, since they are in debt). Rich people don't (they have money in investments). Pretty much the definition of poor and rich. Thus, poor people actually pay a greater percentage of their income on tax than the rich (anti-progressive?)
The downside of a flat income tax is that rich people/corporations who are used to fiddling the system to avoid tax will leave the country, taking jobs with them. Also, the cost of implementing the tax is offloaded primarily to businesses, which they don't like.
I've lived in a country which had both flat income tax and a consumption tax. Even though I was poor at the time, I liked the system better than a progressive tax. The consumption tax was also invisible (integrated into prices). Even though this is pretty much the opposite to what anti-poverty groups advocate, I liked it better. It was really easy for me to calculate my income/outgo. My job was advertised with the after-tax amount and my expenses were all advertised with after tax amounts. It is much, much easier to understand what's going on.
Yeah, I really wished the OP had asked, "In which OS projects are talented contributors likely to find employment?" I assume the Linux kernel and Mozilla are good options. Open Office is probably not any more ;-) But seriously, I would be interested people's ideas on that topic.
Gold's real value as a physical object isn't really tremendously better than paper money. It has a few uses, but far and away it's major value comes from scarcity in comparison to demand. While it is very true that gold has a much longer tradition than strips of cotton/paper/rubber/plastic as a currency, it's intrinsic value is dwarfed by the value placed on it by society. It isn't particularly more or less suited to being a currency than other traditional physical currency. They all depend on tradition/cooperation to hold their value.
While somewhat beside the point, one of the mistakes that many people make about currency is that its only function is to act as a counter for value. I have made this mistake myself in the past and it wasn't until I started to educate myself on economics that I began to understand fiat currencies. Having a handy counter for value to make trade easy is indeed useful, but a much more important role for currency is to create liquidity in markets. Basically, if someone doesn't have access to money, they can't run their business -- farmers can't delivery their produce to the market, restaurants can't buy vegetables, consumers can't buy finished food products. Basically you will stall growth and create inefficiencies.
The main purpose of currency (and you can prove this to yourself by studying the history of currency) is to create this liquidity. By and large you want everyone to have access to money. With access to money, they can do work, which will enable someone else to do work that relied on that work, etc. If you choose a currency that is physically limited, you restrict access to it. This is the opposite to what you want.
A fiat currency works by making the currency unlimited. But you don't want to hand out money to people that won't produce work with it (otherwise they just devalue the currency). So you lend it to people with the expectation that they pay it back. When you lend it, you create it out of thin air. This creates a reasonable expectation that if you want to produce work, you can get the capital that you need to get you started. It is the basis of a strong economy.
Note that the money supply generally grows monotonically. Money that pays back loans does not disappear as you might think it would. So there is always enough money in supply as long as you have some rules on the amount of money someone can lend. This will usually lead to a slight oversupply of money, which leads to inflation. But inflation is actually desirable as it places an upper limit on loans. If the value of money increases, those with debt will have to pay the interest on their debt *and* deal with the deflation. If you have inflation, those with debt know that they will never have to pay more than the debt plus interest rate in today's dollars. This is an important feature. Runaway inflation happens when people no longer trust the currency (usually if a government falls, or is printing money for reasons other than to create loans, or banking institutions loan money indiscriminently without expectation of being paid back). It is true that a limited physical object at least has some intrinsic worth, but since its value as a currency is inevitably many times that of it's intrinsic worth, physical objects are not immune to hyper inflation either (again, you can look at historical records to see that commodity prices have crashed before).
There are lots of things I don't like about our modern banking system, but fiat currency is not one of them.
Later on in the thread, I noticed that someone said that CDMA *never* worked properly on source only builds of Android. All of the phones require binary blobs for CDMA. Taking the source out of the tree apparently doesn't affect anyone. This makes sense to me as I have a Galaxy S in Japan and I never understood why Cyanogenmod doesn't work for it, while it does on most other Galaxy S platforms. My carrier uses CDMA.
It is very likely logged somewhere. It's been 15 years, but I actually vaguely remember having to work with something like that on DMS when I was at Nortel. It wasn't my primary responsibility, but I think I attended a code review with respect to logging SMS messages. I believe it was an option you could turn on (not per number, but for the whole switch). At that point it was up to the Telcos to decide what to do with it. Probably there is someone around here who could provide better information.
Anyway, having worked in telecommunications for a fair while, I never, ever assume that my traffic isn't stored somewhere. It might not be immediately accessible, but the tools for storing the information have been there for a very long time.
However, for those that wish to rebuild Android themselves (say Cyanogenmod), does this mean than CDMA will be unavailable?
Can we mod this up to 11?
As I pointed out in a different post, Matthew Garrett is wrong. Simply read the description of the Busybox replacement project:
http://www.elinux.org/Busybox_replacement_project
The reason for the project is because Sony's *suppliers* are violating Busybox's license without Sony knowing about it. Sony is afraid (and rightfully so) that it will create liability for them even though they generally have no problem with complying with the GPL license. This project is a replacement for Busybox under the new BSD license which they hope will encourage their suppliers to stop violating the GPL. This will reduce their liability.
GPL compliance does not bother them (and they have quite a few devices on the market with Linux source code availability to prove my point). But in this case, so as to avoid unknowingly violating the license, they want to encourage the use of free software with a more liberal license. It makes complete sense.
You made me RTFA. To imply that Sony doesn't comply with the GPL is incorrect. For example, virtually their entire line of Japanese GPS navigation units use Linux and they offer the source code. And from the FAQ about the BusyBox Replacement project:
"It is not expected to affect Sony directly, because Sony has good compliance practices."
So why are they doing this? Because BusyBox is the defacto toolbox for what it does. And while Sony does a good job meeting it's obligations wrt the GPL, it recognizes that many of its *suppliers* don't. They are worried that one of their suppliers will include BusyBox without their knowing it. They have worries about their liability in that case, not just for the single project that infringes, but on other projects since some litigation has apparently asked for the ability to inspect future projects as part of their relief. That is completely reasonable to me.
This isn't a GPL issue. It could happen with any license. The problem is that BusyBox is being infringed left right and center. So they are thinking, "Hey let's write a replacement with a *more* liberal license". The idea being that people will choose to use the replacement over willfully infringing on BusyBox.
It's a good idea. I'm sorry that there are some BusyBox developers that don't understand. If the project succeeds, then potentially BusyBox won't be able to be used to leverage companies into using the GPL. That's too bad for people hoping to do that. But they *have* succeeded in explaining to a company like Sony (think about it -- Sony!) that they should be writing free software. It's all good.
And if you made all of those discoveries available patent-free, nobody will will want to attack you. You're providing $700 billion a year in free medical research. Why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?
Of course it means you can't muck about in the afairs of other countries. That's no fun. Stupid idea...
In the case of Michael Jackson, I remember a time when he received a billion dollars up front for his next 7 albums (tried to find a link, but google is saturated with current stories...). He hadn't even made them yet. The idea is that they pay him up front and then they receive money afterwards. He gets a reduced payout, but it is also de-risked. No matter what kind of crap he put out, he would still have the money.
Clearly the people who payed him (I believe it was Sony) was expecting to make a profit. The more money they think they will make in the future, the more money they can afford to pay the artist up front. It is true that you can't hurt someone who is dead, but if the studios feel that they will make less money, they will offer less up front. It is also true that reduced sales (for whatever reason) by the recording companies will reduce the amount of money they offer to artists in the future.
I don't like the way the recording industry works. I don't like the current copyright laws (especially the length of copyright). This, despite the fact that for most of my life I have made my living off of copyright (as a programmer). I especially don't like the direction that copyright law seems to be going. I believe there are other, better ways to do business.
But, I also believe it is completely factual to say that artists who rely on the existing system will be hurt by any lack of sales resulting from copyright infringement (whatever that may be).
I think there may be something to what you are saying. To be honest, I was very surprised by this article (I would really like to see the original Nikkei report in Japanese... too bad they don't link it).
I'm on DoCoMo at the moment and I have had nothing but terrific service. I live out in the sticks, but no mater where I am I get good signal, good data availability, *very* good bandwidth and decent ping times. I've even tunnelled X through ssh on it and it was (barely) useable. That's considerably better than anything I would expect. Even on my occasional journeys to Tokyo or Osaka, I've never, ever had even the slightest problem. So if they are struggling, it's definitely not obvious.
However, up until November, the gmail app was seriously draining my battery. I ended up going to manual updates and suddenly all of my battery problems were fixed. Then I upgraded to 2.3 and ended up re-enabling auto-update on gmail. No problem. I attributed it to the OS upgrade, but it definitely could have been an infrastructure problem that they have fixed in my area.
I wonder if this is simply some technical issue that they are having and that the cheapest way for them to fix it would be to make changes to Android. In other words a non-story that some reporter got the wrong end of the stick for...
I agree with you, so after reading all the links down as far as I could, here's the gist of it.
Back at the tail end of 2011 a company in Kenya started to get confusing calls from their customers. The customers were asking about promises to set up websites, which is something that the Kenya company doesn't provide. The company looked at their database and noticed that an IP address belonging to a Google offshoot was scaping their company contact database. So they modified their code to provide their own phone number in a few cases rather than their customer's phone number for just that IP address. Sure enough, someone claiming to be from the Google offshoot called them (thinking they were one of the customer sites) and claimed that they had a joint venture with the Kenyan company, wouldn't they like to buy a website, etc...
The Kenyan company was surprised but figured it must be some rogue operator in the Google offshoot doing something wrong. They figured if they contacted Google it would all clear up. But then something strange happened. The Google offshoot in Kenya stopped scraping their database and another IP address from within Google's network (in India) started up. So they offerred up their own phone number again and got a call from one of Google's call center's in India with the exact same scam.
Thinking this can't just be one rogue operation, they contacted Google and asked WTF. Google apologized, but hasn't furnished any more information about what happened.
Fast forward and the Open Street Maps project started discovering vandalism on their site. Some streets were deleted, one one way streets were edited to have them going the wrong way. A fictitious Olympic stadium was even added. Well, it's an open project, vandalism happens. But the twist here is that the vandalism occurred from the exact same IP address in India that was operating the scam in Kenya.
So Open Stream Maps contacted Google and asked WTF. So far no response as far as I could tell.
Finally, an Indian website offered a reward for a picture or information about the individuals responsible for the OSM vanalism and possibly the Kenyan scam. They had previously offerred a similar reward for getting a picture of Mark Zuckerberg at an Indian wedding, but other than that this posting has nothing to do with Facebook (despite the bizarre summary).
Very interesting topic. Crap summary. The English is fine. It's an indication of what is important to the story that is lacking. Admittedly it's an involved story. Probably someone could summarize it a lot better than me too.
TFA is actually a little light on details, so I'll add a few more. But I am not a psychology researcher, so take my explanation with a sack of salt.
There are basically 3 separate issues that they are looking at with respect to learning.
One is spaced repetition. Spaced repetition is the idea that you forget things over time. The longer you go without recalling something, the higher the odds are that you will not be able to remember it when you try. However, if you remember something, the association will be stronger and the speed at which you forget it is lower (i.e., the drop from 90% recall to 80% recall will take more time). That speed is called the "forgetting curve". The shallower the curve, the less often you have to review something to rememer it. Software like Mnemosyne, Anki and SuperMemo try to time when you are likely to forget something so that you don't waste your time reviewing something that you aren't going to forget.
Another concept is spaced learning. This is different from spaced repetition. It turns out that the space between reviews is actually necessary for long term memory. If you memorize something and then wait for a long time, even if you forget it, you will make a stronger connection the *second* time you learn it. Spaced learning intentionally puts spaces between reviews with the intent that it creates a stronger memory (makes the forgetting curve shallower) the *next* time you learn it. In other words, you intentionally make it difficult to remember the second time around (as opposed to choosing a time when you are likely to remember it). The distinction between spaced repetition and spaced learning is fine but important, I think.
Finally there is interleaved learning. It turns out that time is not the only thing that causes you to forget. As you learn new things, the ability to recall old things gets worse. So if you learn A and that's all, you will forget it slower than if you learn A and then B. Learning B makes it difficult to recall A. You can use this to your advantage. Remember that with spaced learning, if you forget something, it is retained *better* the second time around. So if you learn A and B, and then return to A, you will remember A better than if you spent twice as long on A and then did B.
Basically spaced repetition programs that use SM2 algorithm are implementing spaced repetion. I will argue that they aren't making use of spaced learning, at least intentionally. When you initially try to remember something, you should space repetitions so that it is difficult to remember the item. One of the weaknesses of SM2 is that it doesn't really have any strategy for first learning the item (on the other hand, you are free to adopt your own strategies within the framework of the software). Specifically, there's no concept of getting an item correct and then waiting a short time and reviewing it again. It goes ahead and schedules it for a day or so later. Also, when you get an item wrong, you are back to square one, with the "difficulty" set at the same level it was at before you got it wrong. Spaced learning would suggest that at least the item will get less difficult every time you forget it. So I think there is considerable room for improvement.
SM2 also specifically does not implement interleaving. When learning new material (or even items that you forgot in the review) it would be rather interesting to have it introduce one new fact from 4 or 5 different quizes at a time. It would accellerate the speed at which you forget the item and provide opportunities for spaced learning faster (presuming there was support for spaced learning).
I'm actually the author of another spaced repetition program for studying Japanese, called JLDrill. I use a different algorithm, which I describe here: http://jldrill.rubyforge.org/Strategy.html I'm going to try to implement some of these other ideas in the near future.