I think there's a mentality where you want the best possible conversational outcome. And you're surprised time and time again to find you're only one half of the equation and she just wants an alright conversation.
Video Games, for example are THE FUNNEST THING EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. Some people have not found their genre yet. People who don't try and find their genre are just an example of someone not open to new things.
Once you get INTO playing games (or watching movies, TV or Anime together) it's tough to get out of and go out and see people. However if you're an awkward guy it's tough being around people without them associating awkward sexual motives to you (or rendering you a sexless cheerful teddybear, in danger of having opinions stomped) without a girlfriend to point to. So it's tough either way.
Ideally you have a girlfriend money, and the ability to go out and socialize. But really the three tend to be horribly interrelated unless you really nail it.
My best times were spent with close friends drinking, gaming, and talking. If economies of scale had worked out for gamers there would be LAN parties every night after work. But because games have been marginalized and criticised the laptop industry hasn't really embraced decent gaming graphics cards which has kept gamers attached to their towers. Something that can't be shared with a girlfriend or a group of drinking buddies easily.
Eventually a game will come along to unite the masses. Something not everyone loves, but no one really objects to and that is fun and social. Thinking back the last one I can think of was quake 1. Which had 1v1 for spectators and bragging rights and Random free for all death match. Which was just a giant melee of randomness. That made it so people could focus and not socialize and maybe do a bit better or they could just relax and let each kill or death not faze them at all.
Something like CIVILIZATION 2 would be good, since it has broad appeal is amazingly fun, kind of random. But it's too slow and advantages accrue too fast.
Globalization was always going to hurt the majority of musicians. It's not all the internet you know.
There are billions more people, better connected and people can only listen to so much music.
Yea, live shows will still be popular, largely because people are willing to compromise and see a band they kind of like. But online sales will become more and more concentrated, even with independent artists having better access to recording equipment and distribution.
"I cannot, of course, defend in any way the use of police resources in this particular case. I'm sure we'd all want to help our kid out similarly, but I imagine the smart among us would have done it informally and off the clock."
Really you see no benefit to teaching a child that the police really do work. That they take theft and other crime seriously and are effective in deterring it? That the phone was really misplaced and not stolen? With all the implications for that child's perspective on what society is and means?
And criminals are becoming better educated. Society needs to invest in more and better trained police and judges.
With more and better trained policemen, detectives, and judges spending on intelligence services and civil rights violations could be cut. The types of crime that make people feel disenfranchised could be cut down and society could be a better, safer and happier place.
Currently law enforcement budgets are being cut, putting "serve and protect" on the back burner. Funds are being dumped into homeland security which treats some crimes differently than others leading to people feeling that the system is biased. Further it is eroding our civil liberties, which again makes people dislike their government and society and increases anxiety and hostility towards authority.
Would you pay $0.005 to place a bet on your CS, Starcraft, L4D2 or other match? If it would ensure people tried hard? Maybe on a sent e-mail?
Micropayments have billions of applications, and BTC is the perfect medium for them.
BTC makes transactions that don't pay taxes into the military industrial complex easier. If BTC exchanges put a 1% tax rate on transactions that went to the UN or UNESCO the world would survive and be a better place than current taxes that go to regional governments which shore up their profits with violence.
The people that are attacking Bitcoin as a whole aren't hackers. Hackers and intellectuals are inspired by the possibility of Bitcoin, a universal currency that appreciates constantly at the maximum level. No more booms, or busts, no more shady deals, no more loans you apply for in a tie.
The people concerned about Bitcoin are governments, security agencies and anyone that believes in the "pounding flesh and smiling" agenda that has separated the richest from the poorest and removed the representation in representational democracy.
The way they will attack Bitcoin is simple. They will keep the price low spending a tiny bit of money (it's trivially easy if you look at it like a math problem) and then when everyone stops "mining" (read hashing) they will insert enough hardware to take over the block chain and either a.) compromise all the coins. or b.) put in a bunch of BS transactions to make everyone run away from the currency.
Yes, the cryptography is solid. But efforts like Namecoin show that the users aren't cohesive enough to handle keeping the hashes seeded with random numbers properly. Eventually people who don't understand cryptography will be sucked into an effort that devalues the currency they are creating.
In the mean time BTC remains a threat to the political state. Though not perhaps to the political will or the will of the people.
Ron Paul forgot about inflation. Which has been "really bad" since the republican congress and house and Bush 1's cut taxes on capital gains and highest income taxes.
I'm not totally against Ron Paul, I think he needs to be considered in the current political climate where the U.S. treasury, intelligence services and bureaucracy set laws and rules which are "above review." Meaning that the U.S. government can get about 1/3 of their real policy objectives implemented.
If Ron Paul got 1/3 of his objectives completed it would certainly put the fear of god into overspending in government. And it would not be irreversible.
Charging a battery or taking on hydrogen would be much more feasible with a driver-less car. I think the two will probably be released together and work to support one another.
London just banned driving in it's downtown core. They might be more willing to accept highly efficient single lanes of traffic that charge/refill when stopped to let pedestrians cross.
Really a car company could start by getting profits from: Insurance, recharging/refilling and rental (distance or cleaning or hourly). Car companies are MASSIVE they could certainly convert a few test cities.
I'm pretty stoked for solar panels under intersections that produce either electricity or hydrogen for injection into cars stopped at the lights.
Cars produce 16x as much pollution being built as they will over an average lifetime on the road.
The same is true for most electronics. The arguement about power savings should be becoming less of an issue as nuclear power becomes more popular, unfortunately a few "mistakes and mishaps" and a hell of a lot of marketing have made that less popular.
Planned obsolescence should be illegal, the three r's of environmentalism are in that order for a reason: reduce, reuse, recycle. Recycle is by far the least efficient, it will be becoming more efficient when technologies like 3D printing come into popular use but until then you do more for the environment by maintaining your equipment or buying two potential used solutions than buying a single new solution.
Yes it seems likely that the Chinese will put a backdoor into their chip. Which is bad. But is it worse than backdoors in say, Intel or AMD motherboards or chips... probably not. With the chinese CPU backdoor plan eventually a Linux will be released that fixes the problem, with American chips/motherboards/OSs it will probably take a lot longer and be more difficult to identify the backdoors/security holes. Also since they are driven by capitalism not communism many more backdoors and "bugs" will be accepted as non-intentional... also reducing how vehemently security researchers will search for and remove backdoors.
Been thinking a long time about 3D printing in the context of Neal Stephenson's - The Diamond Age. Particularly about the relative recycle-ability of various materials. Glass seems pretty ideal from a flexibility (can be used many ways) and recycling perspective. The high heat required to return it to a liquid state is a problem, as is it's brittleness (not suitable for as many applications as plastic).
Does anyone have a link to a glass 3D printing machine?
Well a lot of people are concerned about the security of the BTC notion. I'd like to bring up something that a lot of Slashdoters are familiar with.
That is that as an individual trader you are at the low end of the reliability spectrum when it comes to trading and finances. If your bank goes bust you will probably not receive your money. If there is a sudden drop in markets, your trades won't be processed for hours or days. Probably not an issue unless there's a war or some other kind of major event, like the U.S. black swan.
Second there are currently 2 senate subcommittees trying to figure out what to do about BTC. While a lot of people think that the government will simply outlaw the currency it becomes an issue in that anything can conceivably be considered a currency. Outlawing barter in a country is probably a bad idea.
Third Bitcoin is a problem for government because it is essentially impossible to tax at this point, that's not saying it will always be that way. If you've been watching the pips carefully you can see that there's been pressure to keep the price stable (and low) many many Bitcoin traders are simply cashing in on this to increase their share. It's relatively cheap to push the price of a stock down, but it does cost a bit and that cost is being soaked up.
So: buy 1 BTC. If it becomes viable for microtransactions, you win. If there's a war, you win. If you trade it every day for a little piece of the money being spent to keep the price stable, you win! If you get to stop reading articles about BTC because you have one... you win!
Slashdot Mirror
I think there's a mentality where you want the best possible conversational outcome. And you're surprised time and time again to find you're only one half of the equation and she just wants an alright conversation.
Video Games, for example are THE FUNNEST THING EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. Some people have not found their genre yet. People who don't try and find their genre are just an example of someone not open to new things.
Once you get INTO playing games (or watching movies, TV or Anime together) it's tough to get out of and go out and see people. However if you're an awkward guy it's tough being around people without them associating awkward sexual motives to you (or rendering you a sexless cheerful teddybear, in danger of having opinions stomped) without a girlfriend to point to. So it's tough either way.
Ideally you have a girlfriend money, and the ability to go out and socialize. But really the three tend to be horribly interrelated unless you really nail it.
My best times were spent with close friends drinking, gaming, and talking. If economies of scale had worked out for gamers there would be LAN parties every night after work. But because games have been marginalized and criticised the laptop industry hasn't really embraced decent gaming graphics cards which has kept gamers attached to their towers. Something that can't be shared with a girlfriend or a group of drinking buddies easily.
Eventually a game will come along to unite the masses. Something not everyone loves, but no one really objects to and that is fun and social. Thinking back the last one I can think of was quake 1. Which had 1v1 for spectators and bragging rights and Random free for all death match. Which was just a giant melee of randomness. That made it so people could focus and not socialize and maybe do a bit better or they could just relax and let each kill or death not faze them at all.
Something like CIVILIZATION 2 would be good, since it has broad appeal is amazingly fun, kind of random. But it's too slow and advantages accrue too fast.
There's a glut of everything. That's what happens when technology keeps getting better and we don't work shorter hours.
And yes, this same process will lead to higher concentrations of wealth as well. In entertainment obviously, as well.
Globalization was always going to hurt the majority of musicians. It's not all the internet you know.
There are billions more people, better connected and people can only listen to so much music.
Yea, live shows will still be popular, largely because people are willing to compromise and see a band they kind of like. But online sales will become more and more concentrated, even with independent artists having better access to recording equipment and distribution.
WOOT!
"I cannot, of course, defend in any way the use of police resources in this particular case. I'm sure we'd all want to help our kid out similarly, but I imagine the smart among us would have done it informally and off the clock."
Really you see no benefit to teaching a child that the police really do work. That they take theft and other crime seriously and are effective in deterring it?
That the phone was really misplaced and not stolen? With all the implications for that child's perspective on what society is and means?
"have a stolen device list that will disable stolen phones."
Mind describing how to do this in a way which can't be abused?
And criminals are becoming better educated. Society needs to invest in more and better trained police and judges.
With more and better trained policemen, detectives, and judges spending on intelligence services and civil rights violations could be cut. The types of crime that make people feel disenfranchised could be cut down and society could be a better, safer and happier place.
Currently law enforcement budgets are being cut, putting "serve and protect" on the back burner. Funds are being dumped into homeland security which treats some crimes differently than others leading to people feeling that the system is biased. Further it is eroding our civil liberties, which again makes people dislike their government and society and increases anxiety and hostility towards authority.
It's really a no brainer.
No one wants to be associated with something that is primarily used to transfer illegal goods?
I LOVE BITTORRENT! LOVE IT! IT'S AWESOME
Would you pay $0.005 to place a bet on your CS, Starcraft, L4D2 or other match? If it would ensure people tried hard? Maybe on a sent e-mail?
Micropayments have billions of applications, and BTC is the perfect medium for them.
BTC makes transactions that don't pay taxes into the military industrial complex easier. If BTC exchanges put a 1% tax rate on transactions that went to the UN or UNESCO the world would survive and be a better place than current taxes that go to regional governments which shore up their profits with violence.
The people that are attacking Bitcoin as a whole aren't hackers. Hackers and intellectuals are inspired by the possibility of Bitcoin, a universal currency that appreciates constantly at the maximum level. No more booms, or busts, no more shady deals, no more loans you apply for in a tie.
The people concerned about Bitcoin are governments, security agencies and anyone that believes in the "pounding flesh and smiling" agenda that has separated the richest from the poorest and removed the representation in representational democracy.
The way they will attack Bitcoin is simple. They will keep the price low spending a tiny bit of money (it's trivially easy if you look at it like a math problem) and then when everyone stops "mining" (read hashing) they will insert enough hardware to take over the block chain and either a.) compromise all the coins. or b.) put in a bunch of BS transactions to make everyone run away from the currency.
Yes, the cryptography is solid. But efforts like Namecoin show that the users aren't cohesive enough to handle keeping the hashes seeded with random numbers properly. Eventually people who don't understand cryptography will be sucked into an effort that devalues the currency they are creating.
In the mean time BTC remains a threat to the political state. Though not perhaps to the political will or the will of the people.
Another guy took a step back and invented the wheel.
Ron Paul forgot about inflation. Which has been "really bad" since the republican congress and house and Bush 1's cut taxes on capital gains and highest income taxes.
I'm not totally against Ron Paul, I think he needs to be considered in the current political climate where the U.S. treasury, intelligence services and bureaucracy set laws and rules which are "above review." Meaning that the U.S. government can get about 1/3 of their real policy objectives implemented.
If Ron Paul got 1/3 of his objectives completed it would certainly put the fear of god into overspending in government. And it would not be irreversible.
$9 million (assuming he pays .1% taxes) is a lot of bombs.
Is creating a social networking site worth thousands of lives? Maybe, maybe not.
And spies on them.
Are we sure he's giving it up for a tax break?
Charging a battery or taking on hydrogen would be much more feasible with a driver-less car. I think the two will probably be released together and work to support one another.
London just banned driving in it's downtown core. They might be more willing to accept highly efficient single lanes of traffic that charge/refill when stopped to let pedestrians cross.
Really a car company could start by getting profits from: Insurance, recharging/refilling and rental (distance or cleaning or hourly). Car companies are MASSIVE they could certainly convert a few test cities.
I'm pretty stoked for solar panels under intersections that produce either electricity or hydrogen for injection into cars stopped at the lights.
Another thing about the steel is that it needs coating. Usually 3-4 coats of highly toxic liquids that are disposed of immediately afterwards.
Cars produce 16x as much pollution being built as they will over an average lifetime on the road.
The same is true for most electronics. The arguement about power savings should be becoming less of an issue as nuclear power becomes more popular, unfortunately a few "mistakes and mishaps" and a hell of a lot of marketing have made that less popular.
Planned obsolescence should be illegal, the three r's of environmentalism are in that order for a reason: reduce, reuse, recycle. Recycle is by far the least efficient, it will be becoming more efficient when technologies like 3D printing come into popular use but until then you do more for the environment by maintaining your equipment or buying two potential used solutions than buying a single new solution.
That goes beyond stopping spam. I've been blocked from linking several Slashdot articles that included mentions of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Intel goes and finishes the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classmate_PC. Before starting a new project?
Getting a bunch of people to sign a petition or approve of a policy is pretty close to liking some random thing.
I still don't understand why it's so hard to provide free anonymous speech.
Yes it seems likely that the Chinese will put a backdoor into their chip. Which is bad. But is it worse than backdoors in say, Intel or AMD motherboards or chips... probably not. With the chinese CPU backdoor plan eventually a Linux will be released that fixes the problem, with American chips/motherboards/OSs it will probably take a lot longer and be more difficult to identify the backdoors/security holes. Also since they are driven by capitalism not communism many more backdoors and "bugs" will be accepted as non-intentional... also reducing how vehemently security researchers will search for and remove backdoors.
Been thinking a long time about 3D printing in the context of Neal Stephenson's - The Diamond Age. Particularly about the relative recycle-ability of various materials. Glass seems pretty ideal from a flexibility (can be used many ways) and recycling perspective. The high heat required to return it to a liquid state is a problem, as is it's brittleness (not suitable for as many applications as plastic).
Does anyone have a link to a glass 3D printing machine?
Which was pretty rad.
Well a lot of people are concerned about the security of the BTC notion. I'd like to bring up something that a lot of Slashdoters are familiar with.
That is that as an individual trader you are at the low end of the reliability spectrum when it comes to trading and finances. If your bank goes bust you will probably not receive your money. If there is a sudden drop in markets, your trades won't be processed for hours or days. Probably not an issue unless there's a war or some other kind of major event, like the U.S. black swan.
Second there are currently 2 senate subcommittees trying to figure out what to do about BTC. While a lot of people think that the government will simply outlaw the currency it becomes an issue in that anything can conceivably be considered a currency. Outlawing barter in a country is probably a bad idea.
Third Bitcoin is a problem for government because it is essentially impossible to tax at this point, that's not saying it will always be that way. If you've been watching the pips carefully you can see that there's been pressure to keep the price stable (and low) many many Bitcoin traders are simply cashing in on this to increase their share. It's relatively cheap to push the price of a stock down, but it does cost a bit and that cost is being soaked up.
So: buy 1 BTC. If it becomes viable for microtransactions, you win. If there's a war, you win. If you trade it every day for a little piece of the money being spent to keep the price stable, you win! If you get to stop reading articles about BTC because you have one... you win!
So some rich assholes can feel safe? Really?
How about just making "hacker proof" hospitals for assholes.