Generally speaking, a 'Bitcoin payment system' isn't. You pay a middle man money for 'bitcoins', the middle man pays a vendor with your money (less their overhead).
For appearances, they'll handle direct bitcoin deposits and withdrawals, but the real business is all good old cash and the bitcoin part is pretend. (Note: this is often useful for claiming hacks and loss of client funds)
You'll still get hit with exchange rate differences, and you can bet the payment processor isn't taking a bath on Bitcoin fluctuations, so there will be something in the TOS about your account being settled in real currency as calculated at some point in the transaction process that is favourable to the processor.
On the other hand, once you've handed over your real money, you don't have to deal with Bitcoin transaction issues, encryption keys, etc. Because you're not really using Bitcoin.
You get BINO, Bitcoin In Name Only. Because if it was really Bitcoin, it wouldn't fucking work.
> I am not sure if Innisfil is some isolated community or near a larger city
Innisfil (36k people), and it's about 10 min south of Barrie (140k people).
As someone from a city that - last time I checked 30 years ago - had 3x the population of Barrie, I don't know if either of those places are large enough to support a proper transit system.
Besides, Barrie is a bedroom community full of people who commute to Toronto for work. I'm pretty sure 99.9% of people there have their own car.
Great for the town budget now, but lousy for long term social stability. They're encouraging part-time under-employment.
It would have been better to launch a town-owned cab company. Probably with somewhat worse service, but with full employment for a couple of people. (Innisfil only has a population of 36K). And with city-owned, electric vehicles.
Even better would have been to escalate this to the county level, and let Simcoe build a region-wide transit system based on the taxi model. By scaling up they could have some inter-city links and a few handicap/accessible vans. Simcoe county is about 5K square kilometers and has four or five decent-sized urban centers in it.
My thermostat isn't Internet-connected, but it's at least programmable. It'd be nice if it was a hell of a lot smarter, so it could figure out the house's rate of heat loss, how fast the furnace can raise the house-wide temperature a degree, how quickly a temperature gradient forms after the blower cuts out, when people were around, etc.
I'd love a learning thermostat that could connect to external temperature and humidity sensors in addition to several sensor sets within the house to learn all that and just keep the temperature and humidity optimal at all times.
Actual secure facilities have guards at the entrances, even if it's just a poor receptionist with a panic button on the wrong side of the bulletproof glass.
And yes, I've seen that, though it was really only to keep activists/protestors out, not anyone who might come in with significant 'hardware'. I've never had the opportunity or inclination to check out military-grade security.
Badges can be faked, so I've always been a fan of the badge being a link to call up a digital version that can be used with live facial recognition (be it human or computer-based).
There's a big difference between a little 'cut and paste' on a physical ID (though that can be a pretty impressive criminal art) and inserting a complete record into a (hopefully fairly secure) database.
Let me point out that people used to get their cars stolen. Then anti-theft chipped keys came along and we got car jackings and home invasions.
So, if you work in a secure facility that someone really wants into... this ensures the bad guys always know where the keys are and how to get them, and you're not going to like it when they do.
It's just a bad idea. This company's doing it as a PR gimmick.
>You do know that bitcoin doesn't need to take over all transactions in order to be successful, right?
I love how you idiots redefine what Bitcoin has to do every time any one of its fatal flaws is pointed out.
Luckily, there are so many flaws to point out it's rare anyone bothers to name them all simultaneously, so you always have somewhere to move your goalpost to.
Seriously, it might be AWESOME to see some small nation switch to Bitcoin for its currency, so people would finally shut the fuck up when they see it crash under the load.
3.5 TPS. That's it. You can't run a small TOWN on 3.5 transactions per second.
>Scripts go through multiple stages of editing and rewriting
At least if the writer is any good. Nobody, not even a genius playwright, gets it perfect on the first go 'round. There's always a line to polish, a plot to tighten, some pacing to adjust.
What you end up seeing is their 'good enough for practical purposes' version, not 'perfect', because it never is.
A bad writer will do it in one go and be satisfied.
Yep. On average women have bigger breasts than men. No way could there also be an average difference in the brain. That's unpossible! It's like people who think it's racist to point out there actually are statistical differences between races (primarily skin colour!)... stupidly wrong.
Instead of trying to open the doors for women who want to be in these areas, have the aptitude for them, and may tend to get extra resistance because they're in the minority, it seems there are people who are hell bent on proving women aren't just equal in the philosophical sense, but actually the same. Even then, I'd be OK if they'd just work more on honestly figuring out if and how much of the difference is nature and how much is nurture before insisting there's something wrong if 50% of any given job market is staffed by women.
I believe it is irrational to vote in ignorance and to willfully maintain that ignorance. That I'm applying the label 'stupid' to unshakable Trump voters isn't a partisan thing - I would say the same about anyone approaching voting for any political party (we have different ones up here in the Great White North) the same way.
I don't expect everyone to be an expert in politics (that's why we elect politicians - to be specialized experts in that field so we can do other things), but you have to learn enough to intelligently elect your representatives.
It was explained to me back in the day by a TKD Grand Master like this: The black belt means you have learned enough to start learning and even then it only means you reached that level at some point, not that you maintained it.
I get the feeling a lot of teachers are disappointed by those who get their black belt then stop, like they got the job done and it'll be that way forever. Sometimes you see those guys coming back a decade later to get back in shape, but not often.
I do like the car analogy, though. I'm going to remember that.
Actually, if the tickets were tiered (some movies definitely don't earn their ticket price), if the concession prices weren't obscene, and if there were ushers who would actually remove patrons disturbing everyone else...
But that means charging less for distribution so the theatres don't have to rape you on popcorn and soda to turn a profit, and that might in turn mean paying actors less than tens of millions for a movie.
I hope the existing system crashes and burns, it is ridiculous. It needs to normalize so the economics make sense for all the players. If that mean wages move towards the mean, I think everyone but the very top will be OK with that. If that means budgets drop a bit, we'll survive. If it means investors have to invest in more movies to make the same amount of money, lawyers will take a slightly larger cut for the extra paperwork.
It'll all work out, and the average moviegoer, actor, and crew will be happier for it. But first Hollywood needs to burn.
The Republican party has been actively promoting ignorance because it gets them votes. It worked right up until Trump got elected.
Now they need to deal with an ignorant and irrational support base that is unpredictable and could turn on them at any time for any reason... though I think it's when they finally cripple the ACA and their voters start actually dying. It could also be when 4 years have passed and their kids haven't gotten black lung yet.
> I don't think history will look too kindly on Trump
Given that the right didn't anticipate him taking the top spot in the party and the left didn't think of him as more than a joke candidate until the very end, given the way most of the world reacted to him... the PRESENT isn't looking too kindly on him.
However, partisan (mostly) support and weirdly dedicated voters who will vote against their own self-interest without even an altruistic reason... I don't think he's leaving any time soon.
I'm still waiting for the press to ask Spicer why they should bother reporting what he says when he's consistently lying to them and treating them like shit on Trump's behalf.
Slashdot Mirror
>Your comment seems to have nothing to do with the article, and a lot to do with your own misconceptions about Bitcoin.
Your comment seems to have a lot to do with YOUR misconceptions about Bitcoin.
Generally speaking, a 'Bitcoin payment system' isn't. You pay a middle man money for 'bitcoins', the middle man pays a vendor with your money (less their overhead).
For appearances, they'll handle direct bitcoin deposits and withdrawals, but the real business is all good old cash and the bitcoin part is pretend. (Note: this is often useful for claiming hacks and loss of client funds)
You'll still get hit with exchange rate differences, and you can bet the payment processor isn't taking a bath on Bitcoin fluctuations, so there will be something in the TOS about your account being settled in real currency as calculated at some point in the transaction process that is favourable to the processor.
On the other hand, once you've handed over your real money, you don't have to deal with Bitcoin transaction issues, encryption keys, etc. Because you're not really using Bitcoin.
You get BINO, Bitcoin In Name Only. Because if it was really Bitcoin, it wouldn't fucking work.
> I am not sure if Innisfil is some isolated community or near a larger city
Innisfil (36k people), and it's about 10 min south of Barrie (140k people).
As someone from a city that - last time I checked 30 years ago - had 3x the population of Barrie, I don't know if either of those places are large enough to support a proper transit system.
Besides, Barrie is a bedroom community full of people who commute to Toronto for work. I'm pretty sure 99.9% of people there have their own car.
Great for the town budget now, but lousy for long term social stability. They're encouraging part-time under-employment.
It would have been better to launch a town-owned cab company. Probably with somewhat worse service, but with full employment for a couple of people. (Innisfil only has a population of 36K). And with city-owned, electric vehicles.
Even better would have been to escalate this to the county level, and let Simcoe build a region-wide transit system based on the taxi model. By scaling up they could have some inter-city links and a few handicap/accessible vans. Simcoe county is about 5K square kilometers and has four or five decent-sized urban centers in it.
My thermostat isn't Internet-connected, but it's at least programmable. It'd be nice if it was a hell of a lot smarter, so it could figure out the house's rate of heat loss, how fast the furnace can raise the house-wide temperature a degree, how quickly a temperature gradient forms after the blower cuts out, when people were around, etc.
I'd love a learning thermostat that could connect to external temperature and humidity sensors in addition to several sensor sets within the house to learn all that and just keep the temperature and humidity optimal at all times.
As far as i know, nobody sells that yet.
> I especially love Saskatchewan Disney...
I think the best we can do is Canada's Wonderland, just north of Toronto in the province of Ontario.
I expect it's a pale shadow of the Mouse theme parks, but there are concession stands and parks full of overpriced items, so it has that going for it.
Actual secure facilities have guards at the entrances, even if it's just a poor receptionist with a panic button on the wrong side of the bulletproof glass.
And yes, I've seen that, though it was really only to keep activists/protestors out, not anyone who might come in with significant 'hardware'. I've never had the opportunity or inclination to check out military-grade security.
If you've ever tried to go through a secure door with your hands full, you'd understand why a token you don't need to handle is nice.
Especially if the reader is a little above waist level, where your arms would naturally be if carrying something.
Badges can be faked, so I've always been a fan of the badge being a link to call up a digital version that can be used with live facial recognition (be it human or computer-based).
There's a big difference between a little 'cut and paste' on a physical ID (though that can be a pretty impressive criminal art) and inserting a complete record into a (hopefully fairly secure) database.
Let me point out that people used to get their cars stolen. Then anti-theft chipped keys came along and we got car jackings and home invasions.
So, if you work in a secure facility that someone really wants into... this ensures the bad guys always know where the keys are and how to get them, and you're not going to like it when they do.
It's just a bad idea. This company's doing it as a PR gimmick.
A bracelet with the chip in it would be a much better alternative, with no need to implant anything, cause tissue scarring, risk infection, etc.
Seriously, it could be a silicone band. Or a ring. Or a little sticker you could apply to any piece of jewelry you want.
>You do know that bitcoin doesn't need to take over all transactions in order to be successful, right?
I love how you idiots redefine what Bitcoin has to do every time any one of its fatal flaws is pointed out.
Luckily, there are so many flaws to point out it's rare anyone bothers to name them all simultaneously, so you always have somewhere to move your goalpost to.
Seriously, it might be AWESOME to see some small nation switch to Bitcoin for its currency, so people would finally shut the fuck up when they see it crash under the load.
3.5 TPS. That's it. You can't run a small TOWN on 3.5 transactions per second.
>Scripts go through multiple stages of editing and rewriting
At least if the writer is any good. Nobody, not even a genius playwright, gets it perfect on the first go 'round. There's always a line to polish, a plot to tighten, some pacing to adjust.
What you end up seeing is their 'good enough for practical purposes' version, not 'perfect', because it never is.
A bad writer will do it in one go and be satisfied.
I would like to know what the sentence would have been if he'd taken a baseball bat to the server and backup media instead of using electronic means.
OK, but we're talking functional differences here. You could scale me up 50% and I still wouldn't be able to intuitively grasp relativity.
Err... "isn't staffed by women".
Yep. On average women have bigger breasts than men. No way could there also be an average difference in the brain. That's unpossible! It's like people who think it's racist to point out there actually are statistical differences between races (primarily skin colour!)... stupidly wrong.
Instead of trying to open the doors for women who want to be in these areas, have the aptitude for them, and may tend to get extra resistance because they're in the minority, it seems there are people who are hell bent on proving women aren't just equal in the philosophical sense, but actually the same. Even then, I'd be OK if they'd just work more on honestly figuring out if and how much of the difference is nature and how much is nurture before insisting there's something wrong if 50% of any given job market is staffed by women.
>that breaks the laws of thermodynamics
That is usually an issue with a particular potential solution, not with the entire solution space for a particular problem.
Get back to work and come up with another solution to the same problem. :)
I believe it is irrational to vote in ignorance and to willfully maintain that ignorance. That I'm applying the label 'stupid' to unshakable Trump voters isn't a partisan thing - I would say the same about anyone approaching voting for any political party (we have different ones up here in the Great White North) the same way.
I don't expect everyone to be an expert in politics (that's why we elect politicians - to be specialized experts in that field so we can do other things), but you have to learn enough to intelligently elect your representatives.
Anything less is just stupid. Blue or red.
With the benefits you draw from your society comes the obligation to not be any more of a drain on it than you have to be.
People who claim liberty to the exclusion of social responsibility want the best of both worlds, and reality doesn't work that way.
It was explained to me back in the day by a TKD Grand Master like this: The black belt means you have learned enough to start learning and even then it only means you reached that level at some point, not that you maintained it.
I get the feeling a lot of teachers are disappointed by those who get their black belt then stop, like they got the job done and it'll be that way forever. Sometimes you see those guys coming back a decade later to get back in shape, but not often.
I do like the car analogy, though. I'm going to remember that.
Actually, if the tickets were tiered (some movies definitely don't earn their ticket price), if the concession prices weren't obscene, and if there were ushers who would actually remove patrons disturbing everyone else...
But that means charging less for distribution so the theatres don't have to rape you on popcorn and soda to turn a profit, and that might in turn mean paying actors less than tens of millions for a movie.
I hope the existing system crashes and burns, it is ridiculous. It needs to normalize so the economics make sense for all the players. If that mean wages move towards the mean, I think everyone but the very top will be OK with that. If that means budgets drop a bit, we'll survive. If it means investors have to invest in more movies to make the same amount of money, lawyers will take a slightly larger cut for the extra paperwork.
It'll all work out, and the average moviegoer, actor, and crew will be happier for it. But first Hollywood needs to burn.
The Republican party has been actively promoting ignorance because it gets them votes. It worked right up until Trump got elected.
Now they need to deal with an ignorant and irrational support base that is unpredictable and could turn on them at any time for any reason... though I think it's when they finally cripple the ACA and their voters start actually dying. It could also be when 4 years have passed and their kids haven't gotten black lung yet.
> I don't think history will look too kindly on Trump
Given that the right didn't anticipate him taking the top spot in the party and the left didn't think of him as more than a joke candidate until the very end, given the way most of the world reacted to him... the PRESENT isn't looking too kindly on him.
However, partisan (mostly) support and weirdly dedicated voters who will vote against their own self-interest without even an altruistic reason... I don't think he's leaving any time soon.
I'm still waiting for the press to ask Spicer why they should bother reporting what he says when he's consistently lying to them and treating them like shit on Trump's behalf.