I'm sure they've heard of USD in europe, but still won't accept it in 99% of retail locations. You might have some success using it in international airports, but thats about it.
In many countries, ISPs are national and their address allocations are allocated from a single national pool, you could be anywhere in a given country. You could be using a VPN. The externally facing ip addresses of mobile networks are also generally national, and shared with hundreds of users. When you're using roaming data in another country it usually tunnels back to your national network too - so it has the same ip as if you were in your home country, even if your half way across the world.
The problem is that each block can only hold a finite number of transactions, so the miners will only carry those transactions that have the highest fees... Hence the scalability problem that's being talked about.
On the other hand, the long term trend of bitcoin value has been up and the swings generally go both ways... So sometimes the value of your bitcoins will go down, but more often it will go up. You lose out on a few transactions and gain on a few more.
You could leave your cellphone at home too... Being trackable is the price you pay for the convenience of being able to use it at arbitrary locations, and there's not really any way around that since the signal could always be triangulated.
Unfortunately virtually all the devices available today work that way, tied in to someone else's service... I too would prefer devices which are entirely under my control, but for anything remotely accessible this is difficult. There aren't enough ipv4 addresses to make everyone's home devices directly addressable, and ipv6 isnt widespread enough yet (i have yet to visit a hotel or public wifi hotspot that gave me ipv6 connectivity). Users could set up a vpn, assuming they have their own single ipv4 address and aren't stuck behind nat but then users would need to know how to configure a vpn.
You can only choose another product if such products exist, so this only works in a competitive market not one that's been sewn up by a single vendor. And this also assumes users are sufficiently aware of the details before they make a purchase. In any case, changing the terms after someone has made a purchase is extremely underhanded.
Filing a civil suit is expensive, the company will have far more money than the end user and can afford to tie them up for years even if their case has no merit, all the while incurring lawyer fees until they run out of money.
It doesn't matter, high price and high performance ends up in an ever shrinking niche - especially since processors have been powerful enough for 99% of users for many years already.
Intel never made anything that was performance competitive with Alpha, MIPS, POWER, HPPA or SPARC in their heydays, Intel were just much cheaper. ARM and AMD don't need to produce the best chips, just good enough chips that are cheaper.
Intel have lost the lowend to ARM, and the lowend is where the volume is.
Most people in germany during the 1930s were not nazis either... They were normal, honest hard working german citizens living in a country that was falling apart and facing huge problems, where none of the established political parties were willing to do anything about it. So they voted for the only party that offered a solution, even if that solution wasn't ideal it was the only one they had.
Sound familiar? Because history is repeating itself... Society is rapidly falling apart and the only parties promising to do anything to help the average person are the extremeist ones.
It's a political opinion when it's a political opinion... If you voice your support for hitler, and your desire for all non aryans to be exterminated then that's an opinion. If you actually try to implement that policy then it's more than an opinion.
Also you will see many countries which implement racist policies, for instance the education system in malaysia has a quota system controlling the number of available places based on your ethnicity. Many african countries also have active policies of handing resources traditionally held by whites over to black residents. While these policies clearly don't go as far as the original nazis did, many of todays neo nazis also advocate watered down ideology which only promotes preferential treatment for aryans rather than the absolute extermination of anyone else.
It's only really in the west where nationalism is frowned upon, many other countries openly want to promote their own people and ideologies at the expense of others. Immigration is also largely a western issue, the number of people permanently migrating *to* other countries is relatively small and generally tightly controlled by the government.
Referring to a german as a nazi is no less of a racial insult than any other.
Holding nazi beliefs is no different to believing in a religion. It may seem stupid and irrational to the rest of us but those who believe it usually do so blindly and will "feel offended" if you question their beliefs.
There's a difference between something like rsync, which *can* be used to download pirated content, and "Free HD Movie Player" which is designed specifically to do so.
You are spot on about the quality aspect, windows is extremely poor quality software and its users have very low expectations as a result. Regular crashing and malware outbreaks are considered normal and unavoidable...
But windows *does* badly need a properly vetted store, because it is *claiming* to be suitable for average users when clearly this is not the case.
If you're an android, ios or (most distros) linux user, you don't need much knowledge to be able to install software - you select what you want to install from the repository provided to you by the system and you'll be safe. If your a windows user, you not only require significantly more effort/knowledge to find the installation files and manually run through the installer, but you also need to be sufficiently clued up to verify the source of those files. My grandma can manage to safely install software on an ios, android or ubuntu... She wouldn't be able to do it safely on windows.
People say this about linux all the time, but truly it's windows that's not ready for the desktop. It's only suitable for geeks who understand what they're doing.
C. Microsoft know full well they are there, but they realise that piracy is a significant way to grow the user base, so they intentionally let it slide hoping it will get more users locked in.
Well that's the thing, windows is "too big to fail", so it gets a free pass in areas where others are heavily scrutinised.
For instance, PCI DSS requirement 8.2.1 says:
8.2.1 Using strong cryptography, render all authentication credentials (such as passwords/phrases) unreadable during transmission and storage on all system components.
Windows stores user passwords using the NTLM algorithm, which is based on MD4... This is not considered "Strong cryptography", i believe PCI defines acceptable "strong cryptography" elsewhere in the standard and in doing so explicitly rule out a number of older algorithms.
Piracy has always been microsoft's biggest ally... They may pay lip service to anti-piracy efforts, but were it not for piracy microsoft wouldn't be in the position they are in today. Microsoft depend on lock-in and inertia, and a huge proportion of those users who are locked in got that way with pirate versions.
If you couldn't pirate windows or its applications, then millions of users would have found something else that they could obtain for free, which would likely have resulted in millions more linux users. Many users can't or won't pay for software, and in eastern europe, asia and africa pretty much all software is pirated.
If there were that many active linux users, there would be very little (if any) windows specific software out there, it would be much easier for users in the west to switch away from windows and many would do so. windows if it still existed at all would end up as an expensive niche brand, rather like osx is, running on expensive niche hardware.
You could use various quality reducing tricks or playing in mono etc, i was able to play mp3s this way on a 25mhz 68040 (amiga), although there would also have been a lot less OS overhead than with windows.. With a 50mhz 68060 i had no problems whatsoever on amigaos, and a 100mhz mips r4600 running irix was fine too.
Exactly this.. Gab's intent is to facilitate free speech, but it's also a much smaller platform than the major players therefore has a smaller user base. The majority of people will not be aware that it exists (i wasnt before reading this story), and most people will have no reason to seek out alternatives to the major players.
Those that do seek out alternatives will be composed of a significant number of those for whom the established platforms are not usable (ie those who have been banned from them for whatever reason) and as such you'll see a disproportionate number of such people on any alternative platform, especially one that is against censorship.
Discard means "throw away", a function called discard is obviously going to destroy data and if he wasn't sure *what* data it was going to destroy he should have verified first.
That, and he should have been keeping backups of anything remotely important. Aside from screwups like this, hardware failure could strike at any moment.
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I'm sure they've heard of USD in europe, but still won't accept it in 99% of retail locations.
You might have some success using it in international airports, but thats about it.
The windows 7 license agreement already included language authorizing them to access your machine...
Except that by accepting the license terms you have granted them authorization.
You have that mixed up still...
ESSID = name
BSSID = mac address (usually of the ap's wireless interface)
Not necessarily..
In many countries, ISPs are national and their address allocations are allocated from a single national pool, you could be anywhere in a given country.
You could be using a VPN.
The externally facing ip addresses of mobile networks are also generally national, and shared with hundreds of users.
When you're using roaming data in another country it usually tunnels back to your national network too - so it has the same ip as if you were in your home country, even if your half way across the world.
IP is quite a poor way to locate someone.
The problem is that each block can only hold a finite number of transactions, so the miners will only carry those transactions that have the highest fees... Hence the scalability problem that's being talked about.
On the other hand, the long term trend of bitcoin value has been up and the swings generally go both ways...
So sometimes the value of your bitcoins will go down, but more often it will go up. You lose out on a few transactions and gain on a few more.
You could leave your cellphone at home too... Being trackable is the price you pay for the convenience of being able to use it at arbitrary locations, and there's not really any way around that since the signal could always be triangulated.
Unfortunately virtually all the devices available today work that way, tied in to someone else's service...
I too would prefer devices which are entirely under my control, but for anything remotely accessible this is difficult. There aren't enough ipv4 addresses to make everyone's home devices directly addressable, and ipv6 isnt widespread enough yet (i have yet to visit a hotel or public wifi hotspot that gave me ipv6 connectivity).
Users could set up a vpn, assuming they have their own single ipv4 address and aren't stuck behind nat but then users would need to know how to configure a vpn.
You can only choose another product if such products exist, so this only works in a competitive market not one that's been sewn up by a single vendor. And this also assumes users are sufficiently aware of the details before they make a purchase. In any case, changing the terms after someone has made a purchase is extremely underhanded.
Filing a civil suit is expensive, the company will have far more money than the end user and can afford to tie them up for years even if their case has no merit, all the while incurring lawyer fees until they run out of money.
It doesn't matter, high price and high performance ends up in an ever shrinking niche - especially since processors have been powerful enough for 99% of users for many years already.
Intel never made anything that was performance competitive with Alpha, MIPS, POWER, HPPA or SPARC in their heydays, Intel were just much cheaper. ARM and AMD don't need to produce the best chips, just good enough chips that are cheaper.
Intel have lost the lowend to ARM, and the lowend is where the volume is.
Hitler had it wrong, he shouldn't have sent his planes...
He should have sent some strongly worded letters insulting the brits instead.
Most people in germany during the 1930s were not nazis either...
They were normal, honest hard working german citizens living in a country that was falling apart and facing huge problems, where none of the established political parties were willing to do anything about it. So they voted for the only party that offered a solution, even if that solution wasn't ideal it was the only one they had.
Sound familiar? Because history is repeating itself... Society is rapidly falling apart and the only parties promising to do anything to help the average person are the extremeist ones.
It's a political opinion when it's a political opinion...
If you voice your support for hitler, and your desire for all non aryans to be exterminated then that's an opinion.
If you actually try to implement that policy then it's more than an opinion.
Also you will see many countries which implement racist policies, for instance the education system in malaysia has a quota system controlling the number of available places based on your ethnicity. Many african countries also have active policies of handing resources traditionally held by whites over to black residents.
While these policies clearly don't go as far as the original nazis did, many of todays neo nazis also advocate watered down ideology which only promotes preferential treatment for aryans rather than the absolute extermination of anyone else.
It's only really in the west where nationalism is frowned upon, many other countries openly want to promote their own people and ideologies at the expense of others. Immigration is also largely a western issue, the number of people permanently migrating *to* other countries is relatively small and generally tightly controlled by the government.
Referring to a german as a nazi is no less of a racial insult than any other.
Holding nazi beliefs is no different to believing in a religion. It may seem stupid and irrational to the rest of us but those who believe it usually do so blindly and will "feel offended" if you question their beliefs.
There's a difference between something like rsync, which *can* be used to download pirated content, and "Free HD Movie Player" which is designed specifically to do so.
You are spot on about the quality aspect, windows is extremely poor quality software and its users have very low expectations as a result. Regular crashing and malware outbreaks are considered normal and unavoidable...
But windows *does* badly need a properly vetted store, because it is *claiming* to be suitable for average users when clearly this is not the case.
If you're an android, ios or (most distros) linux user, you don't need much knowledge to be able to install software - you select what you want to install from the repository provided to you by the system and you'll be safe.
If your a windows user, you not only require significantly more effort/knowledge to find the installation files and manually run through the installer, but you also need to be sufficiently clued up to verify the source of those files.
My grandma can manage to safely install software on an ios, android or ubuntu... She wouldn't be able to do it safely on windows.
People say this about linux all the time, but truly it's windows that's not ready for the desktop. It's only suitable for geeks who understand what they're doing.
Or:
C. Microsoft know full well they are there, but they realise that piracy is a significant way to grow the user base, so they intentionally let it slide hoping it will get more users locked in.
Well that's the thing, windows is "too big to fail", so it gets a free pass in areas where others are heavily scrutinised.
For instance, PCI DSS requirement 8.2.1 says:
8.2.1 Using strong cryptography, render all authentication credentials (such as passwords/phrases) unreadable during transmission and storage on all system components.
Windows stores user passwords using the NTLM algorithm, which is based on MD4... This is not considered "Strong cryptography", i believe PCI defines acceptable "strong cryptography" elsewhere in the standard and in doing so explicitly rule out a number of older algorithms.
Piracy has always been microsoft's biggest ally...
They may pay lip service to anti-piracy efforts, but were it not for piracy microsoft wouldn't be in the position they are in today. Microsoft depend on lock-in and inertia, and a huge proportion of those users who are locked in got that way with pirate versions.
If you couldn't pirate windows or its applications, then millions of users would have found something else that they could obtain for free, which would likely have resulted in millions more linux users. Many users can't or won't pay for software, and in eastern europe, asia and africa pretty much all software is pirated.
If there were that many active linux users, there would be very little (if any) windows specific software out there, it would be much easier for users in the west to switch away from windows and many would do so. windows if it still existed at all would end up as an expensive niche brand, rather like osx is, running on expensive niche hardware.
You could use various quality reducing tricks or playing in mono etc, i was able to play mp3s this way on a 25mhz 68040 (amiga), although there would also have been a lot less OS overhead than with windows..
With a 50mhz 68060 i had no problems whatsoever on amigaos, and a 100mhz mips r4600 running irix was fine too.
Exactly this..
Gab's intent is to facilitate free speech, but it's also a much smaller platform than the major players therefore has a smaller user base. The majority of people will not be aware that it exists (i wasnt before reading this story), and most people will have no reason to seek out alternatives to the major players.
Those that do seek out alternatives will be composed of a significant number of those for whom the established platforms are not usable (ie those who have been banned from them for whatever reason) and as such you'll see a disproportionate number of such people on any alternative platform, especially one that is against censorship.
Try Myanmar, they drive on the right but 95% of cars on the roads are right hand drive cars imported from Japan...
Discard means "throw away", a function called discard is obviously going to destroy data and if he wasn't sure *what* data it was going to destroy he should have verified first.
That, and he should have been keeping backups of anything remotely important. Aside from screwups like this, hardware failure could strike at any moment.
By the same metric, the built in browser on mobile platforms should be banned as it allows access to such content.
Or an SSD with trim support, so the unused blocks get cleared rather than simply being marked unused.