The camera wouldn't be near the ATM. Someone behind you in line would take the camera out of their pocket, and take a picture of the keypad you just touched.
Apparently they aren't too scared, if you look at the falling value of the dollar and euro. Seems that they are happy when wages aren't going up, but don't really care when food, energy and other commodities are rising.
If somebody spends money and effort to tweak the kernel so they get a competitive advantage over the other players, it is in their best interest to keep those changes to themselves.
Otherwise, there's no point in making the thing faster in the first place.
What they are doing is taking advantage of market inefficiencies that already existed. There's nothing unfair about it. If people don't like it, they should make the market more efficient.
Depends on the currency. If you have Swiss Francs under the mattress you're doing okay. If you have US dollars, the value has dropped 10% per year in the last 5 years compared to the same Swiss Francs.
If you put Krugerrands under the mattress, you've also done okay in the last decade.
The GPL only requires you that you distribute the source code to those that have received the binary. So, if you modify GPL code for personal use, and do not distribute the binary, you're not required to distribute the source code.
No, climate changes in the past have been triggered by a combination of solar output, continental drift, and orbital changes. Oh, and greenhouse effects too.
Unless you're claiming that orbits have shifted all of a sudden, or continents drifted in the last few decades, or that solar output increased, it's not really relevant, is it ?
Only 2% of all the ice on the world actually floats. The rest is supported by land, and will cause sea level rise when it melts. Yes, this article only talks about the Arctic ice, but the rest isn't immune to rising temperatures.
Also, the warming of the oceans will expand the water.
And has been doing so for the past 12-14,000 years.
No it hasn't. You're probably referring to the last glacial cycle, but for all purposes that basically ended 8,000 years ago. After that, global temperatures have stabilized, or maybe even slightly decreased (until we started messing with it)
The current downward trend, as shown in the graph, started only a few decades ago:
Not really. Reducing carbon emissions only delays the point where we've burned all the useful carbon in the ground. Since the CO2 will stay in the atmosphere for over 1000 years, it doesn't really make a difference whether we burn all the carbon in 100 years or in 150 years.
If you want to keep CO2 lower, we need to decide to leave some carbon in the ground, and never use it. At the same time, we should probably find a way to sequester existing CO2.
And how much does it cost to make a CPU that's, say, 10% faster than the previous one ? Don't forget all the effort in research, design, testing, and investing in new manufacturing equipment, before you can actually start producing the chips.
Suppose they invest $100 million for the first wafer of a new design, with a yield of 10 working chips. Should they sell these chips for $10 million a piece, since that was the actual cost to make them ?
Sure, but extending their trend for the next 3 years by drawing a straight line is equally poor analysis. Sales have been high because of a lot of first-time buyers of Apple products. At some point in time, the market becomes saturated, and sales will drop, unless they can keep coming up with newer and better stuff that people want, and can afford to buy. I have no idea whether that point is 3, 5 or 10 years from now, though.
No particular reason, but look at Cisco. In 2000, their stock price was more than 3x times what it is now, and people thought it was justified because their earnings would grow rapidly.
Their current profit is a lot closer, with 30 billion for Exxon and 14 billion for Apple, and on current trend, Apple will close that distance within three years.
Or not. Technology trends can be fickle. There comes a point in time where everybody already has a phone, a music player and a tablet computer. Especially when the economy goes south, spending a few hundred buck to upgrade a perfectly fine black phone with a white version may not be as appealing anymore. On the other hand, energy is a pretty basic need.
But that shouldn't stop me from making it reach its full speed
What's stopping you is the security features they've designed into the CPU to prevent this.
My computer is quite capable of running software, like Photoshop, but that doesn't mean it should be provided with the computer for free (or for the manufacturing cost of a DVD), or that you should be allowed to copy it from your friend.
You make no sense. If you buy a cheaper model, you know exactly what you have. All the specs are available, and you can compare the price/performance to hundreds of other options. If you like it, you buy it. If you don't like it, you don't.
This stuff has been going on forever, except that's it's usually done by crippling a product in hardware, rather than software. Does that make it any better ? I doubt it. Hardware based crippling is likely to cost more overall, which means higher prices for the end user.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds great, except there's not much you can do about the economics of spam.
On the other hand, filters have become pretty good. I'm only getting a few spam messages a week that manage to get past the filters.
The camera wouldn't be near the ATM. Someone behind you in line would take the camera out of their pocket, and take a picture of the keypad you just touched.
Apparently they aren't too scared, if you look at the falling value of the dollar and euro. Seems that they are happy when wages aren't going up, but don't really care when food, energy and other commodities are rising.
Before we stop it, you'd have to explain what's so bad about quick trades, and why artificially slowing it down would be better.
If somebody spends money and effort to tweak the kernel so they get a competitive advantage over the other players, it is in their best interest to keep those changes to themselves.
Otherwise, there's no point in making the thing faster in the first place.
What they are doing is taking advantage of market inefficiencies that already existed. There's nothing unfair about it. If people don't like it, they should make the market more efficient.
In that case, if you are unlucky to have a currency where the central bank is printing money, your cash under the mattress is losing value.
Depends on the currency. If you have Swiss Francs under the mattress you're doing okay. If you have US dollars, the value has dropped 10% per year in the last 5 years compared to the same Swiss Francs.
If you put Krugerrands under the mattress, you've also done okay in the last decade.
Of course, bills under the mattress are losing value every day.
The GPL only requires you that you distribute the source code to those that have received the binary. So, if you modify GPL code for personal use, and do not distribute the binary, you're not required to distribute the source code.
It was your suggestion that it could be significant, so why don't you enlighten us ?
Undersea volcanoes do not have anywhere near the required energy to melt Arctic ice. Please come back after you do the math.
Yes, it does, but it takes centuries.
No, climate changes in the past have been triggered by a combination of solar output, continental drift, and orbital changes. Oh, and greenhouse effects too.
Unless you're claiming that orbits have shifted all of a sudden, or continents drifted in the last few decades, or that solar output increased, it's not really relevant, is it ?
Only 2% of all the ice on the world actually floats. The rest is supported by land, and will cause sea level rise when it melts. Yes, this article only talks about the Arctic ice, but the rest isn't immune to rising temperatures.
Also, the warming of the oceans will expand the water.
Because in the places where the Vikings settled, it was green. In fact, those places along the coast are still green:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:Qaqortoq2008.JPG
If you go further inland, you'll find 100,000 year old ice. We can be sure it wasn't green when the Vikings lived there.
No it hasn't. You're probably referring to the last glacial cycle, but for all purposes that basically ended 8,000 years ago. After that, global temperatures have stabilized, or maybe even slightly decreased (until we started messing with it)
The current downward trend, as shown in the graph, started only a few decades ago:
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20110803_Figure3.png
Not really. Reducing carbon emissions only delays the point where we've burned all the useful carbon in the ground. Since the CO2 will stay in the atmosphere for over 1000 years, it doesn't really make a difference whether we burn all the carbon in 100 years or in 150 years.
If you want to keep CO2 lower, we need to decide to leave some carbon in the ground, and never use it. At the same time, we should probably find a way to sequester existing CO2.
And how much does it cost to make a CPU that's, say, 10% faster than the previous one ? Don't forget all the effort in research, design, testing, and investing in new manufacturing equipment, before you can actually start producing the chips.
Suppose they invest $100 million for the first wafer of a new design, with a yield of 10 working chips. Should they sell these chips for $10 million a piece, since that was the actual cost to make them ?
Sure, but extending their trend for the next 3 years by drawing a straight line is equally poor analysis. Sales have been high because of a lot of first-time buyers of Apple products. At some point in time, the market becomes saturated, and sales will drop, unless they can keep coming up with newer and better stuff that people want, and can afford to buy. I have no idea whether that point is 3, 5 or 10 years from now, though.
No particular reason, but look at Cisco. In 2000, their stock price was more than 3x times what it is now, and people thought it was justified because their earnings would grow rapidly.
Or not. Technology trends can be fickle. There comes a point in time where everybody already has a phone, a music player and a tablet computer. Especially when the economy goes south, spending a few hundred buck to upgrade a perfectly fine black phone with a white version may not be as appealing anymore. On the other hand, energy is a pretty basic need.
What's stopping you is the security features they've designed into the CPU to prevent this.
My computer is quite capable of running software, like Photoshop, but that doesn't mean it should be provided with the computer for free (or for the manufacturing cost of a DVD), or that you should be allowed to copy it from your friend.
It runs faster.
You make no sense. If you buy a cheaper model, you know exactly what you have. All the specs are available, and you can compare the price/performance to hundreds of other options. If you like it, you buy it. If you don't like it, you don't.
This stuff has been going on forever, except that's it's usually done by crippling a product in hardware, rather than software. Does that make it any better ? I doubt it. Hardware based crippling is likely to cost more overall, which means higher prices for the end user.