It's not kudos for bitcoin even if the design itself is proven perfect, because bitcoins are useless without practical implementations and real markets, and if those real-world applications continually fail for external reasons, the bitcoin economy will never take off.
Put a little differently, it doesn't matter how perfect bitcoin is on paper. If it can't be made to work in real life, it's useless. And if the computing infrastructure on which bitcoin transactions occur is fundamentally un-securable, then it can't be made to work in real life. It's like deploying an uncrackable ATM in a crime-ridden neighbourhood. It doesn't matter that you can't break into the ATM if you just have to wait for someone to withdraw cash and then rob them.
Given the frequency with which the stories are about the pratfalls of the bitcoin community that repeatedly damage its credibility as a replacement currency, I'd guess zero.
I'm not thinking narrowly about the power of data, I'm recognizing that there are barriers to exploiting data economically based on the fact that, for most of what businesses do, they just don't need all that data. You're positing tremendous potential for advanced uses of data; I'm pointing out that most businesses aren't even set up or capable or desiring to do even mildly complicated things with vast data sets. Most businesses struggle to do normal things well, or recognize (like the Flames) that adding a bunch of data won't improve what they already know how to do.
And what makes you think they'll stop inventing new devices?
As someone involved the tech world in exactly this "data is king" business model, I can tell you from direct experience that there's a hard limit on the value of data, and that's the value placed on it by business consumers. To quote the Calgary Flames marketing department, "we don't give a shit about surveying our customers". And they don't. They know who their customers are, what their demographic profile is, etc. They cared about (and used) our product because it offered another avenue of engagement, which is a separate concern.
Everyone involved in the data side always spins great fantasies about precision marketing and deep knowledge of your customers, without acknowledging that in many cases, deep knowledge isn't even useful or worth paying for because it doesn't increase engagement or conversion rates or redemption ratios. Remember Xmarks, the bookmarks plugin people who thought there'd be tremendous value in having an aggregate-able database of everyone's bookmarks? They built that database, and then ran out of money because no one wanted to do anything with it. They were saved only because someone else saw an opportunity to sell a premium version of their plugin.
I'm not saying data's worthless, by any means. But it's not particularly valuable in and of itself.
Pffft. My mother did, and I'm healthy. As did that whole generation of women.
It's actually turning into a bit of a scandal, really: All the "pregnant women must live lives of total abstinence of anything tasty or fun" is now showing, statistically, to have made little difference in health outcomes in pregnancies over the last couple decades. Normal consumption of alcohol has been shown to have zero consequences--fetal alcohol syndrome is caused by alcoholics continuing to be alcoholics.
The reason routine medical care makes such a difference in pregnancy outcomes is detection and early treatment. Conditions that are minor (and cheaply treated) when caught early and quickly can easily become fatal to the fetus if left untreated. The U.S.'s shockingly high infant mortality rate is basically explained by the fact that 20 million women don't have access to routine health care while pregnant.
Infant mortality is primarily determined by adequate routine medical care during pregnancy. The U.S.'s high rate is due almost entirely to the cohort of women without access to health care. The metrics are entirely different.
If you can afford a Lexus, why buy a Ford? Sure, the U.S. offers the best luxury health care, and that draws wealthy "consumers" the world over. What do you think that says about the average level of quality of U.S. health care? Or about the fact that 40 million Americans have only ER medicine available to them, at approx. 10 times the cost to the taxpayer of routine care.
Because across a whole population, you would expect that the sum total of benefits of things like exercise, good medical care, healthy lifestyle choices, etc. would show up in life expectancy. When you have two populations, like Canada and the U.S., who have pretty comparable lifestyles overall, it seems like a reasonable, if blunt, proxy for the overall quality of health care.
In the case of Canada and the U.S. at least, more on-point aggregate measures show the same thing: Canadians as a whole get better health care than Americans, and seem to have less trouble making appropriate cost/benefit tradeoffs in their health care.
And when you don't directly have to pay for it (ie Medicare) then you don't care about the cost to benefit.
This isn't true in UHC countries like Canada or France or Sweden, so why would it be true in the U.S.? In UHC countries, annual per capita spending is around 55% of what it is in the U.S. (in 2010, $3,900 to $7,400), and they have better aggregate outcomes as measured by things like life expectancy (average 2+ years higher in UHC countries than in the U.S.). With UHC schemes, it looks pretty clearly like they pay less and get more effective medical treatment.
It's their problem right up to the point they decide they should start a nuclear war with you that they might win (or lose less than you), rather than face an enemy you can't nuke, but who can nuke you, and thus dictate terms to you. Better death than slavery, say.
The basis of not having a nuclear exchange during the Cold War was that it was impossible to nuke your enemies without getting nuked in return. An effective anti-nuke shield makes it plausible to launch a "winnable" nuclear war. And if you're the one without the effective shield, you're suddenly feeling defensive and cornered and you've got a lot of nukes laying around.
the usefulness of tablets is purely a marketing creation
Riiiiiiiight. Because "useful to me" is synonymous with "useful to anyone". You're the ur-consumer. Everyone actually enjoying and consistently using their tablets is doing it wrong.
How is it obvious that clicking the comment title collapses and opens the threaded discussion following it? What part of "comment title" says to you "window shade"?
The invasions of Lebanon were provoked by Hezbollah firing rockets; the attacks on the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear reactors were to prevent those two countries from possibly developing nuclear weapons and challenging Israel as the local nuclear power.
And Iraq, 1981, when they destroyed Saddam's nuclear reactor, and then did the same in Syria in 2007. You can argue those aren't "invasions", I suppose, since they were targeted attacks rather than ground forces moving in and leading to occupation, but they were unprovoked military attacks that would be considered casus belli by the victims.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not kudos for bitcoin even if the design itself is proven perfect, because bitcoins are useless without practical implementations and real markets, and if those real-world applications continually fail for external reasons, the bitcoin economy will never take off.
Put a little differently, it doesn't matter how perfect bitcoin is on paper. If it can't be made to work in real life, it's useless. And if the computing infrastructure on which bitcoin transactions occur is fundamentally un-securable, then it can't be made to work in real life. It's like deploying an uncrackable ATM in a crime-ridden neighbourhood. It doesn't matter that you can't break into the ATM if you just have to wait for someone to withdraw cash and then rob them.
Given the frequency with which the stories are about the pratfalls of the bitcoin community that repeatedly damage its credibility as a replacement currency, I'd guess zero.
Zombie Steve Jobs still gets to skullfuck Foxconn employees to death, right? That's what made Apple what it is today!
This comment is (uncharacteristically for /.) brilliant.
Yeah, this is a giant load of horseshit. So is the rest of your post.
I'm not thinking narrowly about the power of data, I'm recognizing that there are barriers to exploiting data economically based on the fact that, for most of what businesses do, they just don't need all that data. You're positing tremendous potential for advanced uses of data; I'm pointing out that most businesses aren't even set up or capable or desiring to do even mildly complicated things with vast data sets. Most businesses struggle to do normal things well, or recognize (like the Flames) that adding a bunch of data won't improve what they already know how to do.
And what makes you think they'll stop inventing new devices?
As someone involved the tech world in exactly this "data is king" business model, I can tell you from direct experience that there's a hard limit on the value of data, and that's the value placed on it by business consumers. To quote the Calgary Flames marketing department, "we don't give a shit about surveying our customers". And they don't. They know who their customers are, what their demographic profile is, etc. They cared about (and used) our product because it offered another avenue of engagement, which is a separate concern.
Everyone involved in the data side always spins great fantasies about precision marketing and deep knowledge of your customers, without acknowledging that in many cases, deep knowledge isn't even useful or worth paying for because it doesn't increase engagement or conversion rates or redemption ratios. Remember Xmarks, the bookmarks plugin people who thought there'd be tremendous value in having an aggregate-able database of everyone's bookmarks? They built that database, and then ran out of money because no one wanted to do anything with it. They were saved only because someone else saw an opportunity to sell a premium version of their plugin.
I'm not saying data's worthless, by any means. But it's not particularly valuable in and of itself.
Ah, you've been digging up pundit's predictions from 2002, I see.
Because the minute someone offers you $1b, you think you're worth 1.1.
Pffft. My mother did, and I'm healthy. As did that whole generation of women.
It's actually turning into a bit of a scandal, really: All the "pregnant women must live lives of total abstinence of anything tasty or fun" is now showing, statistically, to have made little difference in health outcomes in pregnancies over the last couple decades. Normal consumption of alcohol has been shown to have zero consequences--fetal alcohol syndrome is caused by alcoholics continuing to be alcoholics.
The reason routine medical care makes such a difference in pregnancy outcomes is detection and early treatment. Conditions that are minor (and cheaply treated) when caught early and quickly can easily become fatal to the fetus if left untreated. The U.S.'s shockingly high infant mortality rate is basically explained by the fact that 20 million women don't have access to routine health care while pregnant.
Infant mortality is primarily determined by adequate routine medical care during pregnancy. The U.S.'s high rate is due almost entirely to the cohort of women without access to health care. The metrics are entirely different.
If you can afford a Lexus, why buy a Ford? Sure, the U.S. offers the best luxury health care, and that draws wealthy "consumers" the world over. What do you think that says about the average level of quality of U.S. health care? Or about the fact that 40 million Americans have only ER medicine available to them, at approx. 10 times the cost to the taxpayer of routine care.
Because across a whole population, you would expect that the sum total of benefits of things like exercise, good medical care, healthy lifestyle choices, etc. would show up in life expectancy. When you have two populations, like Canada and the U.S., who have pretty comparable lifestyles overall, it seems like a reasonable, if blunt, proxy for the overall quality of health care.
In the case of Canada and the U.S. at least, more on-point aggregate measures show the same thing: Canadians as a whole get better health care than Americans, and seem to have less trouble making appropriate cost/benefit tradeoffs in their health care.
This isn't true in UHC countries like Canada or France or Sweden, so why would it be true in the U.S.? In UHC countries, annual per capita spending is around 55% of what it is in the U.S. (in 2010, $3,900 to $7,400), and they have better aggregate outcomes as measured by things like life expectancy (average 2+ years higher in UHC countries than in the U.S.). With UHC schemes, it looks pretty clearly like they pay less and get more effective medical treatment.
No, because they'd need to sour on all electronics to avoid Foxxcon's (and its ilk's) moral taint.
It's not an Apple problem, it's an industry problem, and Apple does better than most at identifying and correcting these conditions.
It's their problem right up to the point they decide they should start a nuclear war with you that they might win (or lose less than you), rather than face an enemy you can't nuke, but who can nuke you, and thus dictate terms to you. Better death than slavery, say.
The basis of not having a nuclear exchange during the Cold War was that it was impossible to nuke your enemies without getting nuked in return. An effective anti-nuke shield makes it plausible to launch a "winnable" nuclear war. And if you're the one without the effective shield, you're suddenly feeling defensive and cornered and you've got a lot of nukes laying around.
Riiiiiiiight. Because "useful to me" is synonymous with "useful to anyone". You're the ur-consumer. Everyone actually enjoying and consistently using their tablets is doing it wrong.
How is it obvious that clicking the comment title collapses and opens the threaded discussion following it? What part of "comment title" says to you "window shade"?
The invasions of Lebanon were provoked by Hezbollah firing rockets; the attacks on the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear reactors were to prevent those two countries from possibly developing nuclear weapons and challenging Israel as the local nuclear power.
And then there was the invasion of Lebanon again in 2006.
And Iraq, 1981, when they destroyed Saddam's nuclear reactor, and then did the same in Syria in 2007. You can argue those aren't "invasions", I suppose, since they were targeted attacks rather than ground forces moving in and leading to occupation, but they were unprovoked military attacks that would be considered casus belli by the victims.
Lebanon, 1982?
Well put.
Well, that was exactly my point to the poster above arguing that the 70 lb. paper package was somehow superior to a 3 lb. iPad with maps installed.