On U.S. mobiles phones, interestingly, both sides pay.
On European mobile phones, on the other hand, only the caller pays, but they pay a non-neutral rate, which varies depending on the type of device the recipient has: calling mobile phones is more expensive (in some countries, much more expensive) than calling landlines.
Here in France it's normal to not pay anything beyond a fixed monthly fee to call fixed or mobile lines.
There is a provider here called 'Free' (http://mobile.free.fr/) who sells mobile service (no subscription required) for 20 euros a month that includes unlimited mobile calls to France, the US, Canada, China and a few other countries - and in the same 20 euros unlimited fixed line calls to 100 countries (no doubt including those already listed). Ah, and 20 gigs of 4G data as well, still in the same 20 euros.
lol...have you ever heard of FDIC? Consumer protections? None of these things apply to bicoin and never will. My bank can be vaporized out of existence and it wouldn't do shit to me.
Your bank probably got bailed out already and you probably helped pay for it so yes, it does shit to you. Probably not as much as if it failed directly (depending on your bank account balance at the time) but you were not unaffected.
Yeah, those fools should have definitely given their money to the pros. You know what, that's too much sarcasm for me to fart out at once. This sounds essentially like the subprime mortgage crisis. And a lot of other banking crises. It doesn't seem totally insane to me to trust your friend Joe in a trailer over the banking industry: when he runs off with my money, at least he might go to jail rather than getting millions in rewards.
As much as people (including me) like to hate on banks, when was the last time you actually lost money? When was the last time you put money in a bank and they "lost" all or part of it? When was the last time you put money in a bank and lost all or part of it because the bank was robbed?
Have you completely forgotten about the recent bank losses and subsequent massive taxpayer theft to bail them out?
artificial market controls keep the price of meat low, so we consume excess amounts. as the price rises, consumption will go down and the problem solves itself. meat will turn from main course to side dish real fast.
i never understood the fixation with 100% meat. meatloaf > pure beef. people were hyperventilating online when taco bell announced their "meat" was 40% meat.
So long as there are others elsewhere (Asia in this case) who are willing to pay for the meat or alfalfa or whatever it is, it will continue to be produced even if the locals don't consume it.
Seen more in poor countries producing food that their own people can't eat, it's interesting to see something similar happening to the US - if not to the same degree.
For every dollar (or whatever) of loss for one person there is a dollar (or whatever) of gain for someone else. The lottery everyone loses but the state. Not the same.
The State is also part of the zero-sum game. And you're assuming that Bitcoin is tax free. There's still some uncertainty about which taxes Bitcoin qualifies for. But if Bitcoin ever became a significant currency, you can be sure it would be taxed just as much as the native currency.
Tax evasion might be easer with Bitcoin, but then that's just saving money by being a criminal.
I trade about 10 bitcoins and I'm making good money by buying on bad news and selling on good. It doesn't take anything other than that.
Which is exactly the thing people were saying in every rising stock market. It takes experiencing a crash or two before they realise it's a mirage.
I am not assuming it's tax free. Nothing is tax free. Even if it's not a currency and is considered an asset there would be capital gains....or a capital loss - again you have to look at both sides of this.
Now, with regard to legality, criminality and tax avoidance I ask you to consider if the average taxpayer who fails to report the odd bit of income is more or less immoral than the corporations who shift billions in revenue to tax havens to avoid paying anything. Completely legal, but arguably just as wrong.
I've come through the bitcoin crashes to date and I'm still saying it. Everything since the gold standard went away is a mirage. That dollar (or whatever) in your pocket is a mirage. Value is relative based on perception and bitcoin is as valuable as people think it is, the same as with anything else.
The other side of the coin is that the people (typically geek cyrptocurrency early adopters, NOT rich people) that sold those bitcoins that people bought between $1000 and $800 made a profit.
Unless the bitcoins they bought were among the 750,000 that were stolen from Mt Gox.
The big losers at this point are people who left their bitcoins in an exchange that then disappeared
Yes, that would be a problem. So basically, keep your bitcoins in your mattress? I thought... well, never mind.
Sure - it's part of the risk of playing with a currency that is completely unregulated. Possibilities of huge profits vs. the risk of losing everything (assuming one wasn't smart enough or was too lazy to distribute the risk between multiple wallets/accounts/exchanges.
I keep my bitcoins distributed between online and offline wallets, with a bit in the exchange I use. I transfer when I want to sell and then I transfer after I buy.
The beauty of bitcoin is that while you have to trust no one, you can trust no one, minimize your risk and still have complete flexibility.
The other side of the coin is that the people (typically geek cyrptocurrency early adopters, NOT rich people) that sold those bitcoins that people bought between $1000 and $800 made a profit.
And some people that buy lottery tickets win.
There is risk around bitcoins yes, but if you buy smart and sell smart you can make a high rate of return that can justify the risk.
The same lie by which most individuals trading on the stock market in the last couple of decades have lost money. Certainly now, when the banks have machines that are making profitable trades so quick, the speed of fibre-optic network links are the limiting factor, and insider trading is so widespread, the individual is so disadvantaged, they can't hope to win, except by holding on to stocks an being lucky with them.
Bitcoins, with their disappearing and hacked wallets and exchanges are an even worse idea. They are destined to be yet another way by which the gullible are fleeced. And that's started already.
Comparing the lottery and trading currency or stock is invalid. For every dollar (or whatever) of loss for one person there is a dollar (or whatever) of gain for someone else. The lottery everyone loses but the state. Not the same.
Your outlook is way too negative. I trade about 10 bitcoins and I'm making good money by buying on bad news and selling on good. It doesn't take anything other than that.
But that's the problem - Bitcoin isn't "real" money. If it were, there would be a huge number of regulations to follow, sinking it as an anonymous currency. However, if it isn't "real" currency, thefts and/or fraud will not be investigated by law enforcement agencies. So, pick what you want: An anonymous currency with no support of law enforcement, or a "real" currency where regulations such as requiring a photo ID to open an account apply.
Fraud is not limited only to currencies. Currently regulatory agencies are complaining about having to deal with bitcoin but at the end of the day if someone broke the law (i.e. closing the exchange and taking all the bitcoins) it would still be treated as theft, if nothing else, and those responsible would still have to face criminal charges.
2) The US is bankrupt with debt as a ridiculous amount and the situation is only getting worse as our politicians continue to spend what we just plain don't have to spend. There has been discussion of a US dollar default which, were it to happen, would completely devastate the value of the US dollar. That discussion will restart today which will most likely result in bitcoin (and other currencies) going up in relative value against the US dollar which will also drive it up in value against other currencies. http://www.usdebtclock.org/ http://www.reuters.com/article...
I'm not saying bitcoin is safe. It's not - it's very risk compared to government backed currencies. But don't make the mistake of thinking the US dollar is as safe as you seem to think it is either. Default seems inevitable at some point in time as the US just keeps spending and spending and spending with no end in sight.
Oh, you misunderstand me. I think Bitcoin is a neo-libertarian utopian fantasy, based on the same thing all neo-libertarian philosophy relies, the "If only..."
"If only we had perfect information. If only we had perfect competition. If only we could have a free market that existed outside of government."
The problem is, markets are a function of government. There are no markets in nature. They only exist when there is someone to enforce contracts and guard transactions.
The entire philosophy is a scam perpetrated by the economic elite to draw off the energy of talented young people and make it easier to steal from them, while appealing to their egos. And the easiest people to manipulate via ego are talented young people, and those who see themselves that way.
Bitcoin is an undergrad economics project, writ large, and co-opted by criminals and the elite. I knew it would be co-opted eventually, just didn't think it would happen this quickly. Bitcoins will exist, in some form, until the willingness of those talented young people to part with their wealth is exhausted, which won't take long.
Do you have any idea how many Bitcoins were purchased between $1000 and $800? Wait until the people who bought them there realize that a 50% gain after a 50% loss puts you in the hole.
The other side of the coin is that the people (typically geek cyrptocurrency early adopters, NOT rich people) that sold those bitcoins that people bought between $1000 and $800 made a profit. You can't look only at the negative side of things.
There is risk around bitcoins yes, but if you buy smart and sell smart you can make a high rate of return that can justify the risk. The rate doesn't tumble for no reason at all. As with any stock or currency (etc) price varies with good and bad news reports and every bitcoin rate change that has happened so far has been precipitated by either good or bad news.
The big losers at this point are people who left their bitcoins in an exchange that then disappeared - lesson learned from this would be to not keep your bitcoins in an exchange or to spread them out across multiple storage locations (including paper and offline wallets).
The Army and Air Force need to be merged and the Navy, Coast Guard, and Marines need to be merged. The overlap there is just nuts, tons of overhead, procurement programs, command structure, etc...
So you'd be left with an Army who does everything on land and a Navy who does everything at sea (and does landings on coasts, then hands off to the Army at about the 15 mile point inland).
The Marines are already part of the Navy.
The coast guard's real purpose is to provide a place for rich kids to go 'in case of' so it'll never be merged with anything that has real risk to it.
My partner is an elementary school principal. Her school has a small "data room", only accessed by teachers, in which she has posted "data walls". Her data walls are actually printouts of very large spreadsheets -- each row is a child, and the hundred of columns represent individual concepts that children have to master. For example, one column might represent "being able to add fractions", another might represent "being able to subtract fractions", another might be "being able to correctly conjugate verbs", etc.
The really cool thing is that these spreadsheets are generated (by software) after the children take computerized tests. Instead of just giving a numeric score, the software will show exactly *which* concepts the child does and does not know.
You would think teachers would love this technology because it would allow them to focus their instruction time on concepts their students have not mastered. Sadly, that's not the case -- instead, many long-time teachers who had always gotten "good" and "excellent" evaluations are suddenly being shown that they are not actually very good teachers. For example, the software can easily show that *none* of the students in a particular classroom have mastered a particular concept, such as adding fractions. If no student in that particular elementary classroom is able to add fractions, then it is pretty obvious that the teacher in that classroom does not know how to effectively teach adding fractions. Hearing that is pretty threatening to a teacher who has taught the same way for two or three decades.
Anyway, I posted because what the article calls a "data wall" is not really a data wall.
I think what you're describing is very valuable but I'm still not convinced it needs to be put up where the students themselves can see it.
With the children's names removed, with visibility to the parents and school board perhaps.
there's a lot of studies that show that once people develop a negative self image that they tend to take actions that reinforce that self image, often without realizing their doing it. i.e. if a person thinks they're dumb they become unable to do anything smart. This is where the "Precious Little Snowflake" movement came from. You praise kids even if they're not doing very well because if you don't they don't just get discouraged, they quickly come to believe that success is impossible and subconsciously sabotage themselves.
American Puritanicalism runs counter to this. The idea there is that adversity breeds character. I'm inclined to disagree with this. What I mostly see is adversity wears people down. The problem is that people who've been crushed at best fade away quietly and at worst end up in prison. Either way they're marginalized. The few that survive and prosper are much more visible. The phenomenon's called survival bias.
A balance between the two is needed, where you praise the child most of the time but be honest with them when they really do need to improve themselves in some way.
Lying to them by saying that everything they do is wonderful isn't going to serve them well in the long term.
The use of that word makes women uncomfortable. Please be courteous with your language.
You presume the use of 'that word' doesn't make men uncomfortable which is, in itself, a sexist position for you to take and implies that women are somehow weaker than men.
In the future, I'll thank you to keep your sexist and discriminatory comments to yourself.
While many people are interested in a device that interacts with the world around them, I doubt that many people want every interaction to be funneled through, and dependent on, Google (or any other data siphon). The MO of "cloud" companies seems to be all about unnecessarily inserting themselves into every activity as a creepy middleman.
On that we agree completely.
I want a device that records. I do not want a company collecting it behind me.
Other possibilikty. The guests don't want party pics of themselves getting wasted and stupid showing up on Facebook, but the limo owner wants footage for liability in case of damages.
Because the owner can be trusted?
No thanks.
If there's no damage before and there is damage after that is no doubt quite sufficient for the owner to prove liability of the guests.
Slashdot Mirror
On U.S. mobiles phones, interestingly, both sides pay.
On European mobile phones, on the other hand, only the caller pays, but they pay a non-neutral rate, which varies depending on the type of device the recipient has: calling mobile phones is more expensive (in some countries, much more expensive) than calling landlines.
Here in France it's normal to not pay anything beyond a fixed monthly fee to call fixed or mobile lines.
There is a provider here called 'Free' (http://mobile.free.fr/) who sells mobile service (no subscription required) for 20 euros a month that includes unlimited mobile calls to France, the US, Canada, China and a few other countries - and in the same 20 euros unlimited fixed line calls to 100 countries (no doubt including those already listed). Ah, and 20 gigs of 4G data as well, still in the same 20 euros.
Like this? http://gizmodo.com/facebooks-d...
Cisco aggressively offering cloud services themselves aught to go over well with all the customers of Cisco who currently offer cloud services.
lol...have you ever heard of FDIC? Consumer protections? None of these things apply to bicoin and never will. My bank can be vaporized out of existence and it wouldn't do shit to me.
Your bank probably got bailed out already and you probably helped pay for it so yes, it does shit to you. Probably not as much as if it failed directly (depending on your bank account balance at the time) but you were not unaffected.
Yeah, those fools should have definitely given their money to the pros.
You know what, that's too much sarcasm for me to fart out at once. This sounds essentially like the subprime mortgage crisis. And a lot of other banking crises. It doesn't seem totally insane to me to trust your friend Joe in a trailer over the banking industry: when he runs off with my money, at least he might go to jail rather than getting millions in rewards.
As much as people (including me) like to hate on banks, when was the last time you actually lost money? When was the last time you put money in a bank and they "lost" all or part of it? When was the last time you put money in a bank and lost all or part of it because the bank was robbed?
Have you completely forgotten about the recent bank losses and subsequent massive taxpayer theft to bail them out?
How do you propose getting potable water back to where it was?
With a pot of course...
artificial market controls keep the price of meat low, so we consume excess amounts.
as the price rises, consumption will go down and the problem solves itself. meat will turn from main course to side dish real fast.
i never understood the fixation with 100% meat. meatloaf > pure beef. people were hyperventilating online when taco bell announced their "meat" was 40% meat.
So long as there are others elsewhere (Asia in this case) who are willing to pay for the meat or alfalfa or whatever it is, it will continue to be produced even if the locals don't consume it.
Seen more in poor countries producing food that their own people can't eat, it's interesting to see something similar happening to the US - if not to the same degree.
For every dollar (or whatever) of loss for one person there is a dollar (or whatever) of gain for someone else. The lottery everyone loses but the state. Not the same.
The State is also part of the zero-sum game. And you're assuming that Bitcoin is tax free. There's still some uncertainty about which taxes Bitcoin qualifies for. But if Bitcoin ever became a significant currency, you can be sure it would be taxed just as much as the native currency.
Tax evasion might be easer with Bitcoin, but then that's just saving money by being a criminal.
I trade about 10 bitcoins and I'm making good money by buying on bad news and selling on good. It doesn't take anything other than that.
Which is exactly the thing people were saying in every rising stock market. It takes experiencing a crash or two before they realise it's a mirage.
I am not assuming it's tax free. Nothing is tax free. Even if it's not a currency and is considered an asset there would be capital gains....or a capital loss - again you have to look at both sides of this.
Now, with regard to legality, criminality and tax avoidance I ask you to consider if the average taxpayer who fails to report the odd bit of income is more or less immoral than the corporations who shift billions in revenue to tax havens to avoid paying anything. Completely legal, but arguably just as wrong.
I've come through the bitcoin crashes to date and I'm still saying it. Everything since the gold standard went away is a mirage. That dollar (or whatever) in your pocket is a mirage. Value is relative based on perception and bitcoin is as valuable as people think it is, the same as with anything else.
Unless the bitcoins they bought were among the 750,000 that were stolen from Mt Gox.
Yes, that would be a problem. So basically, keep your bitcoins in your mattress? I thought... well, never mind.
Sure - it's part of the risk of playing with a currency that is completely unregulated. Possibilities of huge profits vs. the risk of losing everything (assuming one wasn't smart enough or was too lazy to distribute the risk between multiple wallets/accounts/exchanges.
I keep my bitcoins distributed between online and offline wallets, with a bit in the exchange I use. I transfer when I want to sell and then I transfer after I buy.
The beauty of bitcoin is that while you have to trust no one, you can trust no one, minimize your risk and still have complete flexibility.
The other side of the coin is that the people (typically geek cyrptocurrency early adopters, NOT rich people) that sold those bitcoins that people bought between $1000 and $800 made a profit.
And some people that buy lottery tickets win.
There is risk around bitcoins yes, but if you buy smart and sell smart you can make a high rate of return that can justify the risk.
The same lie by which most individuals trading on the stock market in the last couple of decades have lost money. Certainly now, when the banks have machines that are making profitable trades so quick, the speed of fibre-optic network links are the limiting factor, and insider trading is so widespread,
the individual is so disadvantaged, they can't hope to win, except by holding on to stocks an being lucky with them.
Bitcoins, with their disappearing and hacked wallets and exchanges are an even worse idea. They are destined to be yet another way by which the gullible are fleeced. And that's started already.
Comparing the lottery and trading currency or stock is invalid. For every dollar (or whatever) of loss for one person there is a dollar (or whatever) of gain for someone else. The lottery everyone loses but the state. Not the same.
Your outlook is way too negative. I trade about 10 bitcoins and I'm making good money by buying on bad news and selling on good. It doesn't take anything other than that.
But that's the problem - Bitcoin isn't "real" money. If it were, there would be a huge number of regulations to follow, sinking it as an anonymous currency. However, if it isn't "real" currency, thefts and/or fraud will not be investigated by law enforcement agencies. So, pick what you want: An anonymous currency with no support of law enforcement, or a "real" currency where regulations such as requiring a photo ID to open an account apply.
Fraud is not limited only to currencies. Currently regulatory agencies are complaining about having to deal with bitcoin but at the end of the day if someone broke the law (i.e. closing the exchange and taking all the bitcoins) it would still be treated as theft, if nothing else, and those responsible would still have to face criminal charges.
It's always amazing how blind people are to the US being anything but perfect.
1) The US dollar is, by far, not the most secure currency in the world.
http://content.time.com/time/b... (a bit dated but the reasoning is sound and is backed up by the next two links)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
2) The US is bankrupt with debt as a ridiculous amount and the situation is only getting worse as our politicians continue to spend what we just plain don't have to spend. There has been discussion of a US dollar default which, were it to happen, would completely devastate the value of the US dollar. That discussion will restart today which will most likely result in bitcoin (and other currencies) going up in relative value against the US dollar which will also drive it up in value against other currencies.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
http://www.reuters.com/article...
I'm not saying bitcoin is safe. It's not - it's very risk compared to government backed currencies. But don't make the mistake of thinking the US dollar is as safe as you seem to think it is either. Default seems inevitable at some point in time as the US just keeps spending and spending and spending with no end in sight.
Oh, you misunderstand me. I think Bitcoin is a neo-libertarian utopian fantasy, based on the same thing all neo-libertarian philosophy relies, the "If only..."
"If only we had perfect information. If only we had perfect competition. If only we could have a free market that existed outside of government."
The problem is, markets are a function of government. There are no markets in nature. They only exist when there is someone to enforce contracts and guard transactions.
The entire philosophy is a scam perpetrated by the economic elite to draw off the energy of talented young people and make it easier to steal from them, while appealing to their egos. And the easiest people to manipulate via ego are talented young people, and those who see themselves that way.
Bitcoin is an undergrad economics project, writ large, and co-opted by criminals and the elite. I knew it would be co-opted eventually, just didn't think it would happen this quickly. Bitcoins will exist, in some form, until the willingness of those talented young people to part with their wealth is exhausted, which won't take long.
Do you have any idea how many Bitcoins were purchased between $1000 and $800? Wait until the people who bought them there realize that a 50% gain after a 50% loss puts you in the hole.
The other side of the coin is that the people (typically geek cyrptocurrency early adopters, NOT rich people) that sold those bitcoins that people bought between $1000 and $800 made a profit. You can't look only at the negative side of things.
There is risk around bitcoins yes, but if you buy smart and sell smart you can make a high rate of return that can justify the risk. The rate doesn't tumble for no reason at all. As with any stock or currency (etc) price varies with good and bad news reports and every bitcoin rate change that has happened so far has been precipitated by either good or bad news.
The big losers at this point are people who left their bitcoins in an exchange that then disappeared - lesson learned from this would be to not keep your bitcoins in an exchange or to spread them out across multiple storage locations (including paper and offline wallets).
If someone boards an unmanned drone ship, wouldn't they be able to claim the ship as salvage and sell the contents?
Presumably they would have to get past whatever automated or semi-automated defenses the ship would have.
You're missing the whole "The REAL Sims" product opportunity!
The Army and Air Force need to be merged and the Navy, Coast Guard, and Marines need to be merged. The overlap there is just nuts, tons of overhead, procurement programs, command structure, etc...
So you'd be left with an Army who does everything on land and a Navy who does everything at sea (and does landings on coasts, then hands off to the Army at about the 15 mile point inland).
The Marines are already part of the Navy.
The coast guard's real purpose is to provide a place for rich kids to go 'in case of' so it'll never be merged with anything that has real risk to it.
My partner is an elementary school principal. Her school has a small "data room", only accessed by teachers, in which she has posted "data walls". Her data walls are actually printouts of very large spreadsheets -- each row is a child, and the hundred of columns represent individual concepts that children have to master. For example, one column might represent "being able to add fractions", another might represent "being able to subtract fractions", another might be "being able to correctly conjugate verbs", etc.
The really cool thing is that these spreadsheets are generated (by software) after the children take computerized tests. Instead of just giving a numeric score, the software will show exactly *which* concepts the child does and does not know.
You would think teachers would love this technology because it would allow them to focus their instruction time on concepts their students have not mastered. Sadly, that's not the case -- instead, many long-time teachers who had always gotten "good" and "excellent" evaluations are suddenly being shown that they are not actually very good teachers. For example, the software can easily show that *none* of the students in a particular classroom have mastered a particular concept, such as adding fractions. If no student in that particular elementary classroom is able to add fractions, then it is pretty obvious that the teacher in that classroom does not know how to effectively teach adding fractions. Hearing that is pretty threatening to a teacher who has taught the same way for two or three decades.
Anyway, I posted because what the article calls a "data wall" is not really a data wall.
I think what you're describing is very valuable but I'm still not convinced it needs to be put up where the students themselves can see it.
With the children's names removed, with visibility to the parents and school board perhaps.
there's a lot of studies that show that once people develop a negative self image that they tend to take actions that reinforce that self image, often without realizing their doing it. i.e. if a person thinks they're dumb they become unable to do anything smart. This is where the "Precious Little Snowflake" movement came from. You praise kids even if they're not doing very well because if you don't they don't just get discouraged, they quickly come to believe that success is impossible and subconsciously sabotage themselves.
American Puritanicalism runs counter to this. The idea there is that adversity breeds character. I'm inclined to disagree with this. What I mostly see is adversity wears people down. The problem is that people who've been crushed at best fade away quietly and at worst end up in prison. Either way they're marginalized. The few that survive and prosper are much more visible. The phenomenon's called survival bias.
A balance between the two is needed, where you praise the child most of the time but be honest with them when they really do need to improve themselves in some way.
Lying to them by saying that everything they do is wonderful isn't going to serve them well in the long term.
The use of that word makes women uncomfortable. Please be courteous with your language.
You presume the use of 'that word' doesn't make men uncomfortable which is, in itself, a sexist position for you to take and implies that women are somehow weaker than men.
In the future, I'll thank you to keep your sexist and discriminatory comments to yourself.
Someone should buy this cunt a pizza and coke and tell him to shut the fuck up and stop being such a hypocrite.
Man, I don't want soda, I want brawno! Because it contains electrolytes!
And they doused the fire with water? Like, from the toilet?
They tried but then the water caught fire too and just made things worse...
While many people are interested in a device that interacts with the world around them, I doubt that many people want every interaction to be funneled through, and dependent on, Google (or any other data siphon). The MO of "cloud" companies seems to be all about unnecessarily inserting themselves into every activity as a creepy middleman.
On that we agree completely.
I want a device that records. I do not want a company collecting it behind me.
Let me summarize the situation so we can avoid having an article for every industry.
Any business worth any substantial amount of money is, and has been for years, under constant 'cyberattack'.
"A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it's because it's proven, eh."
Jean Chretien, former Prime Minister of Canada
FYFY
Other possibilikty. The guests don't want party pics of themselves getting wasted and stupid showing up on Facebook, but the limo owner wants footage for liability in case of damages.
Because the owner can be trusted?
No thanks.
If there's no damage before and there is damage after that is no doubt quite sufficient for the owner to prove liability of the guests.