International companies lobby to bring down border restriction to international trade and then try to enforce their own. Having the cake, eating it and charging you premiums for it is not going to work for very long...
Because this fee will be (presumably) the same in any country, which IMHO is the main selling point of BTC : no more silly transaction fees between my French account and the Japanese ATM. 1% + $1.5 is quite cheap.
we should be asking if it's in the public interest
It is not. It gives an unfair advantage to company who practice it, and while it is an essential economic element of the current ecosystem of the web, it is essentially what held back micropayments for all these years.
I personally don't have any clue why they are priced so high.
They sell at a high price what they produce at a low price. And people have yet to understand that. Because it is shiny and has a good finish, they believe it is worth twice the price of a competitor. They sure have taste in where to add $5 to the manufacturing process. It is that simple.
South Korea is officially at war with a country that owns nuclear weapons. There are racks of gas masks in subways in Seoul in case of surprise chemical attack and Kim's artillery pieces are at 10 km of its center (well within range). I think that the remote possibility of a slight nuclear pollution is less of a concern for them, yes. When you are used to live with shells pointed at one minute from your head, people who say that nuclear reactors are an intolerable risk seem a little over-the -top.
You can still have the same experience today, by paying an amount similar to what the ticket cost in those days. Fly in first class, the experience is totally different.
Ah, and in those days, I think that most international trips required several refueling stops. The plane had to be comfortable because you were there for 2 or 3 days.
That would happen in a sane world. My guess is that Google is doing exactly what they bought Motorola for : escalate all this to defcon 1 to see how crazy the whole system is right now.
In a natural disaster, the rules change. What was a 5 minutes trip may now be a life-endangering trip. If you can know where the roads are cut, where the gangs are shooting people, where medical help is being sent, you will risk far less. You'll know if it is worth swimming all the way to downtown. And if you know where an hospital has been sent or tell a rescue team where you are, you can save lives. Communications network is a thing that rescue teams set up on day one to coordinate their teams.
Technology-enabled telepathy is actually what I call cellphones today : you hold a talisman, another talisman rings and transmits speech. Just implant it if you want, but the magic is already done.
Heh give the specs, have the driver. It works that way for closed-source drivers, and open source developers manage the incredible feat to reverse engineer hardware in order to write workable devices.
Complaining about badly working closed devices on linux is like taunting a basketball player you just cuffed for not managing to move as swiftly as the others...
Hmmmm.... is open source driver development the equivalent of the capoiera martial art ?
Mr Assange is not a diplomat or an Ecuador citizen
There are ways to change that really fast, especially if Ecuadorian officials are pissed off seeing UK using extraordinary procedures in that case. In 24h, Assange can be a member of the diplomatic staff and a citizen of Ecuador with a legal passport.
I don't know Ecuador well, but it is said that they don't have a very good reputation when it comes to human rights. They have everything to gain in being on the good side of this case and of showing that UK-US is really selective about which rights they choose to follow.
I wonder how many other scientific breakthroughs are just sitting behind paywalls waiting for anyone to conduct basic followup on a research paper.
Here, fixed that for you. As a CS professional and biology hobbyist, I once decided to use my free time to get a specialization in gerontology genomics and to help open source projects in bioinformatics. I then discovered that 90% of the papers in the field are behind paywalls that even some universities can't access. I needed to read maybe 100-200 papers to have a good view of the field. At 25$ each, it made it expensive to volunteer freely for research projects...
- Liquid nitrogen boils at 77 K (â'196 ÂC; â'321 ÂF), it is very cheap and a hobbyist can get this easily.
- Liquid helium boils at 3-4 K and is also produced industrially.
If you have something that requires a low temperature but no lower than 77K, it is very easy : just dip it in liquid nitrogen.
If you have something that requires 10K, it is "easy" also : put it into liquid helium.
I think it is fair to say that "near absolute zero" is a sentence that supposes heavy cryogenic installations. 10 K is far easier than that.
I think that today, in any OECD city of a moderate size, if you post an info saying "Technomancy next Tuesday at the mall ! Bring old computers, we help you install linux. Get back with a functioning, if slow, computer. Hardware donations accepted." you will have a lot, and I mean A LOT of donated hardware.
Within a few week we had to refuse too old hardware, because our usable volume was full.
The most obvious motivation I see would be to plant fake interesting information to make NASA consider a manned mission quicker than their current agenda.
Yes, it would be good if you kept your hobbyists on your side of the Atlantic, but as much as I find these lawsuits frivolous, it is worth noticing that these were about design patents, not software patents which are still illegal and untested in France.
It is strange but many IT entrepreneurs in France don't see the silicon valley as a dreamland. This is a place where you go to get investors, but you certainly don't open a company there. Software patents is really a strategical consideration that make our (moderately) higher tax rates seem a worthy cost.
Why not ? Bittorrent is a great company, I am grateful to them for creating and opening their protocol. Obviously, I won't use their official client as I am allergic to advertisement, but if they manage to find clients for this kind of things and have a cash flow to finance R&D in bittorrent, kudos to them !
People who do FOSS for companies are actually into "corporate charity". They will be happy if you can help improve the software, but if you can't, feedback is always welcomed.
Most FOSS can be tested by their developers, but a few can't and really need real user feedback : real company accounting, real medical usage, these are not easily done by a developer "for testing".
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone knew that it was unlikely to be anything more than a hacking tool before version 2.0
I still like that Google are making sure that no one can get data from them without their accord. It is a separate issue.
International companies lobby to bring down border restriction to international trade and then try to enforce their own. Having the cake, eating it and charging you premiums for it is not going to work for very long...
Because this fee will be (presumably) the same in any country, which IMHO is the main selling point of BTC : no more silly transaction fees between my French account and the Japanese ATM. 1% + $1.5 is quite cheap.
we should be asking if it's in the public interest
It is not. It gives an unfair advantage to company who practice it, and while it is an essential economic element of the current ecosystem of the web, it is essentially what held back micropayments for all these years.
I personally don't have any clue why they are priced so high.
They sell at a high price what they produce at a low price. And people have yet to understand that. Because it is shiny and has a good finish, they believe it is worth twice the price of a competitor. They sure have taste in where to add $5 to the manufacturing process. It is that simple.
South Korea is officially at war with a country that owns nuclear weapons. There are racks of gas masks in subways in Seoul in case of surprise chemical attack and Kim's artillery pieces are at 10 km of its center (well within range). I think that the remote possibility of a slight nuclear pollution is less of a concern for them, yes. When you are used to live with shells pointed at one minute from your head, people who say that nuclear reactors are an intolerable risk seem a little over-the -top.
You can still have the same experience today, by paying an amount similar to what the ticket cost in those days. Fly in first class, the experience is totally different.
Ah, and in those days, I think that most international trips required several refueling stops. The plane had to be comfortable because you were there for 2 or 3 days.
That would happen in a sane world. My guess is that Google is doing exactly what they bought Motorola for : escalate all this to defcon 1 to see how crazy the whole system is right now.
You have to admit that having to attach a cryogenic system on the shark also has a touch to it, too...
How can this be legal? Isn't that religious discrimination? Is it authorized in US?
In a natural disaster, the rules change. What was a 5 minutes trip may now be a life-endangering trip. If you can know where the roads are cut, where the gangs are shooting people, where medical help is being sent, you will risk far less. You'll know if it is worth swimming all the way to downtown.
And if you know where an hospital has been sent or tell a rescue team where you are, you can save lives. Communications network is a thing that rescue teams set up on day one to coordinate their teams.
Or you may be from section 9...
Technology-enabled telepathy is actually what I call cellphones today : you hold a talisman, another talisman rings and transmits speech. Just implant it if you want, but the magic is already done.
Heh give the specs, have the driver. It works that way for closed-source drivers, and open source developers manage the incredible feat to reverse engineer hardware in order to write workable devices.
Complaining about badly working closed devices on linux is like taunting a basketball player you just cuffed for not managing to move as swiftly as the others...
Hmmmm.... is open source driver development the equivalent of the capoiera martial art ?
Mr Assange is not a diplomat or an Ecuador citizen
There are ways to change that really fast, especially if Ecuadorian officials are pissed off seeing UK using extraordinary procedures in that case. In 24h, Assange can be a member of the diplomatic staff and a citizen of Ecuador with a legal passport.
I don't know Ecuador well, but it is said that they don't have a very good reputation when it comes to human rights. They have everything to gain in being on the good side of this case and of showing that UK-US is really selective about which rights they choose to follow.
I wonder how many other scientific breakthroughs are just sitting behind paywalls waiting for anyone to conduct basic followup on a research paper.
Here, fixed that for you. As a CS professional and biology hobbyist, I once decided to use my free time to get a specialization in gerontology genomics and to help open source projects in bioinformatics. I then discovered that 90% of the papers in the field are behind paywalls that even some universities can't access. I needed to read maybe 100-200 papers to have a good view of the field. At 25$ each, it made it expensive to volunteer freely for research projects...
Just to elaborate :
- Liquid nitrogen boils at 77 K (â'196 ÂC; â'321 ÂF), it is very cheap and a hobbyist can get this easily.
- Liquid helium boils at 3-4 K and is also produced industrially.
If you have something that requires a low temperature but no lower than 77K, it is very easy : just dip it in liquid nitrogen.
If you have something that requires 10K, it is "easy" also : put it into liquid helium.
I think it is fair to say that "near absolute zero" is a sentence that supposes heavy cryogenic installations. 10 K is far easier than that.
I think that today, in any OECD city of a moderate size, if you post an info saying "Technomancy next Tuesday at the mall ! Bring old computers, we help you install linux. Get back with a functioning, if slow, computer. Hardware donations accepted." you will have a lot, and I mean A LOT of donated hardware.
Within a few week we had to refuse too old hardware, because our usable volume was full.
The most obvious motivation I see would be to plant fake interesting information to make NASA consider a manned mission quicker than their current agenda.
Yes, it would be good if you kept your hobbyists on your side of the Atlantic, but as much as I find these lawsuits frivolous, it is worth noticing that these were about design patents, not software patents which are still illegal and untested in France.
It is strange but many IT entrepreneurs in France don't see the silicon valley as a dreamland. This is a place where you go to get investors, but you certainly don't open a company there. Software patents is really a strategical consideration that make our (moderately) higher tax rates seem a worthy cost.
Why not ? Bittorrent is a great company, I am grateful to them for creating and opening their protocol. Obviously, I won't use their official client as I am allergic to advertisement, but if they manage to find clients for this kind of things and have a cash flow to finance R&D in bittorrent, kudos to them !
People who do FOSS for companies are actually into "corporate charity". They will be happy if you can help improve the software, but if you can't, feedback is always welcomed.
Most FOSS can be tested by their developers, but a few can't and really need real user feedback : real company accounting, real medical usage, these are not easily done by a developer "for testing".
Hé! Germany! Bring us le popcorn! They are doing this election thing again!