I dont mind if Ubuntu wants to recreate the wheel. But what I fear is that they will be too controlling over the X-like software. It seems like whenever you want to reconfigure a Ubuntu system running Unity, that there are all kinds of difficulties with getting it to display correctly. There is a limited set of Ubuntu supported applications that display correctly in the taskbar, but once you move ouside their default set and install alternate applications, nothing is integrated properly. Furthermore, the Ubuntu packages are tangled in such a way that it is difficult to remove apparently unrelated packages without removing everything else Ubuntu supplies. In one sense, this could be that Ubuntu wants to force the users to have a certain "look" or suite of applications to call it "Ubuntu". But in another sense, I feel that they are using this as an excuse to make it difficult for users to opt-out of their profit goals. Like the Amazon shopping cart integration and sending all the dash keystokes back to their servers in order to monitize it. Some users really like these automatic "features", while others see this as a potential security threat and a reduction of the privacy benefits linux offers. My fear is that Ubuntu will use Mir as a mechanism to control Ubuntu users into applications and services that channel much of our usage through them. And make it difficult for users to use Mir with a non-standard set of applications. In a similar way that Apple products channel everything through itunes for media usage. Generally itunes is a good product, but in another sense it is too much control over the users. It maximizes profits for Apple, but it limits consumer choice, especially when Apple has the final say over what will and will not be allowed to operate. Because it is in apples interest to make sure the content is channeled through them as the supplier of the media service. So the software is limited in a way that maximizes the channel that provides profit back to them. In the same way, I expect Mir will limit the end users free choice and encourage or force users to use the approved channels such as Ubuntu One and their set of shopping and advertising partners.
Shaw might be less abusive of their customers of their internet service.
Incorrect. Shaw acts like a monopoly in many respects and so does not always care about customer loyalty. So they often use dirty tricks to maximize profits. I ran into this when they offered me a "free upgrade" to faster Internet service. After the free trial I requested a switch back to my original lower priced service and suddenly my IP phone service no longeer worked. When I called them to complain they said my phone would only work if I paid them an extra $10 per month QOS (quality of service) package. Even though my phone was working fine before the "free upgrade". Then they tried to get me to switch to their IP phone service which they just happened to begin one month after they upgraded me.
So basically, Shaw began an IP phone service and then screwed all existing customer already using other IP phone services into paying more.
Here they are two monopolies. Shaw and Telus. They are the only Internet and major phone providers. They play off of each other in order to make sure customers pay as much as possible for service. They do not compete on price... not in a competitive way.
When the French concieved the metric system, they were trying to reconfigure the all measurements to be based on logic rather then history. In many ways they succeeded, but with time they failed. For a short period, France converted to metric time and the calendar was changed. However, the people did not accept and use the new system and business complained and they made changes to the calendar which made people lose faith in it. Its too bad that it didnt work. From a programming perspective metric time would be a lot easier to work with.
I have a hard time imagining all people on Earth of the 11th century all
agreeing on the definition of time units at all, let alone on the
second. It's probably one of those things where the now standardized time units of hours, minute and second was used more and more, and gradually took over any existing local units and standards.
Ancient Egypt divided daylight into 10 hours and night into 10 more. A 20 hour day was useful because they also followed a 5 day week. So the hours in a week was 100 hours. Which was useful because their number system was decimal. Long before we used it. And also, the angular divisions of hours was 1/2Phi (sin 18). So a triangle representing the shadow change of the sun in one hour was easily constructed for cultures who knew about phi.
We would probably have some sort of decimal system for both time and angle if we inherited our measurements from ancient egypt rather then babylonians. And we would probably be worshiping a sun god... which makes much more sense.
What I am trying to say is that I do not believe that our body parts were significant in the creation of time division or angle division. Instead nature was observed and used to set the stage for a meaningful counting system. The body parts were later used as a convenience for recording and remebering these values. We have a lot of things on our bodies in different numbers. The hands can be used to mimic just about any numbering system. So suggesting our hands as the reason for numbers does not provide any more reason for the usage of 60 then say using 10 or 8 or 5 or 25 or whatever combination of fingers, knucles or combination of hand signals available. For example, if the number base was 48, you could say the exact same thing and simply leave the thumb out of the equation in your counting system. ie: 12 *4 = 48
Also note. Most people will suggest base 10 comes from humans having 10 finger/digits. But this is short sighted as it has no relation to the division of circle...which is historically where all numbers come from.. ie: division of angle and time. The true origin of decimal counting (base 10) comes from the realization of dividing the circle into 10. Which requires the understanding of Phi. The proportion of Phi is required in order to divide a circle into 10 equal parts because Cos 36 = Phi/2. Which simply says that a right triangle with a height of 2 and an hypoteneus of Phi will make a 1/10th division of a full circle. Since 36 degrees = 360/10. So the logical reasoning is that decimal number systems come from triangles using Phi.
They also counted in base 60 using the knuckles of the fingers of one hand (using the thumb as a marker) and the fingers of the other hand for 5x12 counting system. There are some people who stand by this or the duodecimal system.
I have heard of this being used to reason why there are 12 hour divisions in the day. But I am skeptical because the counting mechanism has little to do with division of time and angle of the sun.
I have come up with a different theory where the hands are used as a sundial to divide up the day. Open your hands and place them together palm up. Between the hand hold a pencil of straight stick. Position the stick so that it is directly between the creases where the thumbs separate from the palms. Now turn your hands so the shadow of the stick points to the first crease where the thumb seperates from the palm. You will see that as the sun moves through the sky, your hands will work as a sundial where creases of the thumb and fingers make for 12 divisions as the sun moves from horizon to horizon. Basically, anyone can make a sundial with their hands and a stick and it will provide for 12 divisions.
As far as the origin of base 60, I think it came from instead a division of the circle into 6 using the equilateral triangle. One of the simplest divisions of the circle beyond a simpler diameter division into 2. Each of these 6 divisions was subdivided into 60 in order to match the change in the heavens every day. Meaning that the location of a star has an aproximate change of 1 degree every night.
Base 60 is an "ok" selection because it LCD's are 2 x 2 x 3 x 5. Which is a constuctable division of the circle. Meaning that with the primary tools of a compass and straight edge you can divide the circle into 60 equal segments. This is useful for historically accurate divisions of the sky. But the use of 360 is not. You cannot divide a circle into 360 equal parts with the above tools because it requires angle trisection. This means that our usage of 360 degrees and 360 seconds in an hour is a poor choice for accurate measurements. It is my opinion that the usage of 360 is derived in this manner:
- a circle can easily be divided into 6 parts by using the radius as a chord along the perimeter.
- the 6 segments were then divided into 60 due to the usage of base 60 in the number system.
- also: 360 may have seemed like a good idea since it is approximately equivelent to the number of days in the year. So star locations move aprox 1 degree each night
Anyhow, despite the fact that we continue to use 360 in time and angle division, it is a poor selection because it is generally impossible for any student of geometry to easily construct a 360 degree protractor using basic tools.
For the record. Any protractor that has a value of 60 times some multiple of 2 is a "good" protractor. So 120, 240 and 480 degree protractors would have been far better selections
Nothing new here really. Public photographers have been harassed forever; ask any practicing street photographer. Cell phone camera users would be in the same boat except that they are in the majority now. Google Glass users are in the monitory currently, so they can be bullied. Give it time.
Its a private business and he can set the rules how he likes. But Ive never seen anyone in my city actual wearing one of these. Its still undecided whether or not these will catch on. So this is a non issue for the owner and the "announcement" is nothing more then a PR campaign. I mean it got his business mentioned on slashdot right
I was on the bus yesterday and counted the number of people with cell and smart phones in their hand. It was approximately half. Each of these has a camera. If the owner really wants to do something about privacy he should announce a cell phone ban. Because they are real and in active use right now and they are being used all the time to record people without their knowledge.
That said... I think the whole idea that people deserve privacy in public is rediculous. I do film in public and often run in to people who believe that what I am doing is unethical and sometimes suggest it is illegal. For those people I suggest: just stay home. Because it certaily isnt just the public that is filming the public. On that same bus there were 4 cameras mounted in the ceiling of the bus. These cameras really are pointed at you and really are recording you all the time. Do you really believe that business is somehow going to respect your privacy any more then your neighbours
Without knowing much about the truth, I originally suspected exactly what you are saying. Seems to me that when ur caught with kilos of coke, the first thing you do is make up excuses as to why you are not responsible and someone else is. This story sounded exactly like the wild tail someone caught in crime will tell.
Well you're wrong. This is not about how much it costs... its about whether or not there should be a cost. This is just another example of an existing system paying existing salaries is simply going to vanish. They have a history of providing a useful service that used to actually cost money to provide. But now there is simply no reason for them to exist. They are charging fees based on old technology and systems they believe are neccessary. It may be required now, but for the large part, they offer little more then a history of function and trust. Perhaps at one time it did cost money to provide databases for integrations with users around the world. But now it simply isnt too hard to set up an accessible database for anyone in the world to access. They may be needed now simply because of all those who expect them to exist as a database reference. But in short order they will simply price themselves out of existence because they failed to meet the demands of a new paradim change. The paradim is that it now costs nothing to distribute your book. They will simply fizzle away with the physical books they depend on.
Some of these orbit locations are "attractors", meaning that bodies close to these points will tend to "fall in" to the orbital points and remain stable. These solutions generally have 2 large bodies and one much smaller body. What I always wondered if it was possible for 2 black holes to orbit one another. If so, then they should have these lagrange orbital points where other objects would fall in and become "stuck" as the gravitational wells would be very strong and keep objects from falling out. Also, since these wells would be close to black holes gravitational feilds, objects inside them would experience time dilation. Meaning that time experienced inside of these locations would proceed more slowly then time at a distance away from the black holes. The reason I wonder about this, is because it seems it would allow objects and matter to fall partially into or near to a black hole, but never fall into either of the black holes. So if two black holes could remain in a stable orbit about one another, then there should be a fair amount of mass collected in these gravity wells that is "older" then all the other objects in the nearby space. Since time would flow at a slower rate, there should be objects in these wells that has not had as much time to age as the rest of the objects in the surrounding space.
It would be interesting in some far far future space exploration to visit a binary black hole system and then use the lagrange orbital paths to fly between the black holes and explore these gravity wells. It may be that some of the youngest old objects in the universe are hidden within them.
Of course, maybe black holes cannot have long stable orbits. And maybe these gravit wells are not close enough to create significant time dialation. Im just mentioning it because it would be interesting for someone with knowledge to think about it.
With a two body problem like the sun and the earth, we can accurately know exactly where the earth will be in 10,000,000 years. Because we will assign an exact number to its location and speed and exact numbers to the mass of the bodies and such. So the answer in relation to the article... is YES, we know exactly how to calculate 2 bodies in gravitational orbit. Of course, in reality, we dont know everything perfectly, so HiThere is correct in saying that in practice we cannot perdict that far out because there are other variables involved which are not related to a simple two body orbit. But the theoretically answer is that we DO know how to determine the location of the earth and sun exactly to an infinite point in the future, if all we had was exact initial conditions and nothing else to disturb it.
I think you should consider the earth and sun as a perfect two body system, because this is what the article is referring to. It is not including all the other unknowns and limits of our measuring abilities. The 3 body problem does not include ouside considerations. It is difficult all on its own. It is a formula where 3 perfect bodies are set in motion appart from anything else. It is not a limitation of our ability to measure mass, distance, location or speed. So bringing our limitations of measurement of the earth and sun and future unknown possibilities over a 10 million year span has little to do with the considerations of the above article.
Generally, the company will not make money from the rise and fall of the bitcoin. Like most investment companies they will make money from the investment transactions. You pay a small fee or portion of the investment to buy and maybe you pay something to sell out. The more the bitcoin fluctuates, the more likely they are to see clients investment decisions change and the more money they make. I think what they are providing is a useful service. Here is a link to the value of the bitcoin vs US dollar over the last year: http://blockchain.info/charts/market-price. As you can see, it has a juicy track record.
What you saying is correct, but I am missing a step here.
You hand over your bitcoins for the fund to invest. They split the bitcoins into 3 pieces. o.k. - but how is that investing? If they are just keeping the bitcoins secure that is not even banking.
They are allowing clients to speculate on the rise and fall of the bitcoin. In order to do this, they need to have "holdings" in the bicoin comodity in order to meet the rise and fall of the bitcoin asset. So if a client wants to speculate on a million dollars worth of bitcoins, they need to purchase around 1 million bit coins, becuase if the bitcoin doubles over time and the client wants to cash out of the investment, then they will need to roughly 2 million back to the client by selling all the bitcoins they originally bought at 1 million. Generally speaking.
Anyhow, the press release is trying to assure investors that they have a mechanism for protecting the bitcoins they have purchased on your (the clients) behalf. To do this, they are simply generating a master key for a bitcoin wallet. The master key is used to move bitcoins out of the bitcoin wallet. However the master key is not required in order to transfer bitcoins into the wallet. So they used a simple and well known mechanism for breaking this key into 3 parts where 2 parts are required to restore this original master key. They separated the 3 keys into 3 countries and put them offline into security deposit boxes at banks.
Now when you give them 1 milltion dollars, they will use this to puchase the bitcoins on the open market and then transfer these into the wallet. At this point the bitcoins are secured in the bitcoin wallet and cannot be removed by them or anyone else without the master key. To "hack" the master key is currently beyond our computing capabilities. I dont have the exact numbers, but it would be far more then 1 million dollars and would take many many... possibly hunrdeds of years to "hack" the keys to steal the bitcoins from this wallet.
When you want to sell the bitcoins in the open market to say get back 2 million dollars, they will need to physically go into the banks to retrieve at least 2 of the keys. They will share the information in some manner to bring the two keys together to generate the real master key. They will use this key to transfer the bitcoins from this wallet to the wallets of people who have paid money to them for the bitcoins on the open market. They will then send this money to your bank account.
At this point, they may make a new master key. Or maybe they have multiple master keys for multiple wallets with various amounts inside each. I dont know the details about this. In any case, what they are saying is that for the large part, the key which secures your investment in actual bitcoins will be held in a wallet where the master key is offline. No amount of computer hacking will be able to get direct access to the master key. Further they are saying that it would take two natural disasters or two simultaneous robberies at two banks in undisclosed locations in order to comprimise the bitcoin securities you have invested in.
In the most simplest terms they are trying to assure you that despite the fact that bitcoins are easy to transfer from one wallet to another... that the bitcoins backing your investment are secured in a manner which is logically sound and secure. In this respect, it appears entirely possible and valid to me.
So hundreds of thousand of dollars of peoples money (most of it virtual none the less) relying on some $50 flash drives.....No thanks. Ill pass.
If the same flash drives cost $5000 would you feel safer?
Flash drives are far better at holding data then typical spinning hard drives. A master key that is approved for top secret documents by the NSA/FBI/CIA/CSIS/etc will fit onto the smallest flash drive you can buy. Also, 100 x $50 flash drives is far more secure then 1 x $5000 giant "reliable" drive. Flash drives are water proof, xray proof, largely pressure proof and shock proof. I have tested this myself and it is difficult to destroy a flash card. I have dropped, dunked, stepped on, put through washing machine, etc, etc. In fact the bigger issue is how to remove the data from a flash drive. Because the controller mechanism will sometimes move your data into areas that you can no longer write to. So the biggest concern with flash drive is how to get the secured data off of the drive once it has been stored. I generally try writting over with random data and then take a hammer and put it on concrete and smash and smash into tiny pieces and then sprinkle these into various waste locations. Flash NAND devices are probably a technology that will last beyond your lifetime. The portions that will deteriate quickest is the leads and casing... generally from stuffing it into the USB slot or card reader over and over again.
Anyhow... flash is a very safe storage mechanism despite your opinions about cost = security. It may actually be too safe.
You don't actually think they really did this, do you? Bitcoin people love to make big promises and not deliver on them. In reality it's probably stored on a flash drive, possibly on 2 drives for "redundant backup!" and kept in a box on top of a refrigerator.
who knows what they really do. Trust in a company is exactly that. Fact is they are describing a process that is really possible. And if implemented as they describe it would be very secure. Whether or not a company follows through on their promises is outside the scope of what you can know from a press release.
There are examples of bitcoin companies that did not properly secure their clients assests or worse... simply stole the assests of their clients (I think). But there are many many cases of companies improperly handlind our credit card, medical and other personal information. Even when they assured us and we assumed that it was safe.
Whether you trust this company or not is your decision. But the process they describe is entirely possible. And the process they describe is an ideal way of securing bitcoins and keeping your assest locked away from "hackers". All companies need master private keys to strongly store your private information. Bitcoin simply provides new options and this solutions seems very secure if they follow through and combine with other security policies
But banks are regulated and abide by lots of consumer protection laws. Bitcoin exchanges.... well I haven't heard anything of the sorts yet.
When a giant bank gets hacked the people usually end up getting their money back. Hell when an end user gets hacked and someone cleans out their bank account they often end up getting their money back.
When some small bitcoin exchange gets taken to the cleaners... well we'll see.
Well I dont know of any bank that was "hacked" and all the money inside was stolen and then the government gave everyone their money back. If a bank is robbed, then the bank pays for the robbery to return the funds, because they are responsible for the money their clients left to them. In general, they pay insurance at all banks to cover these loses averaged out. The government has little to do with robbery and fraud. Instead what you are thinking of is when a bank mismanages your assests and through actions of their own incompitance causes their company to lose all their assests. This is much worse then what you are talking about, because fraud and robbery generally does not throw a whole banking corporation into bankruptcy.
My experience is that companies dealing with a large amount of clients financial records, data and transfers are required to meet a large set of physical and policy requirements. This means that all computers are tested and there are roles and rules to how everyone behaves and what information is known by individual employees. However, there is a limit to how much security can be achieved due to the nature of the underlying transactions. Bitcoin is a recent development and appears to have a much higher level of security designed into the nature of its existence. This means that it provides a greater range of security options when deploying a secure environment for storing and transfering it.
The article does not go into great depth about the business policies, computer auditing or secret knowledge for various employees of this institution. But no company will reveal this to you as it is generally part of their security policy not to tell everyone how they do their daily tasks to maintain general security. What they do tell you is that they have a master key for storing their bitcoins into wallets that they have broken into 3 parts and delivered to 3 location in 3 countries and secured these keys into bank security deposit boxes. And that it requires at least 2 of these keys to restore the actual key. And that this key is not attached to any operational computer. It is physically removed from the possibility of being electronically compromised.
I dont know what every company is doing to secure financial records and keep our assest safe. But I have seen a few and no company I have ever seen has this level of security based that can match what they have revealed for master key protection.
What we dont know is if the banks they have choosen are safe, whether the owners/employees of the company are honest people, whether the countries are safe from natural disaster or acts of god, how they protect their computers from intrution and viruses and what there physical policy is for when they do need to restore the master key to transfer money out of the bitcoin wallets. But this is true for all financial companies. Fact is, what they have revealed is much better then what your bank is doing to protect your money.... I assure you. Because traditional mechanisms for moving money and assests does not allow for these sorts of security tricks like bitcoin does.
So hundreds of thousand of dollars of peoples money (most of it virtual none the less) relying on some $50 flash drives.....No thanks. Ill pass.
I have worked with companies to attain PCI compliance. This is a set of steps and policies required to handle client credit cards and transactions. It is a step beyond what the average storefront accepting credit cards needs to do. It is a very vast set of rules that mostly make sense and do provide a fair amount of protection for customer data and potential theft and/or fraud.
It is my opinion that bitcoin does offer a whole new set of options for greater security that is just not possible with standard information such as account details, credit card and government number (SSN, etc) and actual money transfers. For example, the bitcoin wallet address of any client can be revealed and used for deposit without the private master key needing to be available or online. Once the transfer is completed, the only way to transfer them out of this secured wallet would be effort that is equivelent to breaking standard encryption. The encryption technology use for bitcoin is top notch, so "hacking" the key to transfer funds out would be equivelent to hacking a credit card number out of an SSL communication or decrypting a strong PGP encrypted email. So this company could easily buy bitcoins on behalf of clients and move them into their holding wallet without ever having to remove the secure master key from the bank deposit box. Furthermore, they can set up any number of deposit wallets and deposit into seperate holding accounts without every comprimising the master key by bringing it to an online computer. I do not know exactly what they are doing, but I will assure you that the potential for providing top notch security falls in favor of bitcoin over traditional financial institutions due to its encrypted and anonymous design.
No credit card handling company I know of can accomplish this, because they need to be able to decrypt credit cards at various times. This means that the decryption key is held somewhere on a computer. Although great steps are taken to block online access to the secret location of these keys, I assure you that with proper inside knowledge there is the slimist of chances that this key could be reached and all private data could be revealed. So, we install automated checking systems and limit the access to a reasonable set of requests and have physical processes in place where no single employee can access machines without colussion and we double encrypt certain things and use obscurity and standard things like port limiting and general computer maintainence and such. But no company that I know of is breaking the key into pieces and storing them offline at mutliple locations in various countries. Because I cannot imagine that this would provide for daily business usage requirements. That is pretty secure.
The only time the private keys that they broke into 3 parts would need to be placed onto an online computer would be when they need to transfer money outside of these locked wallets. And this could be minimized by having a "float" of bitcoins that are not secured by the keys they keep offline in bank deposit boxes. This solution would be extremely secure as they could just keep enough bitcoins to meet the buying and selling of their securities on a daily basis and then just transfer bitcoins to the permanently locked wallets when the float becomes to large. In this way they would be mimizing the potential of a security hack to the daily required float amount. And hey... if they really needed more bitcoins to payout to a client who sold a bunch of securities, they could just buy them on the open market and transfer these to the client as needed. Or they could simply transfer cash directly to the client, if they wanted to be paying in physical dollars and then sell the bitcoins to recoup themselves at a later and convenient time.
I do not have any inside knowledge of this company. I do not know whether or no
266 bitcoins? Wow, that would cost at least 12,000 dollars to replace them.
It really doesnt matter how many bitcoins it is or is not. The important aspect is how much value they retain. At the moment it would take a fair amount of money to replace it. Thats like saying: believe it or not, thats only 8 oz of gold. But the quantity means nothing until you try to sell or buy it. So in fact its the dollar value and not the quantity of goods that is significant.
But I do hear what you are saying... bitcoins are on the rise and still rising.
It would be interesting if some day in the future a news report says: "its estimated the disaster will cost the city 50,000 bitcoins to repair the damages" and dollars are totally left out of the equivelence equation. For now... most people relate to the dollar and that is what we use to estimate the value of something.
One last point: its not just 266 bitcoins. It is in fact 266.00000000 bitcoins. I dont know what the small bit of a bitcoin is called, but maybe you could say that 26.6 trillion deca-nano bitcoins were stolen.
I just wanted to add that this test solution I made only works under firefox. Both Chrome and IE fail because they do not provide a safe mechanism for storing login credentials. They also do not provide a strong encrypted and private way of transferring login credentials between various PCs and other devices. Only firefox is strong enough to store your login credentials without potential comprimise. Chrome and IE (and Safari, etc) are weak browsers that should not be used for things like login into banks, financial services or anything else where hacking would risk your personal assets.
This is a shout out to Google: fix your browser by installing a master passphrase to protect login credentials... also encrypt my data when transferring between devices. I do not think it is worth the small profit you make for selling my information in this area, because it puts my assest at risk.
Two factor authentication is useless in its current state. The whole question/answer is pointless and only used by banks and other sites to meet buzz word "two factor authentication". The only protection this offers is against a site wide attack against a large set of user accounts at once. But it is absolutely no trouble at all to gather the simple information needed to answer all the typical questions asked in two factor authentication.
In response, some users will put in false answers to the questions asked. For example, it will ask for your home town, and they put in their pets name or something similar. This is totally useless as it provides absolutely no greater defense against simply attaching the two words and using them both in a single login password. So two factor authentication should never be two things inside your head. A password, plus an answer to a personal question is not two factor authentication, and yet, that is what most sites use and believe is enough to strengthen your account.
Two factor should be your passphrase + a long random value that you are responsible for storing on your PC or anywhere else you feel safe keeping it. Some people think this is not safe, but it is much safer, because even if the file is stolen from your PC drive, they are no further in getting into your accounts as they will still need the passphrase in your head. Also, a random passphrase can be changed often, it could even be automated by using something similar to how firefox stores login passwords encrypted on your system under a master passphrase.
I actually set up the above in a test environment and was able to create this two factor authentication where firefox holds the long random password inside the saved passwords sections of the browser, encrypted under a master passphrase. It works really well and all the client has to do is tell firefox to store the password on initial signup. Firefox provides a secure way to move saved passwords between various devices like PC's cellphones and tablets. It works really well. This would be far better then the current system most sites call "two factor" authentication.
Slashdot Mirror
I dont mind if Ubuntu wants to recreate the wheel. But what I fear is that they will be too controlling over the X-like software. It seems like whenever you want to reconfigure a Ubuntu system running Unity, that there are all kinds of difficulties with getting it to display correctly. There is a limited set of Ubuntu supported applications that display correctly in the taskbar, but once you move ouside their default set and install alternate applications, nothing is integrated properly. Furthermore, the Ubuntu packages are tangled in such a way that it is difficult to remove apparently unrelated packages without removing everything else Ubuntu supplies. In one sense, this could be that Ubuntu wants to force the users to have a certain "look" or suite of applications to call it "Ubuntu". But in another sense, I feel that they are using this as an excuse to make it difficult for users to opt-out of their profit goals. Like the Amazon shopping cart integration and sending all the dash keystokes back to their servers in order to monitize it. Some users really like these automatic "features", while others see this as a potential security threat and a reduction of the privacy benefits linux offers. My fear is that Ubuntu will use Mir as a mechanism to control Ubuntu users into applications and services that channel much of our usage through them. And make it difficult for users to use Mir with a non-standard set of applications. In a similar way that Apple products channel everything through itunes for media usage. Generally itunes is a good product, but in another sense it is too much control over the users. It maximizes profits for Apple, but it limits consumer choice, especially when Apple has the final say over what will and will not be allowed to operate. Because it is in apples interest to make sure the content is channeled through them as the supplier of the media service. So the software is limited in a way that maximizes the channel that provides profit back to them. In the same way, I expect Mir will limit the end users free choice and encourage or force users to use the approved channels such as Ubuntu One and their set of shopping and advertising partners.
You and me both, I've convinced Google that I'm a gay male yoga instructor.
Picking such a specific persona says something about you
Shaw might be less abusive of their customers of their internet service.
Incorrect. Shaw acts like a monopoly in many respects and so does not always care about customer loyalty. So they often use dirty tricks to maximize profits. I ran into this when they offered me a "free upgrade" to faster Internet service. After the free trial I requested a switch back to my original lower priced service and suddenly my IP phone service no longeer worked. When I called them to complain they said my phone would only work if I paid them an extra $10 per month QOS (quality of service) package. Even though my phone was working fine before the "free upgrade". Then they tried to get me to switch to their IP phone service which they just happened to begin one month after they upgraded me.
So basically, Shaw began an IP phone service and then screwed all existing customer already using other IP phone services into paying more.
Here they are two monopolies. Shaw and Telus. They are the only Internet and major phone providers. They play off of each other in order to make sure customers pay as much as possible for service. They do not compete on price... not in a competitive way.
Oh no. It wont cost billions and billions of dollars to continue our studies. Heaven forbid
When the French concieved the metric system, they were trying to reconfigure the all measurements to be based on logic rather then history. In many ways they succeeded, but with time they failed. For a short period, France converted to metric time and the calendar was changed. However, the people did not accept and use the new system and business complained and they made changes to the calendar which made people lose faith in it. Its too bad that it didnt work. From a programming perspective metric time would be a lot easier to work with.
I have a hard time imagining all people on Earth of the 11th century all agreeing on the definition of time units at all, let alone on the second. It's probably one of those things where the now standardized time units of hours, minute and second was used more and more, and gradually took over any existing local units and standards.
Ancient Egypt divided daylight into 10 hours and night into 10 more. A 20 hour day was useful because they also followed a 5 day week. So the hours in a week was 100 hours. Which was useful because their number system was decimal. Long before we used it. And also, the angular divisions of hours was 1/2Phi (sin 18). So a triangle representing the shadow change of the sun in one hour was easily constructed for cultures who knew about phi.
We would probably have some sort of decimal system for both time and angle if we inherited our measurements from ancient egypt rather then babylonians. And we would probably be worshiping a sun god... which makes much more sense.
What I am trying to say is that I do not believe that our body parts were significant in the creation of time division or angle division. Instead nature was observed and used to set the stage for a meaningful counting system. The body parts were later used as a convenience for recording and remebering these values. We have a lot of things on our bodies in different numbers. The hands can be used to mimic just about any numbering system. So suggesting our hands as the reason for numbers does not provide any more reason for the usage of 60 then say using 10 or 8 or 5 or 25 or whatever combination of fingers, knucles or combination of hand signals available. For example, if the number base was 48, you could say the exact same thing and simply leave the thumb out of the equation in your counting system. ie: 12 *4 = 48
Also note. Most people will suggest base 10 comes from humans having 10 finger/digits. But this is short sighted as it has no relation to the division of circle...which is historically where all numbers come from.. ie: division of angle and time. The true origin of decimal counting (base 10) comes from the realization of dividing the circle into 10. Which requires the understanding of Phi. The proportion of Phi is required in order to divide a circle into 10 equal parts because Cos 36 = Phi/2. Which simply says that a right triangle with a height of 2 and an hypoteneus of Phi will make a 1/10th division of a full circle. Since 36 degrees = 360/10. So the logical reasoning is that decimal number systems come from triangles using Phi.
They also counted in base 60 using the knuckles of the fingers of one hand (using the thumb as a marker) and the fingers of the other hand for 5x12 counting system. There are some people who stand by this or the duodecimal system.
I have heard of this being used to reason why there are 12 hour divisions in the day. But I am skeptical because the counting mechanism has little to do with division of time and angle of the sun.
I have come up with a different theory where the hands are used as a sundial to divide up the day. Open your hands and place them together palm up. Between the hand hold a pencil of straight stick. Position the stick so that it is directly between the creases where the thumbs separate from the palms. Now turn your hands so the shadow of the stick points to the first crease where the thumb seperates from the palm. You will see that as the sun moves through the sky, your hands will work as a sundial where creases of the thumb and fingers make for 12 divisions as the sun moves from horizon to horizon. Basically, anyone can make a sundial with their hands and a stick and it will provide for 12 divisions.
As far as the origin of base 60, I think it came from instead a division of the circle into 6 using the equilateral triangle. One of the simplest divisions of the circle beyond a simpler diameter division into 2. Each of these 6 divisions was subdivided into 60 in order to match the change in the heavens every day. Meaning that the location of a star has an aproximate change of 1 degree every night.
Base 60 is an "ok" selection because it LCD's are 2 x 2 x 3 x 5. Which is a constuctable division of the circle. Meaning that with the primary tools of a compass and straight edge you can divide the circle into 60 equal segments. This is useful for historically accurate divisions of the sky. But the use of 360 is not. You cannot divide a circle into 360 equal parts with the above tools because it requires angle trisection. This means that our usage of 360 degrees and 360 seconds in an hour is a poor choice for accurate measurements. It is my opinion that the usage of 360 is derived in this manner:
- a circle can easily be divided into 6 parts by using the radius as a chord along the perimeter.
- the 6 segments were then divided into 60 due to the usage of base 60 in the number system.
- also: 360 may have seemed like a good idea since it is approximately equivelent to the number of days in the year. So star locations move aprox 1 degree each night
Anyhow, despite the fact that we continue to use 360 in time and angle division, it is a poor selection because it is generally impossible for any student of geometry to easily construct a 360 degree protractor using basic tools.
For the record. Any protractor that has a value of 60 times some multiple of 2 is a "good" protractor. So 120, 240 and 480 degree protractors would have been far better selections
Nothing new here really. Public photographers have been harassed forever; ask any practicing street photographer. Cell phone camera users would be in the same boat except that they are in the majority now. Google Glass users are in the monitory currently, so they can be bullied. Give it time.
Its a private business and he can set the rules how he likes. But Ive never seen anyone in my city actual wearing one of these. Its still undecided whether or not these will catch on. So this is a non issue for the owner and the "announcement" is nothing more then a PR campaign. I mean it got his business mentioned on slashdot right
I was on the bus yesterday and counted the number of people with cell and smart phones in their hand. It was approximately half. Each of these has a camera. If the owner really wants to do something about privacy he should announce a cell phone ban. Because they are real and in active use right now and they are being used all the time to record people without their knowledge.
That said... I think the whole idea that people deserve privacy in public is rediculous. I do film in public and often run in to people who believe that what I am doing is unethical and sometimes suggest it is illegal. For those people I suggest: just stay home. Because it certaily isnt just the public that is filming the public. On that same bus there were 4 cameras mounted in the ceiling of the bus. These cameras really are pointed at you and really are recording you all the time. Do you really believe that business is somehow going to respect your privacy any more then your neighbours
Either way. He should go to jail. You cant commit crimes and claim ignorance. What is his defence? "Im too stupid to go to jail."
Without knowing much about the truth, I originally suspected exactly what you are saying. Seems to me that when ur caught with kilos of coke, the first thing you do is make up excuses as to why you are not responsible and someone else is. This story sounded exactly like the wild tail someone caught in crime will tell.
Well you're wrong. This is not about how much it costs... its about whether or not there should be a cost. This is just another example of an existing system paying existing salaries is simply going to vanish. They have a history of providing a useful service that used to actually cost money to provide. But now there is simply no reason for them to exist. They are charging fees based on old technology and systems they believe are neccessary. It may be required now, but for the large part, they offer little more then a history of function and trust. Perhaps at one time it did cost money to provide databases for integrations with users around the world. But now it simply isnt too hard to set up an accessible database for anyone in the world to access. They may be needed now simply because of all those who expect them to exist as a database reference. But in short order they will simply price themselves out of existence because they failed to meet the demands of a new paradim change. The paradim is that it now costs nothing to distribute your book. They will simply fizzle away with the physical books they depend on.
3 bodies can remain in static orbit according to lagrange: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point
Some of these orbit locations are "attractors", meaning that bodies close to these points will tend to "fall in" to the orbital points and remain stable. These solutions generally have 2 large bodies and one much smaller body. What I always wondered if it was possible for 2 black holes to orbit one another. If so, then they should have these lagrange orbital points where other objects would fall in and become "stuck" as the gravitational wells would be very strong and keep objects from falling out. Also, since these wells would be close to black holes gravitational feilds, objects inside them would experience time dilation. Meaning that time experienced inside of these locations would proceed more slowly then time at a distance away from the black holes. The reason I wonder about this, is because it seems it would allow objects and matter to fall partially into or near to a black hole, but never fall into either of the black holes. So if two black holes could remain in a stable orbit about one another, then there should be a fair amount of mass collected in these gravity wells that is "older" then all the other objects in the nearby space. Since time would flow at a slower rate, there should be objects in these wells that has not had as much time to age as the rest of the objects in the surrounding space.
It would be interesting in some far far future space exploration to visit a binary black hole system and then use the lagrange orbital paths to fly between the black holes and explore these gravity wells. It may be that some of the youngest old objects in the universe are hidden within them.
Of course, maybe black holes cannot have long stable orbits. And maybe these gravit wells are not close enough to create significant time dialation. Im just mentioning it because it would be interesting for someone with knowledge to think about it.
With a two body problem like the sun and the earth, we can accurately know exactly where the earth will be in 10,000,000 years. Because we will assign an exact number to its location and speed and exact numbers to the mass of the bodies and such. So the answer in relation to the article... is YES, we know exactly how to calculate 2 bodies in gravitational orbit. Of course, in reality, we dont know everything perfectly, so HiThere is correct in saying that in practice we cannot perdict that far out because there are other variables involved which are not related to a simple two body orbit. But the theoretically answer is that we DO know how to determine the location of the earth and sun exactly to an infinite point in the future, if all we had was exact initial conditions and nothing else to disturb it.
I think you should consider the earth and sun as a perfect two body system, because this is what the article is referring to. It is not including all the other unknowns and limits of our measuring abilities. The 3 body problem does not include ouside considerations. It is difficult all on its own. It is a formula where 3 perfect bodies are set in motion appart from anything else. It is not a limitation of our ability to measure mass, distance, location or speed. So bringing our limitations of measurement of the earth and sun and future unknown possibilities over a 10 million year span has little to do with the considerations of the above article.
Generally, the company will not make money from the rise and fall of the bitcoin. Like most investment companies they will make money from the investment transactions. You pay a small fee or portion of the investment to buy and maybe you pay something to sell out. The more the bitcoin fluctuates, the more likely they are to see clients investment decisions change and the more money they make. I think what they are providing is a useful service. Here is a link to the value of the bitcoin vs US dollar over the last year: http://blockchain.info/charts/market-price. As you can see, it has a juicy track record.
What you saying is correct, but I am missing a step here.
You hand over your bitcoins for the fund to invest. They split the bitcoins into 3 pieces. o.k. - but how is that investing? If they are just keeping the bitcoins secure that is not even banking.
They are allowing clients to speculate on the rise and fall of the bitcoin. In order to do this, they need to have "holdings" in the bicoin comodity in order to meet the rise and fall of the bitcoin asset. So if a client wants to speculate on a million dollars worth of bitcoins, they need to purchase around 1 million bit coins, becuase if the bitcoin doubles over time and the client wants to cash out of the investment, then they will need to roughly 2 million back to the client by selling all the bitcoins they originally bought at 1 million. Generally speaking.
Anyhow, the press release is trying to assure investors that they have a mechanism for protecting the bitcoins they have purchased on your (the clients) behalf. To do this, they are simply generating a master key for a bitcoin wallet. The master key is used to move bitcoins out of the bitcoin wallet. However the master key is not required in order to transfer bitcoins into the wallet. So they used a simple and well known mechanism for breaking this key into 3 parts where 2 parts are required to restore this original master key. They separated the 3 keys into 3 countries and put them offline into security deposit boxes at banks.
Now when you give them 1 milltion dollars, they will use this to puchase the bitcoins on the open market and then transfer these into the wallet. At this point the bitcoins are secured in the bitcoin wallet and cannot be removed by them or anyone else without the master key. To "hack" the master key is currently beyond our computing capabilities. I dont have the exact numbers, but it would be far more then 1 million dollars and would take many many... possibly hunrdeds of years to "hack" the keys to steal the bitcoins from this wallet.
When you want to sell the bitcoins in the open market to say get back 2 million dollars, they will need to physically go into the banks to retrieve at least 2 of the keys. They will share the information in some manner to bring the two keys together to generate the real master key. They will use this key to transfer the bitcoins from this wallet to the wallets of people who have paid money to them for the bitcoins on the open market. They will then send this money to your bank account.
At this point, they may make a new master key. Or maybe they have multiple master keys for multiple wallets with various amounts inside each. I dont know the details about this. In any case, what they are saying is that for the large part, the key which secures your investment in actual bitcoins will be held in a wallet where the master key is offline. No amount of computer hacking will be able to get direct access to the master key. Further they are saying that it would take two natural disasters or two simultaneous robberies at two banks in undisclosed locations in order to comprimise the bitcoin securities you have invested in.
In the most simplest terms they are trying to assure you that despite the fact that bitcoins are easy to transfer from one wallet to another... that the bitcoins backing your investment are secured in a manner which is logically sound and secure. In this respect, it appears entirely possible and valid to me.
So hundreds of thousand of dollars of peoples money (most of it virtual none the less) relying on some $50 flash drives.....No thanks. Ill pass.
If the same flash drives cost $5000 would you feel safer?
Flash drives are far better at holding data then typical spinning hard drives. A master key that is approved for top secret documents by the NSA/FBI/CIA/CSIS/etc will fit onto the smallest flash drive you can buy. Also, 100 x $50 flash drives is far more secure then 1 x $5000 giant "reliable" drive. Flash drives are water proof, xray proof, largely pressure proof and shock proof. I have tested this myself and it is difficult to destroy a flash card. I have dropped, dunked, stepped on, put through washing machine, etc, etc. In fact the bigger issue is how to remove the data from a flash drive. Because the controller mechanism will sometimes move your data into areas that you can no longer write to. So the biggest concern with flash drive is how to get the secured data off of the drive once it has been stored. I generally try writting over with random data and then take a hammer and put it on concrete and smash and smash into tiny pieces and then sprinkle these into various waste locations. Flash NAND devices are probably a technology that will last beyond your lifetime. The portions that will deteriate quickest is the leads and casing... generally from stuffing it into the USB slot or card reader over and over again.
Anyhow... flash is a very safe storage mechanism despite your opinions about cost = security. It may actually be too safe.
You don't actually think they really did this, do you? Bitcoin people love to make big promises and not deliver on them. In reality it's probably stored on a flash drive, possibly on 2 drives for "redundant backup!" and kept in a box on top of a refrigerator.
who knows what they really do. Trust in a company is exactly that. Fact is they are describing a process that is really possible. And if implemented as they describe it would be very secure. Whether or not a company follows through on their promises is outside the scope of what you can know from a press release.
There are examples of bitcoin companies that did not properly secure their clients assests or worse... simply stole the assests of their clients (I think). But there are many many cases of companies improperly handlind our credit card, medical and other personal information. Even when they assured us and we assumed that it was safe.
Whether you trust this company or not is your decision. But the process they describe is entirely possible. And the process they describe is an ideal way of securing bitcoins and keeping your assest locked away from "hackers". All companies need master private keys to strongly store your private information. Bitcoin simply provides new options and this solutions seems very secure if they follow through and combine with other security policies
No.
But banks are regulated and abide by lots of consumer protection laws. Bitcoin exchanges .... well I haven't heard anything of the sorts yet.
When a giant bank gets hacked the people usually end up getting their money back. Hell when an end user gets hacked and someone cleans out their bank account they often end up getting their money back.
When some small bitcoin exchange gets taken to the cleaners ... well we'll see.
Well I dont know of any bank that was "hacked" and all the money inside was stolen and then the government gave everyone their money back. If a bank is robbed, then the bank pays for the robbery to return the funds, because they are responsible for the money their clients left to them. In general, they pay insurance at all banks to cover these loses averaged out. The government has little to do with robbery and fraud. Instead what you are thinking of is when a bank mismanages your assests and through actions of their own incompitance causes their company to lose all their assests. This is much worse then what you are talking about, because fraud and robbery generally does not throw a whole banking corporation into bankruptcy.
Yes
My experience is that companies dealing with a large amount of clients financial records, data and transfers are required to meet a large set of physical and policy requirements. This means that all computers are tested and there are roles and rules to how everyone behaves and what information is known by individual employees. However, there is a limit to how much security can be achieved due to the nature of the underlying transactions. Bitcoin is a recent development and appears to have a much higher level of security designed into the nature of its existence. This means that it provides a greater range of security options when deploying a secure environment for storing and transfering it.
The article does not go into great depth about the business policies, computer auditing or secret knowledge for various employees of this institution. But no company will reveal this to you as it is generally part of their security policy not to tell everyone how they do their daily tasks to maintain general security. What they do tell you is that they have a master key for storing their bitcoins into wallets that they have broken into 3 parts and delivered to 3 location in 3 countries and secured these keys into bank security deposit boxes. And that it requires at least 2 of these keys to restore the actual key. And that this key is not attached to any operational computer. It is physically removed from the possibility of being electronically compromised.
I dont know what every company is doing to secure financial records and keep our assest safe. But I have seen a few and no company I have ever seen has this level of security based that can match what they have revealed for master key protection.
What we dont know is if the banks they have choosen are safe, whether the owners/employees of the company are honest people, whether the countries are safe from natural disaster or acts of god, how they protect their computers from intrution and viruses and what there physical policy is for when they do need to restore the master key to transfer money out of the bitcoin wallets. But this is true for all financial companies. Fact is, what they have revealed is much better then what your bank is doing to protect your money.... I assure you. Because traditional mechanisms for moving money and assests does not allow for these sorts of security tricks like bitcoin does.
So hundreds of thousand of dollars of peoples money (most of it virtual none the less) relying on some $50 flash drives.....No thanks. Ill pass.
I have worked with companies to attain PCI compliance. This is a set of steps and policies required to handle client credit cards and transactions. It is a step beyond what the average storefront accepting credit cards needs to do. It is a very vast set of rules that mostly make sense and do provide a fair amount of protection for customer data and potential theft and/or fraud.
It is my opinion that bitcoin does offer a whole new set of options for greater security that is just not possible with standard information such as account details, credit card and government number (SSN, etc) and actual money transfers. For example, the bitcoin wallet address of any client can be revealed and used for deposit without the private master key needing to be available or online. Once the transfer is completed, the only way to transfer them out of this secured wallet would be effort that is equivelent to breaking standard encryption. The encryption technology use for bitcoin is top notch, so "hacking" the key to transfer funds out would be equivelent to hacking a credit card number out of an SSL communication or decrypting a strong PGP encrypted email. So this company could easily buy bitcoins on behalf of clients and move them into their holding wallet without ever having to remove the secure master key from the bank deposit box. Furthermore, they can set up any number of deposit wallets and deposit into seperate holding accounts without every comprimising the master key by bringing it to an online computer. I do not know exactly what they are doing, but I will assure you that the potential for providing top notch security falls in favor of bitcoin over traditional financial institutions due to its encrypted and anonymous design.
No credit card handling company I know of can accomplish this, because they need to be able to decrypt credit cards at various times. This means that the decryption key is held somewhere on a computer. Although great steps are taken to block online access to the secret location of these keys, I assure you that with proper inside knowledge there is the slimist of chances that this key could be reached and all private data could be revealed. So, we install automated checking systems and limit the access to a reasonable set of requests and have physical processes in place where no single employee can access machines without colussion and we double encrypt certain things and use obscurity and standard things like port limiting and general computer maintainence and such. But no company that I know of is breaking the key into pieces and storing them offline at mutliple locations in various countries. Because I cannot imagine that this would provide for daily business usage requirements. That is pretty secure.
The only time the private keys that they broke into 3 parts would need to be placed onto an online computer would be when they need to transfer money outside of these locked wallets. And this could be minimized by having a "float" of bitcoins that are not secured by the keys they keep offline in bank deposit boxes. This solution would be extremely secure as they could just keep enough bitcoins to meet the buying and selling of their securities on a daily basis and then just transfer bitcoins to the permanently locked wallets when the float becomes to large. In this way they would be mimizing the potential of a security hack to the daily required float amount. And hey... if they really needed more bitcoins to payout to a client who sold a bunch of securities, they could just buy them on the open market and transfer these to the client as needed. Or they could simply transfer cash directly to the client, if they wanted to be paying in physical dollars and then sell the bitcoins to recoup themselves at a later and convenient time.
I do not have any inside knowledge of this company. I do not know whether or no
266 bitcoins? Wow, that would cost at least 12,000 dollars to replace them.
It really doesnt matter how many bitcoins it is or is not. The important aspect is how much value they retain. At the moment it would take a fair amount of money to replace it. Thats like saying: believe it or not, thats only 8 oz of gold. But the quantity means nothing until you try to sell or buy it. So in fact its the dollar value and not the quantity of goods that is significant.
But I do hear what you are saying... bitcoins are on the rise and still rising.
It would be interesting if some day in the future a news report says: "its estimated the disaster will cost the city 50,000 bitcoins to repair the damages" and dollars are totally left out of the equivelence equation. For now... most people relate to the dollar and that is what we use to estimate the value of something.
One last point: its not just 266 bitcoins. It is in fact 266.00000000 bitcoins. I dont know what the small bit of a bitcoin is called, but maybe you could say that 26.6 trillion deca-nano bitcoins were stolen.
I just wanted to add that this test solution I made only works under firefox. Both Chrome and IE fail because they do not provide a safe mechanism for storing login credentials. They also do not provide a strong encrypted and private way of transferring login credentials between various PCs and other devices. Only firefox is strong enough to store your login credentials without potential comprimise. Chrome and IE (and Safari, etc) are weak browsers that should not be used for things like login into banks, financial services or anything else where hacking would risk your personal assets.
This is a shout out to Google: fix your browser by installing a master passphrase to protect login credentials... also encrypt my data when transferring between devices. I do not think it is worth the small profit you make for selling my information in this area, because it puts my assest at risk.
Two factor authentication is useless in its current state. The whole question/answer is pointless and only used by banks and other sites to meet buzz word "two factor authentication". The only protection this offers is against a site wide attack against a large set of user accounts at once. But it is absolutely no trouble at all to gather the simple information needed to answer all the typical questions asked in two factor authentication.
In response, some users will put in false answers to the questions asked. For example, it will ask for your home town, and they put in their pets name or something similar. This is totally useless as it provides absolutely no greater defense against simply attaching the two words and using them both in a single login password. So two factor authentication should never be two things inside your head. A password, plus an answer to a personal question is not two factor authentication, and yet, that is what most sites use and believe is enough to strengthen your account.
Two factor should be your passphrase + a long random value that you are responsible for storing on your PC or anywhere else you feel safe keeping it. Some people think this is not safe, but it is much safer, because even if the file is stolen from your PC drive, they are no further in getting into your accounts as they will still need the passphrase in your head. Also, a random passphrase can be changed often, it could even be automated by using something similar to how firefox stores login passwords encrypted on your system under a master passphrase.
I actually set up the above in a test environment and was able to create this two factor authentication where firefox holds the long random password inside the saved passwords sections of the browser, encrypted under a master passphrase. It works really well and all the client has to do is tell firefox to store the password on initial signup. Firefox provides a secure way to move saved passwords between various devices like PC's cellphones and tablets. It works really well. This would be far better then the current system most sites call "two factor" authentication.