Tell that to Vermont, as well as to the millions out of power, the people and institutions which suffered billions of dollars in damage, and the relatives of those who lost their lives.
More importantly, tell that to the relatives of the people who will die next time, because everyone says "bah, evacuate my ass, remember Irene?".
Warning people to protect themselves in the face of a legitimate threat has unmeasurable value to society, it can save countless lives and reduce the actual property damage resulting from unpreparedness. Crying wolf just teaches people to ignore the warnings.
This was still a nasty storm.
No argument about that. That doesn't qualify it as an "evacuate NYC"-level of false alarm, however.
It gained hurricane status when people actually latched on to their monster-of-the-week and started paying attention to the media's FUD about just-another-storm.
It lost hurricane status when people got bored with it. Which, not coincidentally, happened right around the time people realized that the storm had passed and nothing more interesting than a few downed trees and some localized flooding had accompanied the Grim Reaper on his end-of-summer ride through the heavens.
Yep, a few people died. Flooding will do that, and if doesn't take a hurricane to do that (how many hurricanes does the Midwest get each year?). Tragic, but at the same time, unimpressive - 35 people? Wow. The "storm of the century" caused about half the number of deaths of one interstate bus accident.
And now I note with some amusement, the media has started trolling for flu season already, with "remember bird/swine flu" retrospectives. Fucking pathetic. Let's all just turn it off, and walk away.
Could you respond to the fact that you are completely wrong that the rogue pharmacies Google was accepting ads from were legal pharmacies? It's shocking that your post is still +5 Insightful when you're absolutely incorrect.
No, actually, I can't (or rather, won't), for two reasons.
First, I don't normally respond to ACs, and I seem to have really brought them crawling out of the woodwork on this one.
And second, the single most factual response to me so far (as opposed to every other post screaming various arguments-by-assertion at me), quoting the DOJ's own case back to me, still fails to point out any real crimes beyond "importation". Others have mentioned counterfeit drugs, but strangely, despite that counting as a fairly legit charge, the DOJ itself didn't bother to mention it.
No, we have nothing more nefarious here than daring to risk corporate profits by undermining the pharmaceutical industry's literally life-threatening global market segregation schemes.
So... Sorry that I can't support this particular front in the War on (some) Drugs, but offering Grandpa his heart meds for less than Phizer likes, I just can't find myself giving a damn.
You're an idiot. You do realize many Canadian drugs come from the USA, right? Dumb ass.
Okay, let's go over what you quoted back to me, shall we dear grasshopper?
"The FDA just doesn't like anyone cutting in on US pharmaceutical industry profits" - If we stop reading here, then yes indeed, I deserve the "dumbass" label. But wait! I didn't stop writing there. Let's continue...
"(even when the drugs come from those very same US companies)." - Even when the drugs come from those very same US companies. Funny, that sounds strangely familiar... Now where have I heard that recently? Oh! Right! "many Canadian drugs come from the USA". Huh, imagine that! You said the same thing I did!
First of all, TFA makes it sound like a straightforward case of "don't advertise illegal crap". Google didn't outright take ads for vendors of illegal drugs, they took ads for entirely legal Canadian pharmacies. The FDA just doesn't like anyone cutting in on US pharmaceutical industry profits (even when the drugs come from those very same US companies).
Second, if merely accepting ads from unkosher sources commits a crime, then why the hell haven't the major broadcast networks gotten the smack-down for showing a non-stop string of crapvertisements from the likes of such blatant frauds as Enzyte and Head On?
Oh. Right. "Online", the magic word that makes everything old new and illegal again.
Do not blame Mozilla because addon creators are too lazy or don't care enough to update their addons properly, or take advantage of a service Mozilla offers them. Do not blame Mozilla because you are too lazy or don't care enough to unzip the addon, open the config file, and change the max version number yourself.
You've conveniently skipped over those changes that really break existing add-ons. Autorolling the version range won't magically rewrite an add-on that depends on a toolbar or menu or behind-the-scenes-hook that Mozilla decided to remove or drastically change between versions.
As for lazy devs not rewriting their add-ons - As a developer myself, I can find the time to deal with Major Platform X releasing a new version once or twice a year. I do not have the time to try to keep up with this new "gotta beat Google at their own game despite them paying people to do this" monthly release philosophy. And if you want to tell me "good riddance", you certainly have every right to do that; And when the authors of Adblock, NoScript, Firebug, Download Helper, or a dozen others, decide they would rather have a life than play catch-up? Good riddance to the lot of 'em, we can always just use Chrome instead?
And as for "blame" - I would prefer Mozilla stop this shit, but I don't blame them. I just won't upgrade until all my "must-have" add-ons work.
I'm moving my data offshore [...] anyone else with me, on this?
Sure, if you'll kindly explain how you plan to get to the internet in the first place without a domestic ISP?
You can certainly move your data offshore, but you still need to get there (and if you don't consider encryption one of the next few steps, I have a bridge to sell you).
thanks congress fuckwads; you just helped move an american's data OFF the US and out of your grubby fingers.
In the past few weeks, they've gleefully helped move billions of dollars out of the US stock market all to score points with their respective "bases". What makes you think they care more about something about which they lack even the faintest understanding (ie, your data)?
But no one would ever guess "damnyouratbastardstohellihopearabidbadgerchewsyourballsoff" as the password for such a well loved and respected institution as a medical insurance company... So no worries!
This is a ridiculous idea. The only structure that is taller than 2600 ft is the Burj Khalifa (Burj Dubai), which is 2717 ft.
The complexity of a giant hollow tube doesn't really compare well to an office and apartment building designed to safely hold tens of thousands of humans at a time.
As for the cost, the average US nuclear power plant puts out very close to one gigawatt, and costs on the order of 6-9 billion dollars to build and another 30 billion in expenses over its lifetime. This tower has an estimated construction cost of 750 million dollars, and although I can't find any estimates of the maintenance cost, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say "a hell of a lot less than completely rebuilding it every 3 years of its spec'd lifetime".
Sounds like at the very least a better-than-breakeven proposition vs nuclear, IMO - With no waste or risk of disaster.
If you have two menu items with the same name, how do you decide which to choose?
Well, Windows has done it smoothly for over a decade (half your menu lives in "All Users", and half in your own documents) - You just merge them into one visible entry and show the contents of both inside.
Is there a law that says software has to get fat over time?
I think it comes right next to the law that says "you must try to run the latest and greatest software on ancient PCs".
Seriously - Get yourself a distro relatively contemporary with the box itself, and it will run amazingly; get yourself a distro that actually takes advantage of oodles of RAM and a powerful GPU and a multicore CPU, none of which your old box have, and don't act surprised when it crawls.
Considering that one of my friends (20 years) is a supervisor, you're plan does not work for me.
Then you have the fairly rare opportunity to act on probably the single most effective suggestion I made. The fact that you defend them rather than act on that makes you part of the problem.
and through negative reinforcement and outright punishment and discrimination (which is illegal anyways) force them to quit their jobs and find new ones.
You might want to double-check that one with your lawyer. Unless someone falls into one of the Holy categories of "old", "female", "immigrant", "Jewish" (Or I suppose Muslim has turned into the new Jewish), "Black", or "crippled" (including "pregnant"), and to a lesser degree "gay" - You can discriminate against whomever the hell you want. You could walk into work tomorrow and get fired, with the actual reason given and you having no recourse, because you like the color green, you drive a Ford, you voted for Obama, you support the Packers, you listen to NPR, or you prefer dogs to cats.
For the record, the poster I replied to offered 4 suggestions. Only one was passive, and he emphasized overall that the goal was to give these "people" no choice, make their lives miserable
For the record, I offered four examples, not meant as all-inclusive, and I don't give a rat's ass about "passive". If not a crime (a real one, in this case) to incite violence, I'd say hunt the race (as in "human") traitors down and kill them in their sleep. As it stands, I suggested legal ways to make their lives hell, in the hopes of redeeming the "better" ones (like, hypothetically, your friend).
Don't get me wrong - I count as "mostly harmless". But the AC in this thread has the right idea - The government fears one thing and only one thing - That the people get their voice back and start filling harbors with imported Tea-Vs.
I find it extremely humorous that you are comparing TSA agents to WWII German concentration camp guards like the ones at Auschwitz.
"No, really, my friend, not like the others! Sure, he unquestioningly kills Jews for a living - But he feels bad about it!"
These unwelcome intrusions continue because we allow them. If we the people as a group, boycotted air travel, tgis DHS BS would go away.
Agreed. However, you need to understand that the vast majority of air travel consists of business travelers with close to zero discretion about how to get to their destination, rather than people flying because they choose to do so.
You want to make the TSA cut this shit out? We have exactly one option that might work: Public shunning.
Run a business? Refuse to serve them.
Know any personally? Tell them you can't hang out anymore until they take a respectable job such as prostitution or dealing drugs.
Encounter one casually on the street? Stop just short of assault in badgering them.
Have to actually fly? Hand every one of them that speaks to you the business card of a local headhunter.
Make it impossible for these people to have a life, and no one will take the job at any price. And maybe, just maybe, instead of instituting some sort of "TSA draft", the asshats in DC will get the message.
They want "public commentary" on their scanners"? How about "fuck off and die, you goose-stepping pieces of shit, We The People hope your pornoscanners give you all a slow and painful cancer"? That work for ya, Janet? Get the idea yet?
/ And for the apologists - You know who else "was just doing their jobs"?
Which have been abused and used nothing today like what the framers had in mind.
Not exactly the best argument to use when talking about yet another extension to our completely insane patchwork of regressive local, state, and federal taxation-without-representation, when we didn't even have a (marginally more legitimate) income tax for the first half of our country's history.
Here, have a dose of reality [ifixit.com], it's on me.
Fair enough, consider me duly humbled.
And confused... A mere 10Gb? We already have both HDMI and 10GBase-T (though admittedly the latter still costs a tidy sum for the two ends, even if it does work on cheap Cat6 cable)... And while I see that the "real" purpose of ThunderBolt rests not in mere displays, but in providing what amounts to an external PCIe interface, I can't help thinking that it amounts to a solution in search of a problem.
The only thing I've heard about this whole thunderbolt mania that I like is that the cables are actually more than just straight through wires with particular connectors on the ends priced like there's actual expensive parts in them - these cables actually have numerous active components at both ends.
If by "expensive" you mean a $0.15 transistor to keep the signal level stable at the remote end, then yes.
Still overpriced, but not nearly as much of a ripoff.
No, pretty much still just as much of a ripoff. And that tiny "active" component will massively slow (if not totally stop) 3rd-party cable manufacturers from jumping into the market, keeping prices artificially high for years.
I understand that you use a complicated technological product, which is considered to be special waste, without having read the necessary documents on ho to process (if that is possible) this product.
Who cares what some CPU can do. The real question is how fast does it run on a modern GPU? Generally speaking encryption cracking and such is way faster on a GPU due this problem being highly parallel in nature.
TFA has nothing to do with the target platform. If you can improve the algorithm itself by 17%, then it doesn't matter if that means (33/0.83)MB/s on a CPU or (333/0.83)MB/s on a GPU.
Granted, some optimizations may adapt worse (or better!) to the instructions available on a GPU than they do on a CPU, but the task of password cracking inherently parallelizes almost perfectly, so 17% just means 17%, period.
Also, there's been massive btc deflation recently.
If by "massive" you mean "trading at about $2 (12%) less than before MtGox got pwnd", then sure.
Other than that, hey, my PC currently makes me $20-$30 a day for about $0.90 worth of electricity. Yeah, definitely not worth it. I fully encourage all SlashDotters to run screaming from BitCoin. Nothing to see here, move along.;)
Without copyright law, the GPL becomes an MIT or BSD style license whereby anyone can take anything and use it for anything they want without ever contributing back changes.
You've inappropriately mixed contexts here, though... Without copyright, we have no need for someone to contribute back to the community, because the community doesn't need "permission" to take what they have and run with it.
In the closest situation that does exhibit the problem behavior you describe - A modification to GPL'd code for private use only - Even under the GPL you have no obligation to release your changes. And once you do distribute something, only the existence of a copyright stops everyone from doing whatever the hell they want with it.
(That said, I will admit that source code vs binary distribution makes this a somewhat messier issue; But you need only look at how often 3rd parties releases fixes to Windows before MS bothers getting around to the job, to see that source code amounts to a convenience rather than a necessity).
And contrary to the hippy ignorance which always seems to surround the anit-copyright trolls/pirates, copyrights exist so as to encourage creation.
Sorry, did I not write "The granting of extremely limited exclusive rights for a single-digit number of years after creation quite likely does encourage people to create" clearly enough?
Without them, the ability to create is dramatically reduced.
Sorry, but bull. The ability to create has nothing to do with copyright; Copyright affects one and only one aspect of content creation - It adds "profit motive" to the reasons to create. Everything else, copyright only hinders.
If you want to advocate socialism, by all means do so, but don't attempt to subvert capitalism by half truths, lies, and general misinformation.
Uhh, smoke what again? Aside from the fact that I said nothing at all about various economic systems, you do realize that copyright actually favors socialism, by encouraging people to donate to the common good over the long term, in exchange for a temporary revenue stream on the short term?
The concept of copyright in itself is not such a bad thing. Firstly it is the cornerstone on top of which the GPL and a large amount of open source software is built:
The GPL wouldn't need to exist if we didn't have copyrights.
That said, I will agree with your first point - The granting of extremely limited exclusive rights for a single-digit number of years after creation quite likely does encourage people to create; Allowing the enforcement of copyrights for so long that the original vanishes into obscurity long before anyone has the right to archive it, however (a huge problem with source code, where after even 25 years we have more complete works from ancient Greece than we do from smaller mid-80s dev houses), does not serve the goal of adding to the common stock of our culture.
Slashdot Mirror
The idiocy... it BURNS!
Sorry? I can't tell if you mean that in support of, or in opposition to, my post.
If agreeing, then thanks. If against, could I trouble you to perhaps bother to articulate some actual point with which you take issue?
Tell that to Vermont, as well as to the millions out of power, the people and institutions which suffered billions of dollars in damage, and the relatives of those who lost their lives.
More importantly, tell that to the relatives of the people who will die next time, because everyone says "bah, evacuate my ass, remember Irene?".
Warning people to protect themselves in the face of a legitimate threat has unmeasurable value to society, it can save countless lives and reduce the actual property damage resulting from unpreparedness. Crying wolf just teaches people to ignore the warnings.
This was still a nasty storm.
No argument about that. That doesn't qualify it as an "evacuate NYC"-level of false alarm, however.
It gained hurricane status when people actually latched on to their monster-of-the-week and started paying attention to the media's FUD about just-another-storm.
It lost hurricane status when people got bored with it. Which, not coincidentally, happened right around the time people realized that the storm had passed and nothing more interesting than a few downed trees and some localized flooding had accompanied the Grim Reaper on his end-of-summer ride through the heavens.
Yep, a few people died. Flooding will do that, and if doesn't take a hurricane to do that (how many hurricanes does the Midwest get each year?). Tragic, but at the same time, unimpressive - 35 people? Wow. The "storm of the century" caused about half the number of deaths of one interstate bus accident.
And now I note with some amusement, the media has started trolling for flu season already, with "remember bird/swine flu" retrospectives. Fucking pathetic. Let's all just turn it off, and walk away.
Could you respond to the fact that you are completely wrong that the rogue pharmacies Google was accepting ads from were legal pharmacies? It's shocking that your post is still +5 Insightful when you're absolutely incorrect.
No, actually, I can't (or rather, won't), for two reasons.
First, I don't normally respond to ACs, and I seem to have really brought them crawling out of the woodwork on this one.
And second, the single most factual response to me so far (as opposed to every other post screaming various arguments-by-assertion at me), quoting the DOJ's own case back to me, still fails to point out any real crimes beyond "importation". Others have mentioned counterfeit drugs, but strangely, despite that counting as a fairly legit charge, the DOJ itself didn't bother to mention it.
No, we have nothing more nefarious here than daring to risk corporate profits by undermining the pharmaceutical industry's literally life-threatening global market segregation schemes.
So... Sorry that I can't support this particular front in the War on (some) Drugs, but offering Grandpa his heart meds for less than Phizer likes, I just can't find myself giving a damn.
You're an idiot. You do realize many Canadian drugs come from the USA, right? Dumb ass.
Okay, let's go over what you quoted back to me, shall we dear grasshopper?
"The FDA just doesn't like anyone cutting in on US pharmaceutical industry profits" - If we stop reading here, then yes indeed, I deserve the "dumbass" label. But wait! I didn't stop writing there. Let's continue...
"(even when the drugs come from those very same US companies)." - Even when the drugs come from those very same US companies. Funny, that sounds strangely familiar... Now where have I heard that recently? Oh! Right! "many Canadian drugs come from the USA". Huh, imagine that! You said the same thing I did!
Dumbass.
So, did Google write a check or just put it on their Amex?
I don't know, but for some unknown reason they decided to pay $618,033,989 instead of an even $500M.
First of all, TFA makes it sound like a straightforward case of "don't advertise illegal crap". Google didn't outright take ads for vendors of illegal drugs, they took ads for entirely legal Canadian pharmacies. The FDA just doesn't like anyone cutting in on US pharmaceutical industry profits (even when the drugs come from those very same US companies).
Second, if merely accepting ads from unkosher sources commits a crime, then why the hell haven't the major broadcast networks gotten the smack-down for showing a non-stop string of crapvertisements from the likes of such blatant frauds as Enzyte and Head On?
Oh. Right. "Online", the magic word that makes everything old new and illegal again.
Do not blame Mozilla because addon creators are too lazy or don't care enough to update their addons properly, or take advantage of a service Mozilla offers them. Do not blame Mozilla because you are too lazy or don't care enough to unzip the addon, open the config file, and change the max version number yourself.
You've conveniently skipped over those changes that really break existing add-ons. Autorolling the version range won't magically rewrite an add-on that depends on a toolbar or menu or behind-the-scenes-hook that Mozilla decided to remove or drastically change between versions.
As for lazy devs not rewriting their add-ons - As a developer myself, I can find the time to deal with Major Platform X releasing a new version once or twice a year. I do not have the time to try to keep up with this new "gotta beat Google at their own game despite them paying people to do this" monthly release philosophy. And if you want to tell me "good riddance", you certainly have every right to do that; And when the authors of Adblock, NoScript, Firebug, Download Helper, or a dozen others, decide they would rather have a life than play catch-up? Good riddance to the lot of 'em, we can always just use Chrome instead?
And as for "blame" - I would prefer Mozilla stop this shit, but I don't blame them. I just won't upgrade until all my "must-have" add-ons work.
I'm moving my data offshore [...] anyone else with me, on this?
Sure, if you'll kindly explain how you plan to get to the internet in the first place without a domestic ISP?
You can certainly move your data offshore, but you still need to get there (and if you don't consider encryption one of the next few steps, I have a bridge to sell you).
thanks congress fuckwads; you just helped move an american's data OFF the US and out of your grubby fingers.
In the past few weeks, they've gleefully helped move billions of dollars out of the US stock market all to score points with their respective "bases". What makes you think they care more about something about which they lack even the faintest understanding (ie, your data)?
To bad its all protected with the same password.
But no one would ever guess "damnyouratbastardstohellihopearabidbadgerchewsyourballsoff" as the password for such a well loved and respected institution as a medical insurance company... So no worries!
/ that, or "bluecrossispants".
This is a ridiculous idea. The only structure that is taller than 2600 ft is the Burj Khalifa (Burj Dubai), which is 2717 ft.
The complexity of a giant hollow tube doesn't really compare well to an office and apartment building designed to safely hold tens of thousands of humans at a time.
As for the cost, the average US nuclear power plant puts out very close to one gigawatt, and costs on the order of 6-9 billion dollars to build and another 30 billion in expenses over its lifetime. This tower has an estimated construction cost of 750 million dollars, and although I can't find any estimates of the maintenance cost, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say "a hell of a lot less than completely rebuilding it every 3 years of its spec'd lifetime".
Sounds like at the very least a better-than-breakeven proposition vs nuclear, IMO - With no waste or risk of disaster.
Can I may my mortgage with them? No.
Funny you should say that - Since I started mining them earlier this spring, I have made just about one mortgage payment with them.
But by all means, keep hating on them so the difficulty stays down.
If you have two menu items with the same name, how do you decide which to choose?
Well, Windows has done it smoothly for over a decade (half your menu lives in "All Users", and half in your own documents) - You just merge them into one visible entry and show the contents of both inside.
Is there a law that says software has to get fat over time?
I think it comes right next to the law that says "you must try to run the latest and greatest software on ancient PCs".
Seriously - Get yourself a distro relatively contemporary with the box itself, and it will run amazingly; get yourself a distro that actually takes advantage of oodles of RAM and a powerful GPU and a multicore CPU, none of which your old box have, and don't act surprised when it crawls.
You have become one with your enemy in both spirit and action.
;)
And you watch too much Kurosawa.
Considering that one of my friends (20 years) is a supervisor, you're plan does not work for me.
Then you have the fairly rare opportunity to act on probably the single most effective suggestion I made. The fact that you defend them rather than act on that makes you part of the problem.
and through negative reinforcement and outright punishment and discrimination (which is illegal anyways) force them to quit their jobs and find new ones.
You might want to double-check that one with your lawyer. Unless someone falls into one of the Holy categories of "old", "female", "immigrant", "Jewish" (Or I suppose Muslim has turned into the new Jewish), "Black", or "crippled" (including "pregnant"), and to a lesser degree "gay" - You can discriminate against whomever the hell you want. You could walk into work tomorrow and get fired, with the actual reason given and you having no recourse, because you like the color green, you drive a Ford, you voted for Obama, you support the Packers, you listen to NPR, or you prefer dogs to cats.
For the record, the poster I replied to offered 4 suggestions. Only one was passive, and he emphasized overall that the goal was to give these "people" no choice, make their lives miserable
For the record, I offered four examples, not meant as all-inclusive, and I don't give a rat's ass about "passive". If not a crime (a real one, in this case) to incite violence, I'd say hunt the race (as in "human") traitors down and kill them in their sleep. As it stands, I suggested legal ways to make their lives hell, in the hopes of redeeming the "better" ones (like, hypothetically, your friend).
Don't get me wrong - I count as "mostly harmless". But the AC in this thread has the right idea - The government fears one thing and only one thing - That the people get their voice back and start filling harbors with imported Tea-Vs.
I find it extremely humorous that you are comparing TSA agents to WWII German concentration camp guards like the ones at Auschwitz.
"No, really, my friend, not like the others! Sure, he unquestioningly kills Jews for a living - But he feels bad about it!"
If the jackboot fits...
These unwelcome intrusions continue because we allow them. If we the people as a group, boycotted air travel, tgis DHS BS would go away.
Agreed. However, you need to understand that the vast majority of air travel consists of business travelers with close to zero discretion about how to get to their destination, rather than people flying because they choose to do so.
You want to make the TSA cut this shit out? We have exactly one option that might work: Public shunning.
Run a business? Refuse to serve them.
Know any personally? Tell them you can't hang out anymore until they take a respectable job such as prostitution or dealing drugs.
Encounter one casually on the street? Stop just short of assault in badgering them.
Have to actually fly? Hand every one of them that speaks to you the business card of a local headhunter.
Make it impossible for these people to have a life, and no one will take the job at any price. And maybe, just maybe, instead of instituting some sort of "TSA draft", the asshats in DC will get the message.
They want "public commentary" on their scanners"? How about "fuck off and die, you goose-stepping pieces of shit, We The People hope your pornoscanners give you all a slow and painful cancer"? That work for ya, Janet? Get the idea yet?
/ And for the apologists - You know who else "was just doing their jobs"?
Which have been abused and used nothing today like what the framers had in mind.
Not exactly the best argument to use when talking about yet another extension to our completely insane patchwork of regressive local, state, and federal taxation-without-representation, when we didn't even have a (marginally more legitimate) income tax for the first half of our country's history.
Here, have a dose of reality [ifixit.com], it's on me.
Fair enough, consider me duly humbled.
And confused... A mere 10Gb? We already have both HDMI and 10GBase-T (though admittedly the latter still costs a tidy sum for the two ends, even if it does work on cheap Cat6 cable)... And while I see that the "real" purpose of ThunderBolt rests not in mere displays, but in providing what amounts to an external PCIe interface, I can't help thinking that it amounts to a solution in search of a problem.
The only thing I've heard about this whole thunderbolt mania that I like is that the cables are actually more than just straight through wires with particular connectors on the ends priced like there's actual expensive parts in them - these cables actually have numerous active components at both ends.
If by "expensive" you mean a $0.15 transistor to keep the signal level stable at the remote end, then yes.
Still overpriced, but not nearly as much of a ripoff.
No, pretty much still just as much of a ripoff. And that tiny "active" component will massively slow (if not totally stop) 3rd-party cable manufacturers from jumping into the market, keeping prices artificially high for years.
I understand that you use a complicated technological product, which is considered to be special waste, without having read the necessary documents on ho to process (if that is possible) this product.
You don't know many artists, do you?
Who cares what some CPU can do. The real question is how fast does it run on a modern GPU? Generally speaking encryption cracking and such is way faster on a GPU due this problem being highly parallel in nature.
TFA has nothing to do with the target platform. If you can improve the algorithm itself by 17%, then it doesn't matter if that means (33/0.83)MB/s on a CPU or (333/0.83)MB/s on a GPU.
Granted, some optimizations may adapt worse (or better!) to the instructions available on a GPU than they do on a CPU, but the task of password cracking inherently parallelizes almost perfectly, so 17% just means 17%, period.
Also, there's been massive btc deflation recently.
;)
If by "massive" you mean "trading at about $2 (12%) less than before MtGox got pwnd", then sure.
Other than that, hey, my PC currently makes me $20-$30 a day for about $0.90 worth of electricity. Yeah, definitely not worth it. I fully encourage all SlashDotters to run screaming from BitCoin. Nothing to see here, move along.
Without copyright law, the GPL becomes an MIT or BSD style license whereby anyone can take anything and use it for anything they want without ever contributing back changes.
You've inappropriately mixed contexts here, though... Without copyright, we have no need for someone to contribute back to the community, because the community doesn't need "permission" to take what they have and run with it.
In the closest situation that does exhibit the problem behavior you describe - A modification to GPL'd code for private use only - Even under the GPL you have no obligation to release your changes. And once you do distribute something, only the existence of a copyright stops everyone from doing whatever the hell they want with it.
(That said, I will admit that source code vs binary distribution makes this a somewhat messier issue; But you need only look at how often 3rd parties releases fixes to Windows before MS bothers getting around to the job, to see that source code amounts to a convenience rather than a necessity).
And contrary to the hippy ignorance which always seems to surround the anit-copyright trolls/pirates, copyrights exist so as to encourage creation.
Sorry, did I not write "The granting of extremely limited exclusive rights for a single-digit number of years after creation quite likely does encourage people to create" clearly enough?
Without them, the ability to create is dramatically reduced.
Sorry, but bull. The ability to create has nothing to do with copyright; Copyright affects one and only one aspect of content creation - It adds "profit motive" to the reasons to create. Everything else, copyright only hinders.
If you want to advocate socialism, by all means do so, but don't attempt to subvert capitalism by half truths, lies, and general misinformation.
Uhh, smoke what again? Aside from the fact that I said nothing at all about various economic systems, you do realize that copyright actually favors socialism, by encouraging people to donate to the common good over the long term, in exchange for a temporary revenue stream on the short term?
The concept of copyright in itself is not such a bad thing. Firstly it is the cornerstone on top of which the GPL and a large amount of open source software is built:
The GPL wouldn't need to exist if we didn't have copyrights.
That said, I will agree with your first point - The granting of extremely limited exclusive rights for a single-digit number of years after creation quite likely does encourage people to create; Allowing the enforcement of copyrights for so long that the original vanishes into obscurity long before anyone has the right to archive it, however (a huge problem with source code, where after even 25 years we have more complete works from ancient Greece than we do from smaller mid-80s dev houses), does not serve the goal of adding to the common stock of our culture.