The analogy isn't perfect because the Federal Reserve "creates" more money than is actually printed, so the dollar is really a "virtual" currency as well. But the point stands that the total amount of _commitments_ made in dollars exceeds the amount of dollars that "exist" by any central measure.
The physical (virtual?) Bitcoin example would be: if you have an account with a Bitcoin bank and you make a transfer to someone else who's using the same Bitcoin bank, they don't have to generate a Bitcoin transaction to honor that transaction.
The virtue of Bitcoin is that it allows anyone to perform transactions in a way that only banks can do with dollars, but this is not the only way to perform transactions with Bitcoins any more than it is with dollars.
As we all know, you don't have to possess a physical dollar bill to spend a dollar. There's no reason the same shouldn't be true of Bitcoins; you shouldn't need to "possess" a "real" Bitcoin in order to spend one.
Well, I'll hand it to Slashdot readers, they really do have the ability to get inside the author's head. Especially all those mods who divined that my parent post must be flamebait because it suggested Apple had certain traits which might not be considered good by some people. Boy, have I ever learned my lesson. Why, I just took out a loan for $5,000 so I could buy a brand spanking new Macintosh computer with the superb open source operating system MacOS X. After all, with the help of this fine young man, I have learned that i am just a whiny little bitch that likes the stuff apple has developed.
First of all, congratulations on your highly buzzword-compliant post. Second of all, thank you for all of the unexpressed value judgments you inferred from my hasty note. For instance, that I was "complaining" and even have a "warped view of the world." Your skills of psychologically insight are clearly well-developed.
Unfortunately, I fail to see how much of this is at all relevant to my post. The key word was "cross-platform compatibility." Is MacOS X's windowing system, with all of its use of standards, actually cross-platform compatible? No. Are the apps (and their preference files) compatible? No.
The UNIX underpinning, on the other hand, does allow them to borrow quite a few things from other platforms, but I have not seen anything new that Apple has actually contributed back to the "open-source community" or whatever you want to call it. If I'm missing anything about how opening the source to Darwin is a great benefit, I welcome an explanation; it should be clear that I'm hardly a close follower of Apple and their products.
Apple has never valued cross-platform compatibility except at great urging. From the days of proprietary Apple-only hardware and the squelching of would-be competitors, to the modern day with the refusal to port Aqua and launching the iPod for Macs only.. the integration of an X server in the latest release is definitely the exception to the rule.
As I understand it, the DMCA prohibits reverse-engineering even if the results are not published or distributed. I mean, there's clearly the issue of "it's not illegal if they have no way of finding out," but the same is true of listening to those DRM songs.
So what? My computer already has tons of data I can't access without illegally reverse-engineering files. My server at work is chock full of e-mail that I can't access without (probably) violating my cow orkers' rights. One might argue that the layout of my CPU is data stored inside my computer, but I sure can't have access to that.
Do not link to BugZilla from the front page. Not only is it extremely impolite to overload their system with a bunch of hits from people who have no actual interest in the page, but they have disabled links with a slashdot referrer anyway. I'm sure some clued person will go to the bug report and relay any pertinent information in the comments anyway.
I'm amazed by how many people just take this guy at his word that Donahue was out to get him. For one thing, it certainly says a lot about/.ers' TRUE ability to interpret "media bias."
Now, I didn't actually see this episode.. but it's a POLITICAL DEBATE show, and even if Donahue loves you (he loves most of his guests) he's going to throw you a couple of tough questions. If he didn't, the show would be an uninteresting lovefest. This guy just balked and went home with his pain to write a self-aggrandizing article.
It's sad that for every insightful reader like this one, there are a dozen who took the Salon at its word and muttered something smug to themselves about "media bias." Media bias? You're soaking in it!
.. like an article about media bias would be better applied to one of the many shows where people like Mr. MIT -aren't- invited on to share their opinions. These shows are taken much more seriously than talk shows are and can certainly be much more biased, on this subject as well as many others.
Sure, there are valuable things to be said about video game violence and about media bias. But this is a political debate show -- it's obvious to anyone who's ever watched TV that just because you lose the debate doesn't mean you're wrong. This guy is simply a sore loser who's 'striking back' at Donahue and his producers in an extremely unfair way. At least they invited him on their show to share his opinions. Did he ask them for a comment for the article? Didn't think so.
I don't think ANY Linux system is vulnerable unless they SPECIFICALLY compiled in S/KEY support. No Linux distros that I know of do this. It's a BSD thang.
I've had this CD since it came out -- you can definitely tell what part of the song contains the image. I tried various visualization programs but couldn't get anything too meaningful.. guess I shouldn't have given up.
Malda, you idiot, the article says 1400 spams a YEAR, not a DAY. I figured this out within 5 seconds of reading the article. How much do you get paid for this??
Slashdot Mirror
The editors of the Daily Mail didn't.
The analogy isn't perfect because the Federal Reserve "creates" more money than is actually printed, so the dollar is really a "virtual" currency as well. But the point stands that the total amount of _commitments_ made in dollars exceeds the amount of dollars that "exist" by any central measure.
The physical (virtual?) Bitcoin example would be: if you have an account with a Bitcoin bank and you make a transfer to someone else who's using the same Bitcoin bank, they don't have to generate a Bitcoin transaction to honor that transaction.
The virtue of Bitcoin is that it allows anyone to perform transactions in a way that only banks can do with dollars, but this is not the only way to perform transactions with Bitcoins any more than it is with dollars.
There are more $100 bills than all other types of bills put together. The majority aren't even in the United States.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/10/09/162568387/all-the-money-the-government-is-printing-this-year-in-one-graphic
As we all know, you don't have to possess a physical dollar bill to spend a dollar. There's no reason the same shouldn't be true of Bitcoins; you shouldn't need to "possess" a "real" Bitcoin in order to spend one.
Well, I'll hand it to Slashdot readers, they really do have the ability to get inside the author's head. Especially all those mods who divined that my parent post must be flamebait because it suggested Apple had certain traits which might not be considered good by some people. Boy, have I ever learned my lesson. Why, I just took out a loan for $5,000 so I could buy a brand spanking new Macintosh computer with the superb open source operating system MacOS X. After all, with the help of this fine young man, I have learned that i am just a whiny little bitch that likes the stuff apple has developed.
First of all, congratulations on your highly buzzword-compliant post. Second of all, thank you for all of the unexpressed value judgments you inferred from my hasty note. For instance, that I was "complaining" and even have a "warped view of the world." Your skills of psychologically insight are clearly well-developed.
Unfortunately, I fail to see how much of this is at all relevant to my post. The key word was "cross-platform compatibility." Is MacOS X's windowing system, with all of its use of standards, actually cross-platform compatible? No. Are the apps (and their preference files) compatible? No.
The UNIX underpinning, on the other hand, does allow them to borrow quite a few things from other platforms, but I have not seen anything new that Apple has actually contributed back to the "open-source community" or whatever you want to call it. If I'm missing anything about how opening the source to Darwin is a great benefit, I welcome an explanation; it should be clear that I'm hardly a close follower of Apple and their products.
Apple has never valued cross-platform compatibility except at great urging. From the days of proprietary Apple-only hardware and the squelching of would-be competitors, to the modern day with the refusal to port Aqua and launching the iPod for Macs only.. the integration of an X server in the latest release is definitely the exception to the rule.
Funny, because in the story RIGHT BEFORE this one, there's a NYTimes link. michael is using the royal "we," it seems.
As I understand it, the DMCA prohibits reverse-engineering even if the results are not published or distributed. I mean, there's clearly the issue of "it's not illegal if they have no way of finding out," but the same is true of listening to those DRM songs.
So what? My computer already has tons of data I can't access without illegally reverse-engineering files. My server at work is chock full of e-mail that I can't access without (probably) violating my cow orkers' rights. One might argue that the layout of my CPU is data stored inside my computer, but I sure can't have access to that.
You rated this at 2? Did you even read the article? He says right there that for systems programming, C/C++ are the most appropriate languages.
Offtopic? I'm afraid not. Troll? Most likely.
What I really love about Slashdot is how the writers just give us all the facts and let us make our own decisions about the issues.
Do not link to BugZilla from the front page. Not only is it extremely impolite to overload their system with a bunch of hits from people who have no actual interest in the page, but they have disabled links with a slashdot referrer anyway. I'm sure some clued person will go to the bug report and relay any pertinent information in the comments anyway.
Shit man, you can get them on ebay for $11k or so.
I'm amazed by how many people just take this guy at his word that Donahue was out to get him. For one thing, it certainly says a lot about /.ers' TRUE ability to interpret "media bias."
Now, I didn't actually see this episode.. but it's a POLITICAL DEBATE show, and even if Donahue loves you (he loves most of his guests) he's going to throw you a couple of tough questions. If he didn't, the show would be an uninteresting lovefest. This guy just balked and went home with his pain to write a self-aggrandizing article.
It's sad that for every insightful reader like this one, there are a dozen who took the Salon at its word and muttered something smug to themselves about "media bias." Media bias? You're soaking in it!
.. like an article about media bias would be better applied to one of the many shows where people like Mr. MIT -aren't- invited on to share their opinions. These shows are taken much more seriously than talk shows are and can certainly be much more biased, on this subject as well as many others.
Sure, there are valuable things to be said about video game violence and about media bias. But this is a political debate show -- it's obvious to anyone who's ever watched TV that just because you lose the debate doesn't mean you're wrong. This guy is simply a sore loser who's 'striking back' at Donahue and his producers in an extremely unfair way. At least they invited him on their show to share his opinions. Did he ask them for a comment for the article? Didn't think so.
I don't think ANY Linux system is vulnerable unless they SPECIFICALLY compiled in S/KEY support. No Linux distros that I know of do this. It's a BSD thang.
Solar Designer wrote a patch for 3.3p1. It'll probably work on 3.4 as well.
The sad thing is, you are grossly exaggerating one side's argument while reporting the other one correctly. Guess which is which.
I've had this CD since it came out -- you can definitely tell what part of the song contains the image. I tried various visualization programs but couldn't get anything too meaningful.. guess I shouldn't have given up.
When it starts making a repetitive 'click' sound, you're pretty much screwed.
If only I'd been polite, I would have gotten credit.. oh well. Cram it with walnuts, ugly!
Wow, he changed it. I didn't think he actually read the comments. Cool!
Malda, you idiot, the article says 1400 spams a YEAR, not a DAY. I figured this out within 5 seconds of reading the article. How much do you get paid for this??