ah, but if you make step 3 $20 and step 4 $45, now it makes more sense for gamer B while still making a reasonable amount of sense for gamer A and the shop. And out of that initial $60, the publisher is probably netting around 10 after the store's cut and the expenses related to making and shipping the physical disk, so they're likely getting about the same out of the used sale as a new sale. (Unless I'm missing something, which is not unlikely:)
Yeah, but TFS said "[The used game seller] must also sell [the used game] at a market price " I might be misunderstanding that, but I took that to mean the same price as the publisher is selling new copies. In those circumstances, there's no incentive for a gamer looking to buy used games.
The customer is always right. But sometimes companies decide that they don't want you as a customer. As in this case.
Yeah, seriously. People forget that (most) businesses aren't required to take everyone's business. If you were a customer of a service I was running, but you started costing me more than 30000% more than I had expected, then I would cancel your service also (at least, insofar as our contract stipulates is acceptable). Everyone always wants to rail against the big bad telcos, but in this instance, I'd say Verizon had the right idea. (Unless they violated their contract. I can't say for sure, as I haven't read it, but they likely leave an opening in there for just such occasions.)
This'd be a different story if they cancelled this guy's account just because he was running servers, even if he wasn't costing them excessive bandwidth. I'm a strong believer in net neutrality. That is, they should not be allowed to discriminate service based on the content of his data, but they sure as hell can discriminate service based on the amount of data.
If game stores have to sell used games back at market price, why wouldn't they just sell the new game? Why would they buy back the old game at any price?
The order of actions would likely follow something like this:
1. Gamer A buys Game from Publisher for $60.
2. Gamer A decides they no longer want said Game for whatever reason.
3. Gamer A sells Game to Used Game Shop for ~$30.
4. Gamer B buys Game from Used Game Shop for $60.
5. Used Game Shop gives Publisher ~$10.
In this case, of the $60 that Gamer B paid for the game, Gamer A gets $30, Used Game Shop gets $20, and Publisher gets $10. The prices are just estimates, of course.
This model makes sense for Gamer A, Used Game Shop, and (mostly for) Publisher. Though, I have no clue why Gamer B would purchase a used game, if it costs the same as a new one. They need to do something about that, otherwise the used game market will die indirectly.
I actually have taken a liking to TypeScript for that purpose. It is rather fancy. I never touch "raw" js any more, I just treat it as a compiled blackbox.
As someone else pointed out, the 360 is (was?) sold below manufacturing cost. If you buy a lot of systems and few games, you're damaging their bottom line.
Mutually assured destruction anyone? Yeah, buying a bunch of consoles and no games would damage Microsoft's bottom line, but it would be far worse for yours, no? If you wanted to throw money at damaging Microsoft, buy stock in their competitors.
Whereas if you use good passwords to start with, and keep layers of trust between different systems (i.e. don't use the same password for your bank as you do for Twatter), then you will not be 100% secure, but at least you have a hope of keeping some control to yourself.
I do something rather similar. At any given time I've memorized 4 distinct passwords. In descending order of complexity, they are: my email password (as a compromised email account makes it trivial to reset or access any other password, this is the most secure. I actually use a 20+ character "pass phrase" for this.), a "High" security password, for things like banks, paypal, amazon, basically anything that if compromised can cost me money, a "Medium" security password, for accounts that are important to me, but wouldn't be a huge deal if they were compromised, slashdot would fall in this category, and finally, a "Low" security password, for accounts that I don't care about, or only expect to use once and then forget about.
Because I layer my passwords like this, it's rarely a big deal even if some site leaks my password and email address. Even if a Low security site has a breach, the usual targets (email and High security sites) are insulated from the risk, so I just change the password at that site and am done with it. High security sites usually have better track records, but if there is a leak, the password group is small enough for me to be able to change them all immediately.
It works pretty well for me. Sourceforge.net leaked my email/password a number of years ago, and I noticed some (failed) unauthorized attempts to login to my email and paypal accounts shortly afterwards. Even if you don't want to go so far as to memorize 4 passwords at any one time, I highly recommend that you at least keep a separate password solely for your email account.
It does surprise me that AmEx wouldn't reverse the charge, though - They have one of the most consumer-friendly (and practically merchant-hostile) dispute policies out there. You ask, they reverse it and ask questions later, with the burden of proof on the merchant.
According to TFA, AmEx did originally credit back the $125k to the guy. Afterwards, though, Salesforce approached AmEx with "authorization for the charge and a signed contract and order form stating that no cancellations or refunds would be allowed", and had the amount charged again. AmEx then refused any subsequent requests to reverse the charge.
How do you run this classic interface on Server 2012? I'm running it right now and it has the start screen rather than a start button just like Windows 8.
Yeah, it has a start screen instead of a start menu, but it's not the same as Windows 8's. It doesn't have any of the random "Smart Tiles" that are more distracting then useful. I didn't really use the start menu anyway, I mostly use quick launch and/or desktop icons. I almost never use the start screen in Server 2012, just when launching a rarely used program. All in all, I don't get the same feel of clumsiness when using 2012's UI without touch that I do from Windows 8.
Even if you actually liked the start menu (which in my opinion was a clumsy way of organizing applications, a holdover from the days of Windows 3.1 and "Program Groups"), Server 2012 is well worth an upgrade from 2008 for its built-in virtualization alone.
When they are ready to upgrade again, Microsoft can just release a "Pro" version which enables a "classic" interface, and leave regular consumers with an interface that trains them to use MS tablets.
They did that. It's called Windows Server 2012. It's essentially Windows 8 without all the cruft. I run it on my desktop. Of course, I might just be weird; my desktop OS upgrade cycle was XP->Ubuntu->Server 2003->Server 2008->Server 2012, over the last 10 years or so.
Though, granted, I get free licenses of Windows and other MS products from my business's Microsoft Partner Action Pack (well, I say free, but it was $400 or so for 10 licenses for each of pretty much every current MS software product), so I may be a biased sample.
The idea of "making an example" of someone while punishing others at a different level, or not punishing others, is unjust on its face. People shining a laser at an aircraft should be tried at least for reckless endangerment and at most for attempted murder, depending upon circumstances (actually, for murder if someone dies), and punished accordingly.
Technically, I believe that's considered involuntary manslaughter, unless it can be proven that the intent of the person shining the laser was to cause bodily harm. Still a serious crime, though.
Undoubtedly. The key is to maximize resource efficiency, taking into account not just taxes over the individual's life, but also potential welfare and unemployment costs, prison and law enforcement costs (good education is proven to reduce crime rates), and the societal benefit gained from the individual (which is hard to measure, though). Every student should receive the education required for them to excel at a job that they both want to and are able to perform; no more, no less.
That said, in the US at least, the demand for unskilled labor will continue to drop, due to automation in the long term and outsourcing in the short. I wrote a fairly detailed research paper on this in college. There will never (within the next few centuries, anyway) be zero need for unskilled labor, but unemployment rates will always be higher for those without much education. Unemployed workers (those that are physically able and willing to work) are indicative of failure at societal and economical levels, and a costly one.
A person who earns $40k a year (a low base for skilled labor) will give roughly $10k a year in taxes, at Federal, State, and Local levels combined. If this person works at that salary (modulated only by inflation), for 50 years, then that is half a million in taxes alone over that person's lifetime. If we spent half of that on that person's education to get them there, then from a purely financial standpoint, that's a net gain for the government. I don't know how much is spent per child by the government, but I doubt it approaches anywhere near a quarter million over the length of their education.
Then there is the fact that, as a society, investing in education makes society as a whole better. Increased education lowers crime. That benefits me, sure, I'll help pay for that. Increased education increases supply of skilled labor, lowering costs. That benefits me, sure, I'll help pay for that. Increased education makes it more likely that useful technology or life saving medicine is invented. That benefits me, sure, I'll help pay for that. Et cetera, et cetera.
(Off-topic: Nice signature. I always wondered if that idea had a proper term, but never got around to doing the research. I referred to it as the observer bias, usually when trying to explain to people that it is not miraculous that Earth supports life.)
This is a nice sound bite, but not really true. We picked the low-hanging fruit of education a long time ago. Despite enormous increases in expenditures, we have not seen significant increases in test scores, etc., over the past 30+ years. It's almost certain that we spend too much on education, not too little, but because people who make government policy are the types who do well in school and can't imagine any other way of being, we keep pushing people to go to more and more of it even when it makes no sense economically. It is entirely possible for college to be a net economic negative for someone.
I don't claim to be an expert on education. I have no idea what will work. I just know that what we have now does not. You are correct in that not all students are cut out for higher education. However, our current educational system treats all children (more or less) equally. Resources should be spent on those who will make the best return on investment for society. Wasting time and money on a student who is simply not capable is a disservice not only to those that are, but the student in question as well. It's a harsh reality that not all students are equal, one that we need to accept.
More money needs to be spent on education. This does not mean that simply throwing money at the problem will solve anything. That money needs to go to teacher salaries (to attract better teachers), better equipment for schools, and not least of all to research into the science of education.
We don't spend too much on education; we're just not spending it smartly.
Maybe. Making a quantum computer give useful results is furiously difficult, as the likelihood of decoherence (and hence loss of all results of the current calculation run) increases as the number of qubits increases and the number of operations increases. Right now, it looks very much like a scaled up research tool and not something you'd use in practice; we're still a good way off the point where any of these machines can tackle modern crypto at all.
Yeah, "feasible" quantum computers are still a long way off.
Quantum computers don't brute-force cryptography in a conventional sense, so much as they simply step around it all together. They're good at cryptographic problems, because they can represent every possible algorithm state simultaneously given enough qubits to represent the problem. Crypto is based on the idea of analyzing all states being expensive - with quantum computers, it's a basic tenet of their operation.
Meaning that solving bitcoin blocks will be exponentially easier for a quantum computer, as compared to a standard binary system. If a large quantum computer starts mining bitcoins, the difficulty of mining bitcoins would rise very fast, until even the quantum computers take some time to solve blocks. Of course, this would mean that anyone without a quantum computer would be shit out of luck if they tried to mine bitcoins.
I'm not being elitist here (well, perhaps I a little)... but most people can't code. They can't be taught to code, save for in a very limited manner.
The thing is... there are a billion people in china, and the same percentage will be able to code as are here.. You _cannot_ teach people to code if they cannot. It takes a slightly odd mindset, IMO.
ergo... there are always going to be more coders, or those with aptitude to code in China than in the west. I think it's just something we're going to have to deal with.
So... who said anything about China? TFA is about Vietnam, which has less than a third of the population of the US.
Sigh... Whether he used Vietnam or China as an example is immaterial. If one reads the part of his comment that you conveniently skipped, you will find that he was trying to point out that while the percentage of people that possess the aptitude for coding is probably more or less the same in different populations of modern humans, in areas with high population density there are going to be more talented coders. This is kind of obvious to anybody with a rudimentary grasp of statistical analysis, but people still go "Ooooh.... small Asian country country has lots of coders... what are they doing that we are not? Is there something in the water?". What it really boils down to is population density, quality of education, student motivation and the priorities government and educators set in schools which in Asia is Maths, Physics, CS and other technology related subjects and last but not least whether or not scripture thumping zealots are allowed to dictate what gets taught is schools.
I read his entire comment. If Vietnam has more high school students who have some knowledge of CS than the US, then it follows that there is a difference in educational policy that is the cause. If China has more than the US, as in his post, then population differences could explain that. The country used in his example is very much material, as a country with less population than us, but more programmers would completely invalidate said example. (If TFA is accurate, of which I cannot be certain.)
However, I can be certain that the educational system in the US needs a serious overhaul. Our students are abysmal in math and science when compared with other major nations. Education should be the primary focus of our government spending. Doing so will have more long term benefits for us as a nation than any other expenditures.
Not defending the US education's system's oversight in this area, but I bet if Google interviewed some kids at a US engineering high school, they'd have better results.
I went to an engineering high school, and there were a number of programming courses. (In addition to the other random computer related courses, like web design, or matlab.) Granted, I skipped ahead to CS 4 by tenth grade and aced my AP Computer Science test (saving me a semester in college "learning" simple CS topics which I knew since I was 12 and started poking at qbasic), but it was mandatory for everyone to take at least one year of programming. If your job involves science or math in any non-trivial fashion, knowing a bit of programming can make you much more competitive/productive.
While the state of education (primary and secondary) in the US is indeed dismal, CS is not entirely left by the wayside by every school.
ergo... there are always going to be more coders, or those with aptitude to code in China than in the west. I think it's just something we're going to have to deal with.
So... who said anything about China? TFA is about Vietnam, which has less than a third of the population of the US.
The difficulty of mining bitcoins (and hence the speed that a given set of hardware mines bitcoins) is directly proportional to the amount of computing power mining bitcoins. If the amount of computational power in the system goes up, that means that (in the short term), the amount of bitcoins mined in a given period goes up. Every X number (I forget exactly how many) of blocks (the basic structure of bitcoin as a currency, currently each block "creates" 25 BTC, given to the block's solver. The amount of BTC earned per block is halved at distinct intervals, but that's not relevant here.), the bitcoin system (i.e., each client that is creating these blocks, as there is no central server) analyzes the length of time it took solve all X blocks. If that time is less than Y (again, don't recall the exact number, but I think it was a week), then the difficulty of mining blocks is increased by a proportional amount. If it was greater than Y, the difficulty is decreased.
What this all means is that if someone were to bring an astronomical amount of computing power to bear on mining bitcoins, the difficulty of mining bitcoins would automatically compensate, and the addition of new bitcoins into the marketplace would proceed at the same rate. Granted, the person at the head of all this computing power would be the recipient of most new bitcoins, but the currency would not be destabilized (at least through computing power alone.) There would be other things said person could do to destabilize bitcoins, though, through either Financial or Technical means. They could hoard all BTC they mine, causing the price of BTC to rise. They could sell BTC they mine at ridiculously low prices, causing the price of BTC to plummet. If they comprise more than 60% or so of all computing directed at bitcoin mining, they could hijack the blockchain, and would be able to spend bitcoins they don't own, or double spend their own bitcoins.
I'm fairly sure that anyone who attempts to hijack bitcoins through raw computing power would end up spending more on said computing power than they would earn from bitcoins. So unless a malicious billionaire or an intrepid hacker organization with a few supercomputers in their botnet decide one day that they really don't like bitcoins, it doesn't seem likely to happen.
Indeed. I still play Nethack. One day I'll win... one day....
And I play the terminal version (not the slash'em or other improved versions.):) I just like the game a bunch... and forget Demon Souls and Dark Souls... you want crushing difficulty, play Nethack....and get off my lawn!:)
Nethack ftfw! In 10+ years of playing Nethack I have ascended exactly once (a Wizard). I have this masochistic tradition where I spend every Friday the 13th playing Nethack. Nethack is hard enough without a -1 Luck handicap, lol.
Sadly, science is made by scientists. And equally sadly, what matters in science these days, when it comes to credibility and "truth", is whether and how often you're quoted. In fact a few scientific fields descended into huge circle jerk groups where one quotes two, two quotes three and three quotes back one, and they all claim that this is confirmation of their theory.
The thing is, however, is that Science as a field is inherently self-correcting. While individual scientists (or groups of scientists) may push this theory or that for personal reasons, eventually, some one will do an experiment proving or disproving said theory. Then someone else will independently validate said experiment. Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.
Bad science, whether so because of incompetence, bias, or malice, will inevitably be revealed as such. This is what I mean when I say Science as a whole is objective.
Slashdot Mirror
ah, but if you make step 3 $20 and step 4 $45, now it makes more sense for gamer B while still making a reasonable amount of sense for gamer A and the shop. And out of that initial $60, the publisher is probably netting around 10 after the store's cut and the expenses related to making and shipping the physical disk, so they're likely getting about the same out of the used sale as a new sale. (Unless I'm missing something, which is not unlikely :)
Yeah, but TFS said "[The used game seller] must also sell [the used game] at a market price " I might be misunderstanding that, but I took that to mean the same price as the publisher is selling new copies. In those circumstances, there's no incentive for a gamer looking to buy used games.
The customer is always right. But sometimes companies decide that they don't want you as a customer. As in this case.
Yeah, seriously. People forget that (most) businesses aren't required to take everyone's business. If you were a customer of a service I was running, but you started costing me more than 30000% more than I had expected, then I would cancel your service also (at least, insofar as our contract stipulates is acceptable). Everyone always wants to rail against the big bad telcos, but in this instance, I'd say Verizon had the right idea. (Unless they violated their contract. I can't say for sure, as I haven't read it, but they likely leave an opening in there for just such occasions.)
This'd be a different story if they cancelled this guy's account just because he was running servers, even if he wasn't costing them excessive bandwidth. I'm a strong believer in net neutrality. That is, they should not be allowed to discriminate service based on the content of his data, but they sure as hell can discriminate service based on the amount of data.
If game stores have to sell used games back at market price, why wouldn't they just sell the new game? Why would they buy back the old game at any price?
The order of actions would likely follow something like this:
In this case, of the $60 that Gamer B paid for the game, Gamer A gets $30, Used Game Shop gets $20, and Publisher gets $10. The prices are just estimates, of course.
This model makes sense for Gamer A, Used Game Shop, and (mostly for) Publisher. Though, I have no clue why Gamer B would purchase a used game, if it costs the same as a new one. They need to do something about that, otherwise the used game market will die indirectly.
Welcome to compiled languages. Still, people continue to use C/C++, so it can't be that problematic.
I actually have taken a liking to TypeScript for that purpose. It is rather fancy. I never touch "raw" js any more, I just treat it as a compiled blackbox.
Aren't Cheetoes made from corn?
As someone else pointed out, the 360 is (was?) sold below manufacturing cost. If you buy a lot of systems and few games, you're damaging their bottom line.
Mutually assured destruction anyone? Yeah, buying a bunch of consoles and no games would damage Microsoft's bottom line, but it would be far worse for yours, no? If you wanted to throw money at damaging Microsoft, buy stock in their competitors.
Whereas if you use good passwords to start with, and keep layers of trust between different systems (i.e. don't use the same password for your bank as you do for Twatter), then you will not be 100% secure, but at least you have a hope of keeping some control to yourself.
I do something rather similar. At any given time I've memorized 4 distinct passwords. In descending order of complexity, they are: my email password (as a compromised email account makes it trivial to reset or access any other password, this is the most secure. I actually use a 20+ character "pass phrase" for this.), a "High" security password, for things like banks, paypal, amazon, basically anything that if compromised can cost me money, a "Medium" security password, for accounts that are important to me, but wouldn't be a huge deal if they were compromised, slashdot would fall in this category, and finally, a "Low" security password, for accounts that I don't care about, or only expect to use once and then forget about.
Because I layer my passwords like this, it's rarely a big deal even if some site leaks my password and email address. Even if a Low security site has a breach, the usual targets (email and High security sites) are insulated from the risk, so I just change the password at that site and am done with it. High security sites usually have better track records, but if there is a leak, the password group is small enough for me to be able to change them all immediately.
It works pretty well for me. Sourceforge.net leaked my email/password a number of years ago, and I noticed some (failed) unauthorized attempts to login to my email and paypal accounts shortly afterwards. Even if you don't want to go so far as to memorize 4 passwords at any one time, I highly recommend that you at least keep a separate password solely for your email account.
It does surprise me that AmEx wouldn't reverse the charge, though - They have one of the most consumer-friendly (and practically merchant-hostile) dispute policies out there. You ask, they reverse it and ask questions later, with the burden of proof on the merchant.
According to TFA, AmEx did originally credit back the $125k to the guy. Afterwards, though, Salesforce approached AmEx with "authorization for the charge and a signed contract and order form stating that no cancellations or refunds would be allowed", and had the amount charged again. AmEx then refused any subsequent requests to reverse the charge.
If we can't manage a planets resources then we are basically a cosmic cancer.
Must.. not.. make.. Matrix.. reference....
Frak...
How do you run this classic interface on Server 2012? I'm running it right now and it has the start screen rather than a start button just like Windows 8.
Yeah, it has a start screen instead of a start menu, but it's not the same as Windows 8's. It doesn't have any of the random "Smart Tiles" that are more distracting then useful. I didn't really use the start menu anyway, I mostly use quick launch and/or desktop icons. I almost never use the start screen in Server 2012, just when launching a rarely used program. All in all, I don't get the same feel of clumsiness when using 2012's UI without touch that I do from Windows 8.
Even if you actually liked the start menu (which in my opinion was a clumsy way of organizing applications, a holdover from the days of Windows 3.1 and "Program Groups"), Server 2012 is well worth an upgrade from 2008 for its built-in virtualization alone.
When they are ready to upgrade again, Microsoft can just release a "Pro" version which enables a "classic" interface, and leave regular consumers with an interface that trains them to use MS tablets.
They did that. It's called Windows Server 2012. It's essentially Windows 8 without all the cruft. I run it on my desktop. Of course, I might just be weird; my desktop OS upgrade cycle was XP->Ubuntu->Server 2003->Server 2008->Server 2012, over the last 10 years or so.
Though, granted, I get free licenses of Windows and other MS products from my business's Microsoft Partner Action Pack (well, I say free, but it was $400 or so for 10 licenses for each of pretty much every current MS software product), so I may be a biased sample.
The idea of "making an example" of someone while punishing others at a different level, or not punishing others, is unjust on its face. People shining a laser at an aircraft should be tried at least for reckless endangerment and at most for attempted murder, depending upon circumstances (actually, for murder if someone dies), and punished accordingly.
Technically, I believe that's considered involuntary manslaughter, unless it can be proven that the intent of the person shining the laser was to cause bodily harm. Still a serious crime, though.
Undoubtedly. The key is to maximize resource efficiency, taking into account not just taxes over the individual's life, but also potential welfare and unemployment costs, prison and law enforcement costs (good education is proven to reduce crime rates), and the societal benefit gained from the individual (which is hard to measure, though). Every student should receive the education required for them to excel at a job that they both want to and are able to perform; no more, no less.
That said, in the US at least, the demand for unskilled labor will continue to drop, due to automation in the long term and outsourcing in the short. I wrote a fairly detailed research paper on this in college. There will never (within the next few centuries, anyway) be zero need for unskilled labor, but unemployment rates will always be higher for those without much education. Unemployed workers (those that are physically able and willing to work) are indicative of failure at societal and economical levels, and a costly one.
A person who earns $40k a year (a low base for skilled labor) will give roughly $10k a year in taxes, at Federal, State, and Local levels combined. If this person works at that salary (modulated only by inflation), for 50 years, then that is half a million in taxes alone over that person's lifetime. If we spent half of that on that person's education to get them there, then from a purely financial standpoint, that's a net gain for the government. I don't know how much is spent per child by the government, but I doubt it approaches anywhere near a quarter million over the length of their education.
Then there is the fact that, as a society, investing in education makes society as a whole better. Increased education lowers crime. That benefits me, sure, I'll help pay for that. Increased education increases supply of skilled labor, lowering costs. That benefits me, sure, I'll help pay for that. Increased education makes it more likely that useful technology or life saving medicine is invented. That benefits me, sure, I'll help pay for that. Et cetera, et cetera.
(Off-topic: Nice signature. I always wondered if that idea had a proper term, but never got around to doing the research. I referred to it as the observer bias, usually when trying to explain to people that it is not miraculous that Earth supports life.)
This is a nice sound bite, but not really true. We picked the low-hanging fruit of education a long time ago. Despite enormous increases in expenditures, we have not seen significant increases in test scores, etc., over the past 30+ years. It's almost certain that we spend too much on education, not too little, but because people who make government policy are the types who do well in school and can't imagine any other way of being, we keep pushing people to go to more and more of it even when it makes no sense economically. It is entirely possible for college to be a net economic negative for someone.
I don't claim to be an expert on education. I have no idea what will work. I just know that what we have now does not. You are correct in that not all students are cut out for higher education. However, our current educational system treats all children (more or less) equally. Resources should be spent on those who will make the best return on investment for society. Wasting time and money on a student who is simply not capable is a disservice not only to those that are, but the student in question as well. It's a harsh reality that not all students are equal, one that we need to accept.
More money needs to be spent on education. This does not mean that simply throwing money at the problem will solve anything. That money needs to go to teacher salaries (to attract better teachers), better equipment for schools, and not least of all to research into the science of education.
We don't spend too much on education; we're just not spending it smartly.
Maybe. Making a quantum computer give useful results is furiously difficult, as the likelihood of decoherence (and hence loss of all results of the current calculation run) increases as the number of qubits increases and the number of operations increases. Right now, it looks very much like a scaled up research tool and not something you'd use in practice; we're still a good way off the point where any of these machines can tackle modern crypto at all.
Yeah, "feasible" quantum computers are still a long way off.
Quantum computers don't brute-force cryptography in a conventional sense, so much as they simply step around it all together. They're good at cryptographic problems, because they can represent every possible algorithm state simultaneously given enough qubits to represent the problem. Crypto is based on the idea of analyzing all states being expensive - with quantum computers, it's a basic tenet of their operation.
Meaning that solving bitcoin blocks will be exponentially easier for a quantum computer, as compared to a standard binary system. If a large quantum computer starts mining bitcoins, the difficulty of mining bitcoins would rise very fast, until even the quantum computers take some time to solve blocks. Of course, this would mean that anyone without a quantum computer would be shit out of luck if they tried to mine bitcoins.
I'm not being elitist here (well, perhaps I a little)... but most people can't code. They can't be taught to code, save for in a very limited manner. The thing is... there are a billion people in china, and the same percentage will be able to code as are here.. You _cannot_ teach people to code if they cannot. It takes a slightly odd mindset, IMO. ergo... there are always going to be more coders, or those with aptitude to code in China than in the west. I think it's just something we're going to have to deal with.
So... who said anything about China? TFA is about Vietnam, which has less than a third of the population of the US.
Sigh... Whether he used Vietnam or China as an example is immaterial. If one reads the part of his comment that you conveniently skipped, you will find that he was trying to point out that while the percentage of people that possess the aptitude for coding is probably more or less the same in different populations of modern humans, in areas with high population density there are going to be more talented coders. This is kind of obvious to anybody with a rudimentary grasp of statistical analysis, but people still go "Ooooh.... small Asian country country has lots of coders... what are they doing that we are not? Is there something in the water?". What it really boils down to is population density, quality of education, student motivation and the priorities government and educators set in schools which in Asia is Maths, Physics, CS and other technology related subjects and last but not least whether or not scripture thumping zealots are allowed to dictate what gets taught is schools.
I read his entire comment. If Vietnam has more high school students who have some knowledge of CS than the US, then it follows that there is a difference in educational policy that is the cause. If China has more than the US, as in his post, then population differences could explain that. The country used in his example is very much material, as a country with less population than us, but more programmers would completely invalidate said example. (If TFA is accurate, of which I cannot be certain.)
However, I can be certain that the educational system in the US needs a serious overhaul. Our students are abysmal in math and science when compared with other major nations. Education should be the primary focus of our government spending. Doing so will have more long term benefits for us as a nation than any other expenditures.
Not defending the US education's system's oversight in this area, but I bet if Google interviewed some kids at a US engineering high school, they'd have better results.
I went to an engineering high school, and there were a number of programming courses. (In addition to the other random computer related courses, like web design, or matlab.) Granted, I skipped ahead to CS 4 by tenth grade and aced my AP Computer Science test (saving me a semester in college "learning" simple CS topics which I knew since I was 12 and started poking at qbasic), but it was mandatory for everyone to take at least one year of programming. If your job involves science or math in any non-trivial fashion, knowing a bit of programming can make you much more competitive/productive.
While the state of education (primary and secondary) in the US is indeed dismal, CS is not entirely left by the wayside by every school.
ergo... there are always going to be more coders, or those with aptitude to code in China than in the west. I think it's just something we're going to have to deal with.
So... who said anything about China? TFA is about Vietnam, which has less than a third of the population of the US.
The difficulty of mining bitcoins (and hence the speed that a given set of hardware mines bitcoins) is directly proportional to the amount of computing power mining bitcoins. If the amount of computational power in the system goes up, that means that (in the short term), the amount of bitcoins mined in a given period goes up. Every X number (I forget exactly how many) of blocks (the basic structure of bitcoin as a currency, currently each block "creates" 25 BTC, given to the block's solver. The amount of BTC earned per block is halved at distinct intervals, but that's not relevant here.), the bitcoin system (i.e., each client that is creating these blocks, as there is no central server) analyzes the length of time it took solve all X blocks. If that time is less than Y (again, don't recall the exact number, but I think it was a week), then the difficulty of mining blocks is increased by a proportional amount. If it was greater than Y, the difficulty is decreased.
What this all means is that if someone were to bring an astronomical amount of computing power to bear on mining bitcoins, the difficulty of mining bitcoins would automatically compensate, and the addition of new bitcoins into the marketplace would proceed at the same rate. Granted, the person at the head of all this computing power would be the recipient of most new bitcoins, but the currency would not be destabilized (at least through computing power alone.) There would be other things said person could do to destabilize bitcoins, though, through either Financial or Technical means. They could hoard all BTC they mine, causing the price of BTC to rise. They could sell BTC they mine at ridiculously low prices, causing the price of BTC to plummet. If they comprise more than 60% or so of all computing directed at bitcoin mining, they could hijack the blockchain, and would be able to spend bitcoins they don't own, or double spend their own bitcoins.
I'm fairly sure that anyone who attempts to hijack bitcoins through raw computing power would end up spending more on said computing power than they would earn from bitcoins. So unless a malicious billionaire or an intrepid hacker organization with a few supercomputers in their botnet decide one day that they really don't like bitcoins, it doesn't seem likely to happen.
Indeed. I still play Nethack. One day I'll win... one day....
And I play the terminal version (not the slash'em or other improved versions.) :) I just like the game a bunch... and forget Demon Souls and Dark Souls... you want crushing difficulty, play Nethack. ...and get off my lawn! :)
Nethack ftfw! In 10+ years of playing Nethack I have ascended exactly once (a Wizard). I have this masochistic tradition where I spend every Friday the 13th playing Nethack. Nethack is hard enough without a -1 Luck handicap, lol.
Sadly, science is made by scientists. And equally sadly, what matters in science these days, when it comes to credibility and "truth", is whether and how often you're quoted. In fact a few scientific fields descended into huge circle jerk groups where one quotes two, two quotes three and three quotes back one, and they all claim that this is confirmation of their theory.
The thing is, however, is that Science as a field is inherently self-correcting. While individual scientists (or groups of scientists) may push this theory or that for personal reasons, eventually, some one will do an experiment proving or disproving said theory. Then someone else will independently validate said experiment. Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.
Bad science, whether so because of incompetence, bias, or malice, will inevitably be revealed as such. This is what I mean when I say Science as a whole is objective.
And people so like to believe that science is objective, free of self-interest and politics, and trustworthy as a source of real world insight...
Science? Science is objective and unbiased. Scientists, on the other hand...
So where should one obtain related work experience without already having related work experience?
Internships are a good start, if you can manage it financially.