Yeah, Verizon tried to "rent" me GPS capabilities on my phone for 8 years, got exactly $0 for that and a pile of other "optional features" that I never used - finally dumped V for T-Mobile last week (unlimited data for less than V charges for limited data? hell yeah!)
When I use voodoo, I usually include hyperlinks to Wikipedia or similar sources explaining what's going on. Even when the links die, you can usually search on the algorithm names to come up with an explanation.
More often, I let the library deal in the voodoo and my code reads like: while ( input ) { insert } sort.
Re:Similar language, describing different things
on
Code Is Not Literature
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
If you are writing assembler, you _should_ be including a human readable commentary at some level.
If you have put 5000 assembly instructions under a heading titled "object rotation and zoom", with no other commentary, your code _should_ be expelled from the system, regardless of how well it works on the test cases you made up for it.
Since you ever found employment at a firm which has existing code that they want to continue to use and evolve?
Re:Similar language, describing different things
on
Code Is Not Literature
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I've always been struck by the similarity of code and contracts or laws.
When written well, they define a set of requirements for specific actions to take place, leaving no ambiguity.
When written poorly, you need to know the version of system they are running under, starting circumstances, state of concurrently running processes, etc.
It's that irresistible Nokia hardware that will seal the deal. WinPhone will (never) fly off the shelves carrying Metro interface and driving future desktop OS sales.
Similarly, Microsoft Corporate has spent a lot of time making sure that the Windows 8 touch interface molds user behavior in such a way that they _think_ will ensure future profits. I think Marketing / Strategy had more to do with the decision than actual usability.
Thanks for the Hunt Bros clarification, I was about 8 at the time and I remember my parents had invested about $600 in bulk silver coins. When the value plummeted, they explained to me what they understood from the 6pm news on the TV, and I regurgitated that here some 40ish years later...
At least as reliable as most "information" you find on/.
Seriously, though, this means that the perps were able to setup a relay station in Russia. I would hope that a person/organization capable of this kind of operation would have the resources/foresight to relay data through several foreign countries.
How embarrassing would it be for the Target data to have been heisted straight to young Matthew Broderick's bedroom? Even if something like that did happen, I'd expect the circulated news stories to tell tales of a massive, sophisticated, international syndicate of PhD hackers, who have now been arrested and jailed, or terminated by drone strike if they were hiding in uncooperative countries. Which story inspires more confidence in the safety of our financial systems? That is likely the story that will be told.
Bitcoin, whatever you think of it, is a nascent technology / financial phenomenon. While $28M is less than nothing in the federal budget, how this is handled will have significant impact on the future of virtual currencies.
I think you're right, auction the BTC to a private individual and let them try to maximize the value, that will minimize the impact to virtual currencies (assuming the individual that wins the auction isn't an idiot) - which is what I'm betting "the powers that be" want.
However, if the government directly dumps all the BTC on the exchanges crashing their value, that would be a clear policy statement. I doubt they'll do it, my read of the politics is that it would upset more voters than it makes happy, but that's just my read, and political decisions are made based on a whole lot more than what the voters will think of the decision in the next election.
With online trading, why can't (a fool) store almost all of their cash in BTC and liquidate to other currency as needed?
It wouldn't be too hard to make an app for that, execute BTC-USD trade at market for cash needed, transfer and pay - all in 1 click.
There would be some delays in processing, but if you keep a 48 hour operating cash flow cushion in your account, you should be able to use BTC (or Euros, or Yuan) to pay for everything using existing financial systems, just like when you travel abroad and use your credit card.
Now, getting people to set prices in something as volatile as BTC is a stretch - volatility is why a lot of the world prefers to deal in US dollars (or, increasingly, Euros) instead of their local currency.
The US Government is very experienced in manipulation of market prices via supply side control.
There's enough gold in Fort Knox to drive current market prices below $100/oz (at least for a while) if they chose to dump even half of it.
In the late 1970s, a speculator in Texas (I think) cornered the silver market, driving prices up several hundred percent. The Feds eventually got wind of it and dumped some of their silver holdings on the open market, returning silver prices to their pre-runup levels. I believe they slowly repurchased their silver, at significantly lower prices. Not that that made a dent in the federal deficit, but it did amount to an extraction of millions of dollars from everyone who was speculating on the silver market that year.
They do this with the Farm bill, buying excess production and storing it for later distribution.
If they chose to convert 28,000 BTC to USD all at once, they'll collapse the market - probably pretty hard and for a long time, with knock-on effects on all virtual currencies. I'm betting they'll do it more slowly, maximizing their USD capture and preserving the virtual currency markets. I'm also betting that policymakers are well aware of this, and whichever redemption method is chosen it will be ultimately at the direction of your elected officials.
NG is hot - fracking is making it cheap and (even more) ubiquitous - the whistleblower thing is necessary to prod infrastructure improvements now before a major disaster gives this cheap new energy source a black eye, causing the demand for an already high supply commodity to fall.
Seems to me that an officer at the scene could drop an encrypted USB stick into your possessions, then demand the password from you. Of course, sworn officers of the law would never do such things.
I don't think this cycle of civilization is going to end like previous ones. There's an awful lot of guns and ammo around today, and one idiot with a hundred gallons of diesel fuel and some functional construction equipment can do massive environmental damage that people in the Roman era couldn't even dream of.
It's either going to go out with a serious big bang, or hobble along with some core of civilization preserved - sort of how it is today with the First / Third world.
Slashdot Mirror
Buy used, if it has a carburetor you're almost certainly safe from electronic snooping.
Yeah, Verizon tried to "rent" me GPS capabilities on my phone for 8 years, got exactly $0 for that and a pile of other "optional features" that I never used - finally dumped V for T-Mobile last week (unlimited data for less than V charges for limited data? hell yeah!)
Same could be said for non-trivial code.
When I use voodoo, I usually include hyperlinks to Wikipedia or similar sources explaining what's going on. Even when the links die, you can usually search on the algorithm names to come up with an explanation.
More often, I let the library deal in the voodoo and my code reads like: while ( input ) { insert } sort.
If you are writing assembler, you _should_ be including a human readable commentary at some level.
If you have put 5000 assembly instructions under a heading titled "object rotation and zoom", with no other commentary, your code _should_ be expelled from the system, regardless of how well it works on the test cases you made up for it.
Since you ever found employment at a firm which has existing code that they want to continue to use and evolve?
I've always been struck by the similarity of code and contracts or laws.
When written well, they define a set of requirements for specific actions to take place, leaving no ambiguity.
When written poorly, you need to know the version of system they are running under, starting circumstances, state of concurrently running processes, etc.
So, isn't this what happened to Ubuntu, too?
It's that irresistible Nokia hardware that will seal the deal. WinPhone will (never) fly off the shelves carrying Metro interface and driving future desktop OS sales.
Metro mode (mode - as in fashion), see also: http://www.urbandictionary.com...
Similarly, Microsoft Corporate has spent a lot of time making sure that the Windows 8 touch interface molds user behavior in such a way that they _think_ will ensure future profits. I think Marketing / Strategy had more to do with the decision than actual usability.
Bold strategic moves often fail.
Why are you forced to say "Siri" or "O.K. Google" to activate voice recognition?
O.K. - maybe you're not forced, but it is certainly not easy to get past the default configurations...
Isn't that the rumored Windows 9, coming soon?
Thanks for the Hunt Bros clarification, I was about 8 at the time and I remember my parents had invested about $600 in bulk silver coins. When the value plummeted, they explained to me what they understood from the 6pm news on the TV, and I regurgitated that here some 40ish years later...
At least as reliable as most "information" you find on /.
In Soviet Russia: Credit Cards -> Target -> YOU.
Seriously, though, this means that the perps were able to setup a relay station in Russia. I would hope that a person/organization capable of this kind of operation would have the resources/foresight to relay data through several foreign countries.
How embarrassing would it be for the Target data to have been heisted straight to young Matthew Broderick's bedroom? Even if something like that did happen, I'd expect the circulated news stories to tell tales of a massive, sophisticated, international syndicate of PhD hackers, who have now been arrested and jailed, or terminated by drone strike if they were hiding in uncooperative countries. Which story inspires more confidence in the safety of our financial systems? That is likely the story that will be told.
Bitcoin, whatever you think of it, is a nascent technology / financial phenomenon. While $28M is less than nothing in the federal budget, how this is handled will have significant impact on the future of virtual currencies.
I think you're right, auction the BTC to a private individual and let them try to maximize the value, that will minimize the impact to virtual currencies (assuming the individual that wins the auction isn't an idiot) - which is what I'm betting "the powers that be" want.
However, if the government directly dumps all the BTC on the exchanges crashing their value, that would be a clear policy statement. I doubt they'll do it, my read of the politics is that it would upset more voters than it makes happy, but that's just my read, and political decisions are made based on a whole lot more than what the voters will think of the decision in the next election.
With online trading, why can't (a fool) store almost all of their cash in BTC and liquidate to other currency as needed?
It wouldn't be too hard to make an app for that, execute BTC-USD trade at market for cash needed, transfer and pay - all in 1 click.
There would be some delays in processing, but if you keep a 48 hour operating cash flow cushion in your account, you should be able to use BTC (or Euros, or Yuan) to pay for everything using existing financial systems, just like when you travel abroad and use your credit card.
Now, getting people to set prices in something as volatile as BTC is a stretch - volatility is why a lot of the world prefers to deal in US dollars (or, increasingly, Euros) instead of their local currency.
The US Government is very experienced in manipulation of market prices via supply side control.
There's enough gold in Fort Knox to drive current market prices below $100/oz (at least for a while) if they chose to dump even half of it.
In the late 1970s, a speculator in Texas (I think) cornered the silver market, driving prices up several hundred percent. The Feds eventually got wind of it and dumped some of their silver holdings on the open market, returning silver prices to their pre-runup levels. I believe they slowly repurchased their silver, at significantly lower prices. Not that that made a dent in the federal deficit, but it did amount to an extraction of millions of dollars from everyone who was speculating on the silver market that year.
They do this with the Farm bill, buying excess production and storing it for later distribution.
If they chose to convert 28,000 BTC to USD all at once, they'll collapse the market - probably pretty hard and for a long time, with knock-on effects on all virtual currencies. I'm betting they'll do it more slowly, maximizing their USD capture and preserving the virtual currency markets. I'm also betting that policymakers are well aware of this, and whichever redemption method is chosen it will be ultimately at the direction of your elected officials.
Now they need "power vents" to actively exchange the gas.
NG is hot - fracking is making it cheap and (even more) ubiquitous - the whistleblower thing is necessary to prod infrastructure improvements now before a major disaster gives this cheap new energy source a black eye, causing the demand for an already high supply commodity to fall.
Creating money = tax on existing money = unpopular with people who have lots of money.
Seems to me that an officer at the scene could drop an encrypted USB stick into your possessions, then demand the password from you. Of course, sworn officers of the law would never do such things.
I don't think this cycle of civilization is going to end like previous ones. There's an awful lot of guns and ammo around today, and one idiot with a hundred gallons of diesel fuel and some functional construction equipment can do massive environmental damage that people in the Roman era couldn't even dream of.
It's either going to go out with a serious big bang, or hobble along with some core of civilization preserved - sort of how it is today with the First / Third world.
That was entirely conscensual, I just forgot where I put the key.
Can't the answer be: "I don't remember the password anymore." ?