Or maybe someone could not link in EVERY FUCKING BITCOIN STORY that comes out.
Why do you bother reading and even commenting on those stories againg? It looks like you are clearly interested in them.
Personaly i think than bitcoin is very interesting for geeks/nerds (internet currency, no borders, no central authority, almost instant transactions etc.). More info about such topics and less bullshit about latest apple products would be quite appreciated by me.
Wasn't the whole point of Bitcoin for it to be anonymous, like cash?
No. The main points of Bitcoin are (from bitcoin wiki):
Bitcoins are sent easily through the Internet, without needing to trust any third party.
Transactions:
Are irreversible by design
Are fast. Funds received are available for spending within minutes.
Cost very little, especially compared to other payment networks.
The supply of bitcoins is regulated by software and the agreement of users of the system and cannot be manipulated by any government, bank, organization or individual. The limited inflation of the Bitcoin system's money supply is distributed evenly (by CPU power) to miners who help secure the network.
Irreversible transactions aren't necessarily a good thing. Put the wrong part in your cart and checked out? Too bad, it's irreversible. No canceling that order!
A buyer wants to trade with somebody he doesn't know or trust. In the common case where the transaction goes well, the client doesn't want any third parties involved. If something goes wrong though, he'd like a third party to decide who gets the money - perhaps a professional dispute mediation service. Note that this concept can apply to either buyer or seller. The mediator might request proof of postage from the merchant, for example.
In other words, one wants to lock up some coins so a third party has to agree in order for them to be spent:
Agree with the merchant on a dispute mediator (e.g., ClearCoin).
Ask the merchant for a public key (K1). Ask the mediator for a public key (K2). Create a new key for yourself (K3).
Send the merchant K2. The merchant challenges the mediator with a random nonce. The mediator signs the nonce with the private form of K2, thus proving it really belongs to merchant.
Create a transaction (Tx1) with an output script as follows and broadcast it:
2 <K1> <K2> <K3> 3 CHECKMULTISIGVERIFY
Now the coins are locked in such a way that they can only be spent by the following methods:
Client and the merchant agree (either a successful trade, or merchant agrees to reimburse client without mediation)
Client and the mediator agree (failed trade, mediator sides with client, like a charge-back)
The mediator and the merchant agree (goods delivered, merchant gets client's coins despite the dispute)
When signing an input, the contents are set to the connected output. Thus, to redeem this transaction, the client creates a scriptSig containing zeros where the other signature should be, signs it, and then sets one of the slots to his new signature. The partially-complete transaction can then be sent to the merchant or mediator for the second signature.
Am i the only one who things she is exaggerating a little? What exactly happend according to her (note that i haven't read the version of the events according the guy) - they talked to each other, he bumped into her few times with his shoulder and elbow. (If you ever visited a con, thic could be perfectly normal if you talk to someone in a tight group of people, in the line for some event for example) - later in some hallway bottleneck, he put his hands on her shoulders from behind and said "Well, you and I will have a good time!", to which she responded "fuck off" and the guy stopped. - later he tried to apologise, she told him "Don't want to talk about this, don't worry about it, goodbye," - later she published her rant on her blog, which resulted in two-year entry ban on the con for the man.
I don't know how picking up a women in US works, do you have to get prior permission to try to touch them? Or dou you wait for them to touch you first? But wait, isn't it harrassment in oposite way then?
Or they were drafted or conscripted - like mine. And then their allies, the Americans, forgot to tell the Aussies - "Yo, spraying some nasty shit over here, might want to get out". And then their kids (me), were born deaf and lost a father to cancer as a result of it.
I'm sorry for your condition, but you have to understand that your father partipicated in offensive war which thousands of civilians paid for with their lives. Maybe he was forced into it but that in no way lessens his guild. If the war is unjustified, he should resist the draft. I have realy no sympathy for people who commit evil and apologise it by saying they were forced into it. Resit whoever is forcing you to do evil, this is the right think to do. Otherwise, you are acting like a dump sheep.
My father served in Vietnam as a truck driver. The foliage on the sides of the roads were a main target for the agent orange deployments, and the truck drivers likely received a proportionally higher dose due to their continuing contact with the agent.
Your father was a part of invading army, why should we have any sympathy with him?
In other words, the hosting company most likely had a choice between shutting down the service and responding to multiple court summons, if not full blown cases. Were I the hosting company, I would have folded, and I would have laid the responsibility of responding to the customer, just as this company did.
This is quite sad. What fucked-up state is the legal system in, when you rather fold and shutdown you customer then fight the accussations, even when you believe you are right?
is it me or did the class get it wrong, it was never about destroying an asteroid, it was about splitting it up in pieces or nudging it out of the earth direction
Indeed drilling a hole to the center of the asteroid and blowing it from inside is inefficient and stupid. The best way would be to aply force to the side of the asteroid, so its trajectory would change to non-coliding with earth. It can be some king of one-time explosion, or it could be small but perpetual force like ion-drive powered space-craft pushing to the side, or even series of mirrors orbiting the asteroid and reflecting sun-shine to its side for prolonged period of time.
Drugs ruin much more than just the user's life. It affects the entire family. What is a child supposed to do when their parents uses drugs all day and there's no food on the table? "take responsibility" for their parents' lives?
You do the same think like when the parents are drunks and can't take care of their child properly. You send in some social worker for inspection and if she finds some problerms, she can take the child away from the parents. No need to ban drugs. Ban the actual harmfull behaviour (not taking care of your child in this case)
As a non-USAian, I've never understood why you have to "register" with a particular party. This seems like it just opens the door for all kinds of election fraud and manipulation.
As an european i believe that here you also have to be party member to participate in the party internal decision-making process, like nominating a candidate for some elections. But i don't think this membership info needs to be public. It sounds quite dangerous to force this info to be public, people from oposing parties could threaten you or bribe you to switch sides etc.
Since 1985 the EU patent office keeps a registry where you can deposit plans that could be turned into patents even though the relevant law of 1978 does specifically not recognise computer programs a patentable. The 2005 vote in the EU parliament dismissed the idea of software patents with 648 out of 729 votes.
Swipe to unlock IMO is software patent - you input something using the touchscreen and the software in the phone performs some action. Maybe this is just german specific and is unenforcable in EU as whole? I don't know, IANAL and i'd be glad if someone enlightens me about this topic.
Note that a Free Software advocate does "believe in copyright". This is the legal basis for enforcement of the GNU GPL. Copyright does have a purpose, and that purpose is not so bad. What is bad is unreasonable extension of the copyright term - but that is another issue.
IMO Stallman line of free software advocates believes, that openness and sharing is benefical to the society and should be enforced. They only use copyright to promote this. They are certainly not using copyright to restrict or prevent the copying and sharing. So saying thet FOSS advocates believe in copyright is quite missleading. If they ever get to power, they would IMO modify the copyright so it cannot be used to limit or restrict copying and openness in any way.
If a developer chooses to restrict the choices of his/her users, the user is more than welcome to find another solution to his/her problem, leaving the user in the exact same position as if the software was never developed. The users have had nothing taken from them
How has the user nothing taken from him? The user is in the position as if the software was never developed, so he he has the posibility to use this software taken from him. You may argue, that he is free to choose another product, but what if no other similar product exists? This may be realistic scenario with locked-in ecosystems like iOS, some android versions or STEAM. This is what the open-source proponents are afraid of.
Probably yes, you will also have problems with copyright holders if you later try to replay some of your... copies.
You are probably joking but brain-computer interfaces undergo big progress in recent years. We have bionic eyes which can bring eysigh to the blind for example. How will copyright groups handle those technologies? Will they insist you erase part of your memory after visiting cinema? This is one of the fundamental flaw copyright has. It tries to control creation of copies but fails to notice you create copy the first time you hear or see something.
Controlling priority and limiting heavy services are common procedures in all major networks, and users should be darned thankful for it.
I agree with you that controling priority is good think. Big file upload via FTP should not impact the quality of low latency and jitter depended protocols like VoIP.
But why is limiting heavy services desirable? What are heavy services anyway? Torrent? Ftp? You know that people are streaming huge amounts of data via http too? It is imo no bussiness of ISP to decide which protocol i use for transers of large data chunks.
Adjusting priority of latency-critical services like voip, digital TV or games is OK. Limiting bandwidth of arbitrary protocols is not OK.
Customers _pay_for_this service, it is not mandatory for _anyone_ to use the service.
Where do you got this info from? In the article, i can see that customers will be able to tweak the filter but they don't say if it would be on by default or if it would be possible to turn it off completely.
From the article:
laranet becomes only the second British ISP to offer network-level filtering, which a group of MPs led by Conservative Claire Perry is lobbying to be made mandatory for all British internet providers.
Really? Anyone? Really believes that the ISP are protecting you? Your privacy? With claws and fangs?
Well can't speak for all ISP's but i for one work for small local ISP (cca 50k customers) and we try to protect our customers as much as possible. Often police try to get some info about our users without proper court order and we reject them regulary. Also, i made a decision when i started to work there that i would not support any censorship attempts if they are not required by law and would quit the job if the management ever tried to introduce such practises
Also at least in europe and australia, there are often cases of ISP's fighting some censorship requests from media companies at court (piratebay etc) so i don't realy think that ISP's are all that bad. Remember, that most of the network engineers working for ISP's have positive relation to linux and OSS and are generaly anti-censorship.
Who's going to pay them the wage, and without the author having a copyright, why would a publisher pay them the wage, and once the first publisher published, what would keep all the other publishers from also publishing that work?
What about goverment paid them from tax-payers money? Intelectual property is part of the commons so it should be funded by the whole society and the benefits should be available to everyone. The main problem in this model becomes fair money distribution, but it can be done using some combination of grants, kickstarter-like platforms and other regulations. It works for goverment-funded fundamental research, it should work for other media too. The problems of this model are far lesser then problems of current copyright. The benefits of abolyshing copyright are enormous.
I know it's fun to get stuff for free (I do it myself), but authors still deserve to be paid. Some of ye appear to say they do not (which is why you oppose copyright).
Your assuptions are wrong. I'm opposing copyright because it limits distribution, not because i don't want to pay authors. According to some studies, pirates pay more money for media in average then non-pirates, so pirates don't have any problem with paying.
Limiting distribution is the main problem here. Without it, collective knowledge of all humankind could be avaliable to every person connected to the internet now. You could build upon existing works, make derivative works, extend them etc. The benefits would be unimagginable.
On the other hand, copyright invades big portion of our lives and constantly deteriorates our privacy.
I'm wholy in support of some system, which would provide incentive to creators to make new intelectual property, But such system can't limit distribution and can't be called copyright.
It seems pretty obvious that a program designed to download youtube videos is infringing on copyright. Though I guess you could argue said program is no different than a VCR (which the SCOTUS ruled can legally capture video and store it).
According to your logic, copy machines are also infringing copyright and should be banned? It seems pretty obvious to me that youtube video downloader is not infringing on any copyright.
If you don't have an STB, then you can't record encrypted cable channels (like HBO) using your tuner card.
You can, you just need DVB tuner with common interface (CI) slot and Conditional Access Module (CAM) with paired coresponding smart card, which you plug into it. Most cable operators in europe provide CAM modules with smart card, so it's no problem to watch even encypted channels on your PC. Dunno about US though.
If you make something, it's up to you to decide how you want to distribute it. If I write a song, it could be the best song ever written, but if I never record it then good luck trying to find it on The Pirate Bay. I have a reasonable expectation that people should respect my wishes when it comes to how the song should be copied, played, or otherwise consumed. Your right to listen to my song ends where my right to protect my work begins.
I believe you expectations are wrong. When a car manufacturer sells a car, does he expect to have control over how the buyer use the car, where does he drive it, whom does he drive in it, whom does he lend it or resell it? I think no, so why do you expect to have those rights over a song you sell?
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe someone could not link in EVERY FUCKING BITCOIN STORY that comes out.
Why do you bother reading and even commenting on those stories againg? It looks like you are clearly interested in them.
Personaly i think than bitcoin is very interesting for geeks/nerds (internet currency, no borders, no central authority, almost instant transactions etc.). More info about such topics and less bullshit about latest apple products would be quite appreciated by me.
Wasn't the whole point of Bitcoin for it to be anonymous, like cash?
No. The main points of Bitcoin are (from bitcoin wiki):
Bitcoins are sent easily through the Internet, without needing to trust any third party.
Transactions:
Are irreversible by design
Are fast. Funds received are available for spending within minutes.
Cost very little, especially compared to other payment networks.
The supply of bitcoins is regulated by software and the agreement of users of the system and cannot be manipulated by any government, bank, organization or individual. The limited inflation of the Bitcoin system's money supply is distributed evenly (by CPU power) to miners who help secure the network.
Irreversible transactions aren't necessarily a good thing. Put the wrong part in your cart and checked out? Too bad, it's irreversible. No canceling that order!
Well bitcoin doesn't support chargeback, but simmilar effect can be done using contracts. From https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts:
Escrow and dispute mediation
A buyer wants to trade with somebody he doesn't know or trust. In the common case where the transaction goes well, the client doesn't want any third parties involved. If something goes wrong though, he'd like a third party to decide who gets the money - perhaps a professional dispute mediation service. Note that this concept can apply to either buyer or seller. The mediator might request proof of postage from the merchant, for example.
In other words, one wants to lock up some coins so a third party has to agree in order for them to be spent:
Agree with the merchant on a dispute mediator (e.g., ClearCoin).
Ask the merchant for a public key (K1). Ask the mediator for a public key (K2). Create a new key for yourself (K3).
Send the merchant K2. The merchant challenges the mediator with a random nonce. The mediator signs the nonce with the private form of K2, thus proving it really belongs to merchant.
Create a transaction (Tx1) with an output script as follows and broadcast it:
2 <K1> <K2> <K3> 3 CHECKMULTISIGVERIFY
Now the coins are locked in such a way that they can only be spent by the following methods:
Client and the merchant agree (either a successful trade, or merchant agrees to reimburse client without mediation)
Client and the mediator agree (failed trade, mediator sides with client, like a charge-back)
The mediator and the merchant agree (goods delivered, merchant gets client's coins despite the dispute)
When signing an input, the contents are set to the connected output. Thus, to redeem this transaction, the client creates a scriptSig containing zeros where the other signature should be, signs it, and then sets one of the slots to his new signature. The partially-complete transaction can then be sent to the merchant or mediator for the second signature.
Maybe I missed the /. thread on the ReaderCon fiasco, but here's the original complaint
http://glvalentine.livejournal.com/340623.html
Am i the only one who things she is exaggerating a little? What exactly happend according to her (note that i haven't read the version of the events according the guy)
- they talked to each other, he bumped into her few times with his shoulder and elbow. (If you ever visited a con, thic could be perfectly normal if you talk to someone in a tight group of people, in the line for some event for example)
- later in some hallway bottleneck, he put his hands on her shoulders from behind and said "Well, you and I will have a good time!", to which she responded "fuck off" and the guy stopped.
- later he tried to apologise, she told him "Don't want to talk about this, don't worry about it, goodbye,"
- later she published her rant on her blog, which resulted in two-year entry ban on the con for the man.
I don't know how picking up a women in US works, do you have to get prior permission to try to touch them? Or dou you wait for them to touch you first? But wait, isn't it harrassment in oposite way then?
Or they were drafted or conscripted - like mine.
And then their allies, the Americans, forgot to tell the Aussies - "Yo, spraying some nasty shit over here, might want to get out".
And then their kids (me), were born deaf and lost a father to cancer as a result of it.
I'm sorry for your condition, but you have to understand that your father partipicated in offensive war which thousands of civilians paid for with their lives. Maybe he was forced into it but that in no way lessens his guild. If the war is unjustified, he should resist the draft. I have realy no sympathy for people who commit evil and apologise it by saying they were forced into it. Resit whoever is forcing you to do evil, this is the right think to do. Otherwise, you are acting like a dump sheep.
My father served in Vietnam as a truck driver. The foliage on the sides of the roads were a main target for the agent orange deployments, and the truck drivers likely received a proportionally higher dose due to their continuing contact with the agent.
Your father was a part of invading army, why should we have any sympathy with him?
In other words, the hosting company most likely had a choice between shutting down the service and responding to multiple court summons, if not full blown cases. Were I the hosting company, I would have folded, and I would have laid the responsibility of responding to the customer, just as this company did.
This is quite sad. What fucked-up state is the legal system in, when you rather fold and shutdown you customer then fight the accussations, even when you believe you are right?
is it me or did the class get it wrong, it was never about destroying an asteroid, it was about splitting it up in pieces or nudging it out of the earth direction
Indeed drilling a hole to the center of the asteroid and blowing it from inside is inefficient and stupid. The best way would be to aply force to the side of the asteroid, so its trajectory would change to non-coliding with earth. It can be some king of one-time explosion, or it could be small but perpetual force like ion-drive powered space-craft pushing to the side, or even series of mirrors orbiting the asteroid and reflecting sun-shine to its side for prolonged period of time.
See http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/201232110854436189.html for some interestig ideas.
Drugs ruin much more than just the user's life. It affects the entire family. What is a child supposed to do when their parents uses drugs all day and there's no food on the table? "take responsibility" for their parents' lives?
You do the same think like when the parents are drunks and can't take care of their child properly. You send in some social worker for inspection and if she finds some problerms, she can take the child away from the parents. No need to ban drugs. Ban the actual harmfull behaviour (not taking care of your child in this case)
As a non-USAian, I've never understood why you have to "register" with a particular party. This seems like it just opens the door for all kinds of election fraud and manipulation.
As an european i believe that here you also have to be party member to participate in the party internal decision-making process, like nominating a candidate for some elections. But i don't think this membership info needs to be public. It sounds quite dangerous to force this info to be public, people from oposing parties could threaten you or bribe you to switch sides etc.
Since 1985 the EU patent office keeps a registry where you can deposit plans that could be turned into patents even though the relevant law of 1978 does specifically not recognise computer programs a patentable.
The 2005 vote in the EU parliament dismissed the idea of software patents with 648 out of 729 votes.
I hear this a lot, but if you look at some actual cases, you find out software patents are valid and enforced in EU. Maybe there are less software patents than in US but they are there. Look for example at this case: http://www.dailytech.com/German+Judge+Bans+Androids+for+SwipeUnlocking+Despite+Prior+Art/article24027.htm
Swipe to unlock IMO is software patent - you input something using the touchscreen and the software in the phone performs some action.
Maybe this is just german specific and is unenforcable in EU as whole? I don't know, IANAL and i'd be glad if someone enlightens me about this topic.
Note that a Free Software advocate does "believe in copyright". This is the legal basis for enforcement of the GNU GPL. Copyright does have a purpose, and that purpose is not so bad. What is bad is unreasonable extension of the copyright term - but that is another issue.
IMO Stallman line of free software advocates believes, that openness and sharing is benefical to the society and should be enforced. They only use copyright to promote this. They are certainly not using copyright to restrict or prevent the copying and sharing. So saying thet FOSS advocates believe in copyright is quite missleading. If they ever get to power, they would IMO modify the copyright so it cannot be used to limit or restrict copying and openness in any way.
If a developer chooses to restrict the choices of his/her users, the user is more than welcome to find another solution to his/her problem, leaving the user in the exact same position as if the software was never developed. The users have had nothing taken from them
How has the user nothing taken from him? The user is in the position as if the software was never developed, so he he has the posibility to use this software taken from him. You may argue, that he is free to choose another product, but what if no other similar product exists? This may be realistic scenario with locked-in ecosystems like iOS, some android versions or STEAM. This is what the open-source proponents are afraid of.
Probably yes, you will also have problems with copyright holders if you later try to replay some of your... copies.
You are probably joking but brain-computer interfaces undergo big progress in recent years. We have bionic eyes which can bring eysigh to the blind for example. How will copyright groups handle those technologies? Will they insist you erase part of your memory after visiting cinema? This is one of the fundamental flaw copyright has. It tries to control creation of copies but fails to notice you create copy the first time you hear or see something.
Controlling priority and limiting heavy services are common procedures in all major networks, and users should be darned thankful for it.
I agree with you that controling priority is good think. Big file upload via FTP should not impact the quality of low latency and jitter depended protocols like VoIP.
But why is limiting heavy services desirable? What are heavy services anyway? Torrent? Ftp? You know that people are streaming huge amounts of data via http too? It is imo no bussiness of ISP to decide which protocol i use for transers of large data chunks.
Adjusting priority of latency-critical services like voip, digital TV or games is OK. Limiting bandwidth of arbitrary protocols is not OK.
game studios exist to make money
I think you have it backwards. Game studios exists to make games. Money should be only the means to reach that goal.
I'm quite sorry for people whose primary motive for every action is money. You seem to be one of them.
Customers _pay_for_this service, it is not mandatory for _anyone_ to use the service.
Where do you got this info from? In the article, i can see that customers will be able to tweak the filter but they don't say if it would be on by default or if it would be possible to turn it off completely.
From the article:
laranet becomes only the second British ISP to offer network-level filtering, which a group of MPs led by Conservative Claire Perry is lobbying to be made mandatory for all British internet providers.
Really? Anyone? Really believes that the ISP are protecting you? Your privacy? With claws and fangs?
Well can't speak for all ISP's but i for one work for small local ISP (cca 50k customers) and we try to protect our customers as much as possible. Often police try to get some info about our users without proper court order and we reject them regulary. Also, i made a decision when i started to work there that i would not support any censorship attempts if they are not required by law and would quit the job if the management ever tried to introduce such practises
Also at least in europe and australia, there are often cases of ISP's fighting some censorship requests from media companies at court (piratebay etc) so i don't realy think that ISP's are all that bad. Remember, that most of the network engineers working for ISP's have positive relation to linux and OSS and are generaly anti-censorship.
Windows has the capability to have multiple users, with multiple passwords, built right in.
How many of them could login at the same time? I don't think you know what multi-user system realy means.
Who's going to pay them the wage, and without the author having a copyright, why would a publisher pay them the wage, and once the first publisher published, what would keep all the other publishers from also publishing that work?
What about goverment paid them from tax-payers money? Intelectual property is part of the commons so it should be funded by the whole society and the benefits should be available to everyone. The main problem in this model becomes fair money distribution, but it can be done using some combination of grants, kickstarter-like platforms and other regulations. It works for goverment-funded fundamental research, it should work for other media too. The problems of this model are far lesser then problems of current copyright. The benefits of abolyshing copyright are enormous.
I know it's fun to get stuff for free (I do it myself), but authors still deserve to be paid. Some of ye appear to say they do not (which is why you oppose copyright).
Your assuptions are wrong. I'm opposing copyright because it limits distribution, not because i don't want to pay authors. According to some studies, pirates pay more money for media in average then non-pirates, so pirates don't have any problem with paying.
Limiting distribution is the main problem here. Without it, collective knowledge of all humankind could be avaliable to every person connected to the internet now. You could build upon existing works, make derivative works, extend them etc. The benefits would be unimagginable.
On the other hand, copyright invades big portion of our lives and constantly deteriorates our privacy.
I'm wholy in support of some system, which would provide incentive to creators to make new intelectual property, But such system can't limit distribution and can't be called copyright.
Does only the kernel need signing or is there more to it than that for Linux?
Do you even read the summary? Your answer is right there:
Beyond that they will also be switching from GRUB to the more liberal efilinux bootloader, and only require bootloader binaries be signed
It seems pretty obvious that a program designed to download youtube videos is infringing on copyright. Though I guess you could argue said program is no different than a VCR (which the SCOTUS ruled can legally capture video and store it).
According to your logic, copy machines are also infringing copyright and should be banned? It seems pretty obvious to me that youtube video downloader is not infringing on any copyright.
If you don't have an STB, then you can't record encrypted cable channels (like HBO) using your tuner card.
You can, you just need DVB tuner with common interface (CI) slot and Conditional Access Module (CAM) with paired coresponding smart card, which you plug into it. Most cable operators in europe provide CAM modules with smart card, so it's no problem to watch even encypted channels on your PC. Dunno about US though.
If you make something, it's up to you to decide how you want to distribute it. If I write a song, it could be the best song ever written, but if I never record it then good luck trying to find it on The Pirate Bay. I have a reasonable expectation that people should respect my wishes when it comes to how the song should be copied, played, or otherwise consumed. Your right to listen to my song ends where my right to protect my work begins.
I believe you expectations are wrong. When a car manufacturer sells a car, does he expect to have control over how the buyer use the car, where does he drive it, whom does he drive in it, whom does he lend it or resell it? I think no, so why do you expect to have those rights over a song you sell?