Of course not. Studies utilizing questionable methodologies say it saves energy.
Besides, not having to run in circles every time Congress decides to twiddle the dates would put people out of work and that's the last thing we need in this economy.
About 42 of them. CANDU reactors can run on thorium (among other things, such as unenriched uranium, light water reactor waste, and MOX) and India has run several in that manner at the Rajasthan and Kakrapar power stations.
GCC has it mostly implemented (the new concurrency features remain MIA along with a few other bits) already, including the variadic templates the GP mentions.
Depends on your definition of "vulnerability". For example, there's a vulnerability in AES's key schedule that weakens the 256 and 192 bit versions down to roughly 99.5 bits security. However, this is not an exploitable vulnerability, as the stars will still have all gone cold and dark by that time.
but there are active R&D programs to develop them, so in the near future, that disadvantage may be somewhat (though not entirely) mitigated.
R&D? Saab has been selling such a vehicle (the biopower 9-5) since 2005. It cranks up the turbocharger boost when the sensors detect an elevated ethanol content in the fuel, actually resulting in BETTER highway mileage (and equal city mileage) on E85, along with about 15% extra horsepower and torque.
It's entirely possible to have a car take advantage of it, just current ones don't. It requires 3 things.
1. Forced induction. Supercharger, turbocharger, or if you're VW, both. 2. Sensor in the gas tank to determine ethanol content of the fuel. 3. Appropriate configuration engine control configuration to crank up the boost as appropriate.
Saab has an engine that does this. It gets equal mileage on gasoline and E85, but delivers about 20% more horsepower and torque on the latter.
Ethanol is a poor substitute for gasoline as it only has 80% of the energy per unit of volume, and it has other properties that make it a bad choice for fuel..
And other properties that make it an awesome choice for fuel. Compare the octane rating of gasoline and ethanol. Notice ethanol is way higher. Stick on a turbocharger or supercharger (or hey, do what VW does and use both), crank up the boost, and watch as you get slightly BETTER mileage and MORE power out of ethanol than gasoline.
Ethanol content higher than about 5% harms engines not properly rigged for it (e.g. anything made before 1980 or so). More than 10% requires special alcohol-resistant rubbers to be used in the fuel system, among other things.
The BitCoin software has no protection against multiple people mining the same coin, even though the chances are low of this happening. This means that potentially you are wasting your time making new coins, especially if someone mines a bunch offline.
The protection against this is that you can't have two people receive the same coin. Someone will get the subsidy, the other one won't. This is why there is a 120 block maturation period for the block subsidy.
Furthermore, you CAN'T mine offline, at least not for longer than 10 minutes or so. An integral part of the block header is the hash of the previous block in the chain. If you're offline, you have no way of getting that, and thus are not going to get anything done.
If it was a practically exploitable fundamental flaw in the ECDSA algorithm, it would decimate bitcoin, yes, with lesser effects in general finance. As far as is known, there aren't any better-than-brute-force attacks on ECDSA other than sidechannel timing attacks. Due to the high security margin, it would have to be a massive weakness to have any effect on the security of bitcoin.
Other than that, the only thing that would be a problem is an practical efficient solution to the discrete logarithm problem, which would also probably give an efficient solution to integer factorization, and thereby completely shatter most current forms of public key cryptography, which would destroy bitcoin and have massive repercussions in general finance.
He wants to live as long and accomplish as possible before he cannot, then die. How is that cowardice?
It's nigh impossible to get a good estimate as to how long he'll have left until his Alzheimer's becomes debilitating. He could have 6 months or 10 years until then. Why squander that time when you could continue doing things with it?
At present, assuming 1.6 megahashes per joule (a typical value for most recent ATI cards), all bitcoin hashing efforts worldwide are drawing about 4 gigawatts or about 2 Hoover dams.
Bitcoin doesn't really require a defense against increasing computing power with respect to encryption. Barring some absolutely stunning development, further increases to key size should not be needed. Bitcoin uses 512-bit elliptical curve DSA. Security-wise, this is roughly equivalent to good 256-bit symmetric key cipher. Even if you put every computer on earth and every computer built each year, accounting for Moore's law, to the task of breaking this, the last white dwarf in the universe will have gone cold and dark long before you break a single keypair.
A weakness in the hashing algorithm, specifically SHA-256, may be more of a concern. However, the use of SHA-256 is not fixed, it's specified in the protocol rules, which are subject to democracy. If you can get the majority (preferably the vast majority. With a slim majority, a fork could result) of the network hashing power to agree on it and switch over semi-simultaneously (within a day or two of each other), you can change that on the fly.
Theoretically, it would be possible to restart coin generation past the 21 million limit if the number of lost coins became significant and started to cause problems. You'd just need the majority (preferably the vast majority. A slim majority would likely result in a fork.) of the network hashing power to agree to the rule change.
The system is quite flexible. Most of the properties of the system are contained in the rules for what constitutes a valid block and those rules can be changed on the fly if semi-everyone agrees on it.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple complies with the 7-day requirement in Taiwan, but doesn't allow refunds elsewhere in the world.
link
More PETA gubbish.
I really wish they would go away, and I'm a vegetarian myself.
Of course not. Studies utilizing questionable methodologies say it saves energy.
Besides, not having to run in circles every time Congress decides to twiddle the dates would put people out of work and that's the last thing we need in this economy.
About 42 of them. CANDU reactors can run on thorium (among other things, such as unenriched uranium, light water reactor waste, and MOX) and India has run several in that manner at the Rajasthan and Kakrapar power stations.
By that standard you have no rights at all, as all rights require someone else's "slavery".
Closer to 7 now, but it hit here January 1st.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/01/01/023248/Micro-USB-Cellphone-Charger-Becomes-EU-Standard
The standard was only decided on 6 months ago!
It takes time for new designs to integrate the new connector.
Would you like me to wave a magic wand and disappear all the previously existing non-standard phones and chargers?
...and make a compiler.
They did. It's even GPL licensed.
http://developer.amd.com/tools/open64/Pages/default.aspx
GCC has it mostly implemented (the new concurrency features remain MIA along with a few other bits) already, including the variadic templates the GP mentions.
http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx0x.html
Depends on your definition of "vulnerability". For example, there's a vulnerability in AES's key schedule that weakens the 256 and 192 bit versions down to roughly 99.5 bits security. However, this is not an exploitable vulnerability, as the stars will still have all gone cold and dark by that time.
No, they are mistakes, errors in copying. Just occasionally, they're useful mistakes.
but there are active R&D programs to develop them, so in the near future, that disadvantage may be somewhat (though not entirely) mitigated.
R&D? Saab has been selling such a vehicle (the biopower 9-5) since 2005. It cranks up the turbocharger boost when the sensors detect an elevated ethanol content in the fuel, actually resulting in BETTER highway mileage (and equal city mileage) on E85, along with about 15% extra horsepower and torque.
It's entirely possible to have a car take advantage of it, just current ones don't. It requires 3 things.
1. Forced induction. Supercharger, turbocharger, or if you're VW, both.
2. Sensor in the gas tank to determine ethanol content of the fuel.
3. Appropriate configuration engine control configuration to crank up the boost as appropriate.
Saab has an engine that does this. It gets equal mileage on gasoline and E85, but delivers about 20% more horsepower and torque on the latter.
Sugar cane isn't appropriate for the US climate, but sugar beets are wonderful for it and are just as good for sugar and ethanol production.
Ethanol is a poor substitute for gasoline as it only has 80% of the energy per unit of volume, and it has other properties that make it a bad choice for fuel..
And other properties that make it an awesome choice for fuel. Compare the octane rating of gasoline and ethanol. Notice ethanol is way higher. Stick on a turbocharger or supercharger (or hey, do what VW does and use both), crank up the boost, and watch as you get slightly BETTER mileage and MORE power out of ethanol than gasoline.
Ethanol content higher than about 5% harms engines not properly rigged for it (e.g. anything made before 1980 or so). More than 10% requires special alcohol-resistant rubbers to be used in the fuel system, among other things.
The BitCoin software has no protection against multiple people mining the same coin, even though the chances are low of this happening. This means that potentially you are wasting your time making new coins, especially if someone mines a bunch offline.
The protection against this is that you can't have two people receive the same coin. Someone will get the subsidy, the other one won't. This is why there is a 120 block maturation period for the block subsidy.
Furthermore, you CAN'T mine offline, at least not for longer than 10 minutes or so. An integral part of the block header is the hash of the previous block in the chain. If you're offline, you have no way of getting that, and thus are not going to get anything done.
Ok, apparently I can't do math at 2pm.
Thanks for the correction.
Yep, because Google was the first search engine ever.
If it was a practically exploitable fundamental flaw in the ECDSA algorithm, it would decimate bitcoin, yes, with lesser effects in general finance. As far as is known, there aren't any better-than-brute-force attacks on ECDSA other than sidechannel timing attacks. Due to the high security margin, it would have to be a massive weakness to have any effect on the security of bitcoin.
Other than that, the only thing that would be a problem is an practical efficient solution to the discrete logarithm problem, which would also probably give an efficient solution to integer factorization, and thereby completely shatter most current forms of public key cryptography, which would destroy bitcoin and have massive repercussions in general finance.
He wants to live as long and accomplish as possible before he cannot, then die. How is that cowardice?
It's nigh impossible to get a good estimate as to how long he'll have left until his Alzheimer's becomes debilitating. He could have 6 months or 10 years until then. Why squander that time when you could continue doing things with it?
At present, assuming 1.6 megahashes per joule (a typical value for most recent ATI cards), all bitcoin hashing efforts worldwide are drawing about 4 gigawatts or about 2 Hoover dams.
As for total, no idea.
Bitcoin doesn't really require a defense against increasing computing power with respect to encryption. Barring some absolutely stunning development, further increases to key size should not be needed. Bitcoin uses 512-bit elliptical curve DSA. Security-wise, this is roughly equivalent to good 256-bit symmetric key cipher. Even if you put every computer on earth and every computer built each year, accounting for Moore's law, to the task of breaking this, the last white dwarf in the universe will have gone cold and dark long before you break a single keypair.
A weakness in the hashing algorithm, specifically SHA-256, may be more of a concern. However, the use of SHA-256 is not fixed, it's specified in the protocol rules, which are subject to democracy. If you can get the majority (preferably the vast majority. With a slim majority, a fork could result) of the network hashing power to agree on it and switch over semi-simultaneously (within a day or two of each other), you can change that on the fly.
Theoretically, it would be possible to restart coin generation past the 21 million limit if the number of lost coins became significant and started to cause problems. You'd just need the majority (preferably the vast majority. A slim majority would likely result in a fork.) of the network hashing power to agree to the rule change.
The system is quite flexible. Most of the properties of the system are contained in the rules for what constitutes a valid block and those rules can be changed on the fly if semi-everyone agrees on it.
Much of the problem is the fantastically screwy US banking system. Moving money around, especially online person-to-person transfers, is annoying.
Last time I sold some bitcoin (using Interac e-transfer), it took about 2 hours, mostly waiting for the bitcoins to transfer twice (me->escrow->buyer)