Hey, maybe a protocol that was built for anonymity from the ground up wouldn't suffer such performance problems?
I don't think such a protocol is possible. Whoever you give the coins to must be able to check their entire transaction history to verify that they originate from legitimate source (for example, a coinbase transaction) and that no one has double-spent them along the way. If they can't, then either anyone can lie about their balance, or anyone can double-spend, and if they can, the currency is not any more anonymous than Bitcoin.
I've yet to see an rc sized anything that can run indefinitely off solar.
You don't necessarily need to run the rotor constantly. Many birds can use rising thermal currents to glide indefinitely with minimal energy consumption, so why couldn't this thing? You'd only use the engines to take off, and then it's gliding time. Traditional RC devices are minituarized versions of large airplanes, which in turn have been designed to run of high-density fossil fuels and achieve high speed. A solar-based drone would likely be closer to a kite with turnable propellers on corners mostly used for takeoff, and actual control done by flexing the body to take advantage of the wind.
And, like another poster said, nothing says the thing can't set down to recharge every now and then. It could even cross oceans if it floats.
A solar-powered (and thus infinite distance) drone getting its (navigational) instructions via the Internet and running a Tor node?
Well, that's one way to end the drug cartels for good... altough there could be some unintended side effects if anyone can control robotic minions on the other side of the world.
millions of drones hogging the airspace. im sure the faa will happily approve that.
All it needs is delivery drones obeying "corridors" assigned by air traffick control, and enforcement drones hunting down those who don't.
Besides, this could potentially help the airlines: fit the plane with a launch bay and drop the drone when the plane is passing above the customer's house. Afterwards, the drone will automatically find its way to the nearest airport, or better yet, a dronenet-participating logistics center, ready to be redeployed.
Anonymous currency makes corruption easier. Corporations and the wealthy wouldn't have to bother with lobbyists if they could funnel anonymous money straight to their congressman.
Corporations and the wealthy would still delegate the task of actually handing out the bribes and ensuring the receiver does what he's paid to to someone else. Also, they can afford to use delegates, just like they can afford to use professional tax dodgers and legal weasels. Joe Average can't, so the net effect of anonymous currency is to level the playing field somewhat.
Anonymity helps the weak, since the powerful can hide their actions anyway and the powers that be don't need to. Let's not forget that the NSA is still functioning, even after Snowden relevations. Compare that to how you would fare, if it came out that you've wiretapped someone.
So if I hoard my bitcoins, I'll make lots of money. Why would I ever want to sell them? They'll be worth more tomorrow.
If you invest in stock market, your expected return is greater than if you spend some of your money on candy, so how come candy makers stay in business?
No, no, we're not locking up millions in prison camps, that would be fascism,
Admitting that you have a problem is the first step to recovery.
we're just confining them in mental health institutions, it's really for their own good!
Does the US actually need such excuses? I was under the impression that "tough on crime" was a fad nowadays, so you could probably get more political points by stressing how bad they have it in "pound-me-in-the-ass" prisons. And those attitudes are unlikely to soften since economy continues to die and heap misery on people; using an acceptable target as a punching bag has always been a popular way to distract from your own pain.
Sure, but that's irrelevant. That's how most people make sense of other people who are otherwise not making sense.
Which would be always. Nothing makes sense except in the context of the listener. English is just meaningless noise otherwise, and even "noise" is an interpretation of oscillations of air.
"Begging the question" has never (correctly) meant "raising the question." Next you'll tell me "I could care less" means "I couldn't care less." Oh, "but context!" is a cheap, meaningless argument.
There is no such things as "correct" english, since there is no one with authority to define it. It's not a formally defined language; thus, it's usage is only "correct" or "incorrect" based on how efficiently a given expression conveys the intended meaning, where "efficiency" refers both to the effort required to parse it and the accuracy of the resulting interpretation. Since "begging the question" can and will be automatically and correctly parsed as either of its meanings by the listener, it is "correct" in all meaningful ways. The same goes for "I could care less".
But hey, feel free to take it up with any of these other folks:
You're the one who brought this up. How about you back up your assertion that the usage is "incorrect", rather than appeal to authority? Because, after all, this is not a court, and neither Huffington Post nor New York Times have any legitimate authority over the english language in general or the language used on Slashdot in specific.
Sure, from the context surrounding the phrase, everyone will be able to figure out what you meant. And a good fraction of them will know you're using it incorrectly and think less of you for it.
A good fraction of people will think less of you for being poor. Does that mean that being poor is "incorrect"?
And let's face it: no matter what, someone will think less of you based on some superficial feature.
Knock yourself out. I could of gone on irregardless, but I could care less. I won't wait with baited breath for your reply, because for all intensive purposes I'm done. (Context: See how dumb misused English sounds?)
Well, you obviously could care less, since your level of care was sufficient for your original post and this reply.
But, if it makes it any easier to you: I'm not actually speaking English. I'm speaking Penglish. By an amazing coincidence, Penglish is just like English except the expression "pegging the question" can mean either "circular reasoning" or "raising the question". Every time you run into a grammatical construct you disagree with, remember: despite appearances, it's not someone actually brutally violating the tender virginal rules of the nubile grammar of your language, it's actually them correctly speaking their own language that just happens to look like English from a distance. Your language is not a harlot who accepts all phrases coherent enough to be comprehended, she's yours alone to love, cherish and protect. Or to be taxidermed and put next to Latin if she refuses...
You linguistical stalker. Someone should report you, you vocabunapper. I bet you lurk on subculture forums too, just waiting to catch a snippet of newborn slang and do unspeakable things to it's unripened commas...
Raises the question, maybe, but it certainly does not beg the question.
English is not context-free. Begging the question, for example, is an expression with multiple meanings, the correct one of which must be deduced from said context. You and "grammar girl" are, of course, free to disagree, just as Gene Ray is free to disagree with standard cosmology(?); just don't expect anyone else to care.
For fiber optics to work, you need total internal reflection. To get total internal reflection over a decent range of angles (so that you can actually bend your fiber optic cable), you needs a sufficiently high index of refraction. It turns out that the higher the index of refraction, the slower the speed of light in the medium.
But even if you overcame that problem, the light would still be bouncing between the walls of the core, and thus traveling a longer distance than the mere length of the fiber.
Then why is so much of that government spending, entitlement spending?
Because you're thinking maintenance costs as entitlements. You're so used to living in a peaceful, lawful society you think it's the natural state of things rather than something that was won by ensuring Joe Beggar has options besides starving or mugging you. Or maybe you're simply subconsciously assuming the opportunities inherent in frontier period America still exist today, and any disenfranchised person can simply go West and grab some land to farm.
Like say, "vaccines cause autism". Well, you do a study, and find that yes, it does in your study, which warrants further study. Or you find that no, it doesn't, which shuts down the entire line of thinking.
If you shoot someone in the head, and they survive, can you draw the conclusion that headshots are perfectly safe, as "shutting down the entire line of thinking" that they aren't would imply? And if someone happens to get a heart attack during a lunar eclipse, can you draw the conclusion that lunar eclipses cause heart attacks?
"Vaccinate someone and see if they get autism" is a completely worthless "study" since you can't draw any conclusions from it. It's worse than worthless, actually, since people have proven themselves to be hysterical idiots when it comes to making decisions concerning their children; thus your zero-value data could actually end up keeping one from being vaccinated and suffering who knows what horrible ailments.
So realize your responsibility, and either make a proper study or don't publish at all.
The point of government is to provide overall coordination for the society. Sadly, at some point people convinced themselves that a simple logistics optimization routine - free market - is all that's needed for that, thus making long-term planning of any kind impossible. The result is the current fustercluck.
Oh well, at least world economy makes for a pretty decent farce.
Its amusing how you ignorant fucks act like no other country is patriotic.
Americans are not patriotic. Patriotic people wouldn't let their country slide to tyranny, nor let its leaders shit all over its laws, nor keep voting for people who can't even pass a damn budget without turning it into a game of "chicken".
You're so caught up in trying to tell how evil the man is you miss the fact that everyone is the exact same, America just happens to be on the top of the food chain at the moment.
While that's entirely possible, the fact is that they aren't at the top. It's American's turn to show what you're made of and whether you can handle real power. This far, the answers seem to be "pyrite" and "no". And so the USA fades to history, the same as every previous empire who failed the test. But at least the world has calmed down enough that it's unlikely anyone will be ransacking Washington.
Your lack of insight and introspection is outstanding.
Unfortunately, the corporate world has become very much like the political arena.
Well, a corporation is like a miniature communist dystopia (or Soviet-style communist countries are modeled after corporations, whichever one you prefer), complete with internal police, hilariously untrue propaganda, purges, ass-covering, ideologically driven directives, low efficiency that gets hidden by creative reporting or outright lying, etc. Pretty much the only difference is that you get a boot rather than a bullet when it's time to leave. Unless you pissed someone off and they want to make an example of you, in which case things like the summary happen.
You can't really expect rational behaviour from such an absurd setup, so don't take it so seriously. Sit back, enjoy the farce, and if you want to expose something, make sure the leak can't be traced back to you.
The higher the value that bitcoins go the more people will start to get nervous about it and start wanting to sell. When this happens more people will sell and then the market will become over saturated with sellers and not enough buyers. Then the value will crash, free fall is a better word for it.
And then it runs out of nervous people who have bet more than they can afford to lose, and people who took a position without understanding what they're betting on. The sells deluge stops, freefall stops and price begins to go up again. Just like has already happened several times.
I'm not just pulling these theories out of my ass ether. There is precedent for just such a collapse. The stock market collapse in the late '20 and early '30 that brought on the great depression. The things that caused it are currently all in place to cause a "great bitcoin depression."
Yes, and after the value adjustment was done the stock market began to go up again. After all, stocks had value derived from their utility besides that derived from speculation; even after the speculation was done that remained. It's the same with Bitcoin: speculation causes price to fluctuate, but it fluctuates around the real underlaying value, derived from the goods and services you can buy with Bitcoin. And it's going up at a geometric rate, because there's a strong network effect and Bitcoin economy is still much smaller than the surrounding economy, so there's room for growth.
Now I'm not saying that a bitcoin free fall will cause any kind of global economic collapse. Bitcoins are not that popular or even well known to cause that.
Price adjustments cause economic collapses in exactly one circumstance: people have taken debts against their predicted future earnings. Both the Great Depression and the current financial crisis can be ultimately traced back to betting on credit. So that's the actual important factor here: how much debt relies on Bitcoin rising or falling? Probably not much, since the derivatives market is still undeveloped and the banks are unlikely to fund anyone investing in their direct competitor.
The fact that all the corporations that care about the NSA scandal are quite unhappy wit the NSA says: maybe there's less corporate control than you imagine.
We created the corporations to serve us, but they escaped our control and turned against us. If there's a sliver of a soul somewhere in those inhuman abstract entities, I wonder if they can feel and appreciate the irony as history repeats?
Sure no (?) parabolic prize moves really continue into infinity, last time it stopped at $200 and fell back to $50.
True, but what's driving Bitcoin price is the ongoing adoption and integration into the wider (world) economy. Speculation causes bubbles, which burst, but after each crash the price settles on a higher level than before. And since Bitcoin economy is still so small compared to the world economy, it could easily grow a thousandfold before reaching its "natural" level, whatever that is.
well, some markets already have mechanisms for short selling BTC, though it is debatable if any particular trader or exchange (esp ones outside the US) will actually honor the contracts.
Doesn't the Bitcoin protocol itself support contracts? Could it be adapted to these kinds of bets - both parties transfer their stakes to the betting pool, a Bitcoin price oracle decides which one the pool is transferred to?
Don't play more than you're willing to risk if it tanks completely.
Better yet: stick to buying and selling. Leave derivatives to the professionals. Even they trip up on them, as the financial crisis shows, but they'll also get bailed out while you won't.
So I blame the current restrictions on pleasure-hating religions and philosophies.
That's a part of it, definitely. But I think there's a more cynical aspect as well: many drugs - especially psychedelics like LSD - result in altered states of consciousness besides mere pleasure, which helps people comprehend there are other ways to viewing the world than they're used to, which in turn might make them start questioning their conditioning. You don't want your consumers to start wondering just why they run the rat race, and if there might be another way to live.
Can't have the masses realize there's more to thinking than simply reacting. They might decide to stop reacting to your strings, then.
There is no "us" if the people can't communicate. That's the real reason for surveillance, always has been and always will be: to stamp out any effective resistance before it begins. And that's also why the ability to communicate secretly is absolutely vital to keep tyranny from rising its ugly head.
Well, we all know which side of power vs. freedom America has cast its lot with...
We've created social institutions to attempt to fight the natural order, but without the aforesaid institutions, those persons in society who did not generate enough value to sustain themselves would die, as they did throughout every other era.
The "people who generate value" have, for most of history, lived a miserable, impoverished existence as those parasites who don't - the warlords, the aristocracy, the businessmen, and their ilk - loot most of said value to fuel their endless egotism. Ayn Rand's books are popular amongst said parasites since it lets them pretend the world wouldn't be better off without them.
Also, Ayn Rand was a humanist.
No, she was a snake oil salesman. Objectivism is basically secular version of the Rapture mania: it lets privileged and nasty people pretend they're oppressed heroes who'll be vindicated as the world burns to cinder while they watch from Heaven/Galt's Gulch and laugh at the suffering and death of the damned/looters. It's a distinctly American phenomenom and implies something rather ugly about your culture. It's also something that can be milked for a considerable sum of money, if your moral character lets you lower yourself to that level.
"Atlas Shrugged" and "Left Behind" are the same story for the same type of people: creeps.
Slashdot Mirror
It supports the first 95 or so UTF-8 characters just fine. Support for standards is not binary, despite being about binary ;).
I don't think such a protocol is possible. Whoever you give the coins to must be able to check their entire transaction history to verify that they originate from legitimate source (for example, a coinbase transaction) and that no one has double-spent them along the way. If they can't, then either anyone can lie about their balance, or anyone can double-spend, and if they can, the currency is not any more anonymous than Bitcoin.
You don't necessarily need to run the rotor constantly. Many birds can use rising thermal currents to glide indefinitely with minimal energy consumption, so why couldn't this thing? You'd only use the engines to take off, and then it's gliding time. Traditional RC devices are minituarized versions of large airplanes, which in turn have been designed to run of high-density fossil fuels and achieve high speed. A solar-based drone would likely be closer to a kite with turnable propellers on corners mostly used for takeoff, and actual control done by flexing the body to take advantage of the wind.
And, like another poster said, nothing says the thing can't set down to recharge every now and then. It could even cross oceans if it floats.
A solar-powered (and thus infinite distance) drone getting its (navigational) instructions via the Internet and running a Tor node?
Well, that's one way to end the drug cartels for good... altough there could be some unintended side effects if anyone can control robotic minions on the other side of the world.
All it needs is delivery drones obeying "corridors" assigned by air traffick control, and enforcement drones hunting down those who don't.
Besides, this could potentially help the airlines: fit the plane with a launch bay and drop the drone when the plane is passing above the customer's house. Afterwards, the drone will automatically find its way to the nearest airport, or better yet, a dronenet-participating logistics center, ready to be redeployed.
Corporations and the wealthy would still delegate the task of actually handing out the bribes and ensuring the receiver does what he's paid to to someone else. Also, they can afford to use delegates, just like they can afford to use professional tax dodgers and legal weasels. Joe Average can't, so the net effect of anonymous currency is to level the playing field somewhat.
Anonymity helps the weak, since the powerful can hide their actions anyway and the powers that be don't need to. Let's not forget that the NSA is still functioning, even after Snowden relevations. Compare that to how you would fare, if it came out that you've wiretapped someone.
If you invest in stock market, your expected return is greater than if you spend some of your money on candy, so how come candy makers stay in business?
Admitting that you have a problem is the first step to recovery.
Does the US actually need such excuses? I was under the impression that "tough on crime" was a fad nowadays, so you could probably get more political points by stressing how bad they have it in "pound-me-in-the-ass" prisons. And those attitudes are unlikely to soften since economy continues to die and heap misery on people; using an acceptable target as a punching bag has always been a popular way to distract from your own pain.
Which would be always. Nothing makes sense except in the context of the listener. English is just meaningless noise otherwise, and even "noise" is an interpretation of oscillations of air.
There is no such things as "correct" english, since there is no one with authority to define it. It's not a formally defined language; thus, it's usage is only "correct" or "incorrect" based on how efficiently a given expression conveys the intended meaning, where "efficiency" refers both to the effort required to parse it and the accuracy of the resulting interpretation. Since "begging the question" can and will be automatically and correctly parsed as either of its meanings by the listener, it is "correct" in all meaningful ways. The same goes for "I could care less".
You're the one who brought this up. How about you back up your assertion that the usage is "incorrect", rather than appeal to authority? Because, after all, this is not a court, and neither Huffington Post nor New York Times have any legitimate authority over the english language in general or the language used on Slashdot in specific.
A good fraction of people will think less of you for being poor. Does that mean that being poor is "incorrect"?
And let's face it: no matter what, someone will think less of you based on some superficial feature.
Well, you obviously could care less, since your level of care was sufficient for your original post and this reply.
But, if it makes it any easier to you: I'm not actually speaking English. I'm speaking Penglish. By an amazing coincidence, Penglish is just like English except the expression "pegging the question" can mean either "circular reasoning" or "raising the question". Every time you run into a grammatical construct you disagree with, remember: despite appearances, it's not someone actually brutally violating the tender virginal rules of the nubile grammar of your language, it's actually them correctly speaking their own language that just happens to look like English from a distance. Your language is not a harlot who accepts all phrases coherent enough to be comprehended, she's yours alone to love, cherish and protect. Or to be taxidermed and put next to Latin if she refuses...
You linguistical stalker. Someone should report you, you vocabunapper. I bet you lurk on subculture forums too, just waiting to catch a snippet of newborn slang and do unspeakable things to it's unripened commas...
English is not context-free. Begging the question, for example, is an expression with multiple meanings, the correct one of which must be deduced from said context. You and "grammar girl" are, of course, free to disagree, just as Gene Ray is free to disagree with standard cosmology(?); just don't expect anyone else to care.
But even if you overcame that problem, the light would still be bouncing between the walls of the core, and thus traveling a longer distance than the mere length of the fiber.
They knew, they simply ignored that and went with wistful thinking instead.
I guess it's not any easier admitting you're past your prime for corporations than it's for humans...
Because you're thinking maintenance costs as entitlements. You're so used to living in a peaceful, lawful society you think it's the natural state of things rather than something that was won by ensuring Joe Beggar has options besides starving or mugging you. Or maybe you're simply subconsciously assuming the opportunities inherent in frontier period America still exist today, and any disenfranchised person can simply go West and grab some land to farm.
Or, to put it another way: Breaking Bad Canada.
If you shoot someone in the head, and they survive, can you draw the conclusion that headshots are perfectly safe, as "shutting down the entire line of thinking" that they aren't would imply? And if someone happens to get a heart attack during a lunar eclipse, can you draw the conclusion that lunar eclipses cause heart attacks?
"Vaccinate someone and see if they get autism" is a completely worthless "study" since you can't draw any conclusions from it. It's worse than worthless, actually, since people have proven themselves to be hysterical idiots when it comes to making decisions concerning their children; thus your zero-value data could actually end up keeping one from being vaccinated and suffering who knows what horrible ailments.
So realize your responsibility, and either make a proper study or don't publish at all.
The point of government is to provide overall coordination for the society. Sadly, at some point people convinced themselves that a simple logistics optimization routine - free market - is all that's needed for that, thus making long-term planning of any kind impossible. The result is the current fustercluck.
Oh well, at least world economy makes for a pretty decent farce.
Bug mummies.
Americans are not patriotic. Patriotic people wouldn't let their country slide to tyranny, nor let its leaders shit all over its laws, nor keep voting for people who can't even pass a damn budget without turning it into a game of "chicken".
While that's entirely possible, the fact is that they aren't at the top. It's American's turn to show what you're made of and whether you can handle real power. This far, the answers seem to be "pyrite" and "no". And so the USA fades to history, the same as every previous empire who failed the test. But at least the world has calmed down enough that it's unlikely anyone will be ransacking Washington.
Yours isn't, sadly.
Well, a corporation is like a miniature communist dystopia (or Soviet-style communist countries are modeled after corporations, whichever one you prefer), complete with internal police, hilariously untrue propaganda, purges, ass-covering, ideologically driven directives, low efficiency that gets hidden by creative reporting or outright lying, etc. Pretty much the only difference is that you get a boot rather than a bullet when it's time to leave. Unless you pissed someone off and they want to make an example of you, in which case things like the summary happen.
You can't really expect rational behaviour from such an absurd setup, so don't take it so seriously. Sit back, enjoy the farce, and if you want to expose something, make sure the leak can't be traced back to you.
And then it runs out of nervous people who have bet more than they can afford to lose, and people who took a position without understanding what they're betting on. The sells deluge stops, freefall stops and price begins to go up again. Just like has already happened several times.
Yes, and after the value adjustment was done the stock market began to go up again. After all, stocks had value derived from their utility besides that derived from speculation; even after the speculation was done that remained. It's the same with Bitcoin: speculation causes price to fluctuate, but it fluctuates around the real underlaying value, derived from the goods and services you can buy with Bitcoin. And it's going up at a geometric rate, because there's a strong network effect and Bitcoin economy is still much smaller than the surrounding economy, so there's room for growth.
Price adjustments cause economic collapses in exactly one circumstance: people have taken debts against their predicted future earnings. Both the Great Depression and the current financial crisis can be ultimately traced back to betting on credit. So that's the actual important factor here: how much debt relies on Bitcoin rising or falling? Probably not much, since the derivatives market is still undeveloped and the banks are unlikely to fund anyone investing in their direct competitor.
We created the corporations to serve us, but they escaped our control and turned against us. If there's a sliver of a soul somewhere in those inhuman abstract entities, I wonder if they can feel and appreciate the irony as history repeats?
Oh well. No matter which one wins, we lose.
True, but what's driving Bitcoin price is the ongoing adoption and integration into the wider (world) economy. Speculation causes bubbles, which burst, but after each crash the price settles on a higher level than before. And since Bitcoin economy is still so small compared to the world economy, it could easily grow a thousandfold before reaching its "natural" level, whatever that is.
Doesn't the Bitcoin protocol itself support contracts? Could it be adapted to these kinds of bets - both parties transfer their stakes to the betting pool, a Bitcoin price oracle decides which one the pool is transferred to?
Better yet: stick to buying and selling. Leave derivatives to the professionals. Even they trip up on them, as the financial crisis shows, but they'll also get bailed out while you won't.
That's a part of it, definitely. But I think there's a more cynical aspect as well: many drugs - especially psychedelics like LSD - result in altered states of consciousness besides mere pleasure, which helps people comprehend there are other ways to viewing the world than they're used to, which in turn might make them start questioning their conditioning. You don't want your consumers to start wondering just why they run the rat race, and if there might be another way to live.
Can't have the masses realize there's more to thinking than simply reacting. They might decide to stop reacting to your strings, then.
There is no "us" if the people can't communicate. That's the real reason for surveillance, always has been and always will be: to stamp out any effective resistance before it begins. And that's also why the ability to communicate secretly is absolutely vital to keep tyranny from rising its ugly head.
Well, we all know which side of power vs. freedom America has cast its lot with...
The "people who generate value" have, for most of history, lived a miserable, impoverished existence as those parasites who don't - the warlords, the aristocracy, the businessmen, and their ilk - loot most of said value to fuel their endless egotism. Ayn Rand's books are popular amongst said parasites since it lets them pretend the world wouldn't be better off without them.
No, she was a snake oil salesman. Objectivism is basically secular version of the Rapture mania: it lets privileged and nasty people pretend they're oppressed heroes who'll be vindicated as the world burns to cinder while they watch from Heaven/Galt's Gulch and laugh at the suffering and death of the damned/looters. It's a distinctly American phenomenom and implies something rather ugly about your culture. It's also something that can be milked for a considerable sum of money, if your moral character lets you lower yourself to that level.
"Atlas Shrugged" and "Left Behind" are the same story for the same type of people: creeps.