I was on mile 4 of a long bike ride when my rear tire failed.... I had decided not to bring my wallet with me, but I did have my phone.
Just curious, did you bring any ID, in case you die or get seriously injured? A (presumably) locked (or dead, if you're out there for a while) phone isn't very helpful in those cases...
Do you keep your entire life savings in cash in your dead cow wallet?
I keep my entire life savings stored in a *live* cow wallet. It "moos" a LOT -- but it's a bit cranky and stealing from it is only for the very brave...
If everybody is always carrying around a powerful computer in their pockets, it's natural to consider loading payment information onto that secure device as an alternative to cash or plastic cards.
The summary used the words "computer" and "secure" in the same sentence as "payment information".
How often have you sat at your desk browsing the internet instead of being productive?
Who says I'm not being productive then? Some (many?) problems cannot be solved via by simply brute-force thinking them through - a linear left-brain methodology. Many times, especially for more complex things, I need to let things peculate awhile. Ever get the solution to a vexing problem (an "ah-ha!" moment) while taking a shower? That's your right-brain solving something non-linearly.
Going off and doing something completely different is a strategy for allowing a left to right brain shift -- keep the (usually) dominate left brain busy on something completely unrelated to the task at hand giving the (usually subordinate) right brain time and space to chime in. (read the book: "Drawing on the Right Side of The Brain" - and others on left/right brain)
How many people could your company fire if everybody just paid attention all the time?
Perhaps manyt, but how long would those people last/stay before burning out? There's more to work than "paying attention all the time".
In addition, the Cray-2 was a vector processor, so, from what I understand, if you accessed your memory/arrays in a manner compatible with the "stride" things ran very, very fast, but you could easily screw that up - which was probably happening with the FORTRAN to C port. I'm not a compiler wonk, but understand that things have come a long way since I started out. I get the I/O thing for your work and have written a few routines doing I/O and mmap(), which is not only fast, but dodges some accounting as well, as well as a few things for an X11 pass-through scanner/server. Obviously not the scale of particle physics stuff, but I get the general idea. Thanks.
Particle physics does not use FORTRAN except in very limited places usually associated with theorists who have not yet migrated to C++ which is a small and diminishing number.
Although, C and FORTRAN are not (or were not) implemented/executed identically. I remember way back in the late 1980s - early 1990s, when I was working as a system programmer/administrator at the NASA Langley Research Center, I was asked to port a FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) routine from FORTRAN to C on their Cray-2. [A researcher wanted to stream live wind tunnel data through the Cray instead of forking out $50k for a dedicated processor.] The C version did not perform as well as the FORTRAN version - yes I ported it correctly. I understand that there were different optimization abilities for the two compilers, but I also believe it had to do with one language being "row major" and the other "column major" for arrays (I can't remember which was which) and the FORTRAN memory model was more efficient on the Cray-2. So, use the appropriate tool for the equipment/environment you're using.
Fortran (yes, that's how it's spelt now, not "FORTRAN")
Actually, FORTRAN -- the original -- is an acronym derived from Formula Translating System, so I'm sure all upper case is still also acceptable, unless you have a bug up your butt.
When you go to any place where 'cutting edge' scientific research is going on, strangely the computer language of choice is FORTRAN, the first computer language commonly used, invented in the 1950s.
Perhaps it's still the best tool for the job. Why is that strange? Old(er) doesn't necessarily mean obsolete -- and new(er) doesn't necessarily mean better.
a lot of difficulty when it comes to safely rules being implemented if we don't have a high enough body count
Congress won't really care unless it's rich people getting killed, Wall Street banks getting destroyed or the accidents are FIIMBY -- Fuck It's In My Back Yard -- (thank you The Daily Show for that acronym).
Try turning off a car with keys when the car is in drive. Mostly doesn't work.
If by "mostly" you mean cars w/automatic transmission, then perhaps. My two cars have manual transmissions and turning the key off shuts off the engine no matter what and I suspect that's true for all cars w/manual transmission. Personally, I can't stand push-button start or automatic transmissions.
... with the "Krazy Kripples" story line where ChristopherReeve sucks down fetus blood to cure his quadriplegia and gain super-human strength:
In "Krazy Kripples", Christopher Reeve comes to town to promote stem cell research. In order to 'cure' his quadriplegia, he is shown sucking the fluids out of fetuses from a medical bio-hazard container. With each fetus he sucks dry, Reeves becomes healthier and more dependent on them for his developing super human strength.
Tape still seems to be a bit more reliable if you want to just put something on the shelf and then spin it up in 5 years, HDDs can be a bit touchy about that.
Ya, I had a SCSI disk (run 24/7 for 7 years, then off for 3 years) that refused to spin up, but "tapping" on the side it with a screwdriver handle during power up fixed that.:-)
Earnest question: if the primary restrictions on an individual's freedom are a direct result of economic circumstances (read: being poor), are laws that promote an equitable distribution of wealth compatible with Neo-Classical Libertarianism?
For example, killing and redistributing the wealth of the ten richest Americans would yield roughly $1000 per American. This would be a dramatic decrease in freedom for ten individuals (perhaps an understatement), but a modest increase in freedom for hundreds of millions of other individuals. How would such a policy be seen in the context of your preferred flavor of Libertarianism?
Altering your example... If people were honest and you could redistribute that money to only the people in actual need (i.e. I don't need that extra $1000 and would pass on accepting it - I have given out about $10k / year to friends in need over the last 8 years, as well as ~$40k total to charity) then you could do more for fewer people, which changes the equation a bit. Some people are in desperate need and/or are simply trapped by their current financial circumstances.
On a related note, I can think of a few rich people we could all do w/o... Mark Zuckerberg would be at the top of my list
First, they want to provide a personalized web-browsing experience, which isn't possible using do-not-track.
This is one of the phrases and behaviors that annoy me the most about various sites, especially search sites. I search for both personal and work related things, don't want searches tailored to anything other than the specific thing for which I'm searching at that time. I generally don't care what I searched for 24h ago (looking at you Google side-bar).
In a related rant, I can't stand the Google side-bar, Instant and Suggestions and make every attempt to disable and or strip them out (using Proxomitron) though now that Google has switched to HTTPS, that makes things more difficult for me - sigh.
Dear Providers, Don't "help" me unless I ask for it.
Well they're clearly a bunch of moron rednecks... Stop selling [guns] to idiots with mental problems...
I see you've clearly stated the problem *and* solution.:-)
Unfortunately, for whatever reason, too many people believe they *need* a gun when, in reality, they don't. And using a gun to protect ones property - or most property - is inappropriate - it's property, it can be replaced. No one deserves to die for just stealing a TV or car. Of course, using a gun to protect yourself or others is another matter - though not from popcorn in a movie theater or loud music at a gas station...
Our real danger is getting stuck on chip-n-pin for the next 20 years. I suspect somebody (Amazon/PayPal/NewCorp) will replace payments entirely with phones by then, though. The old people who use credit cards might still be using chip-n-pin, but they will be a tiny minority.
Okay Smugly, payment by phone is different, but not necessarily better or more secure, convenient, robust... than a CC. In addition, a phone has a battery, isn't water or crush proof (etc) or nearly as small as a CC. Some people, like me, don't even have a cell phone (because I don't need one), but I have a CC.
I don't think payment by phone will be the panacea you imagine.
Slashdot Mirror
I was on mile 4 of a long bike ride when my rear tire failed. ... I had decided not to bring my wallet with me, but I did have my phone.
Just curious, did you bring any ID, in case you die or get seriously injured? A (presumably) locked (or dead, if you're out there for a while) phone isn't very helpful in those cases...
Do you keep your entire life savings in cash in your dead cow wallet?
I keep my entire life savings stored in a *live* cow wallet. It "moos" a LOT -- but it's a bit cranky and stealing from it is only for the very brave...
Not have to carry as many rewards/credit cards in your wallet/on your keychain?
Easy. I have no reward cards and one (platinum) CC - paid off each month.
If everybody is always carrying around a powerful computer in their pockets, it's natural to consider loading payment information onto that secure device as an alternative to cash or plastic cards.
The summary used the words "computer" and "secure" in the same sentence as "payment information".
Why? 10'?
Only the male scientists say it's 10 feet, the women say it's really about 5-6 feet.
If you knocked on an aluminum frame with your fingernail enough times in the same spot, it would eventually fail.
Your manicures must be *really*difficult and expensive.
I wonder how Bayer is going to keep this new study out of their court case where they're suing the EU for banning neonicotinoid pesticides.
Lawyers.
Do these neonicotinoid pesticides work on them too?
Wholesale?
Nice. I wish I'd remembered that.
The researchers suggest that the technique could potentially be used to help people who suffer from chronic nightmares.
How often have you sat at your desk browsing the internet instead of being productive?
Who says I'm not being productive then? Some (many?) problems cannot be solved via by simply brute-force thinking them through - a linear left-brain methodology. Many times, especially for more complex things, I need to let things peculate awhile. Ever get the solution to a vexing problem (an "ah-ha!" moment) while taking a shower? That's your right-brain solving something non-linearly.
Going off and doing something completely different is a strategy for allowing a left to right brain shift -- keep the (usually) dominate left brain busy on something completely unrelated to the task at hand giving the (usually subordinate) right brain time and space to chime in. (read the book: "Drawing on the Right Side of The Brain" - and others on left/right brain)
How many people could your company fire if everybody just paid attention all the time?
Perhaps manyt, but how long would those people last/stay before burning out? There's more to work than "paying attention all the time".
In addition, the Cray-2 was a vector processor, so, from what I understand, if you accessed your memory/arrays in a manner compatible with the "stride" things ran very, very fast, but you could easily screw that up - which was probably happening with the FORTRAN to C port. I'm not a compiler wonk, but understand that things have come a long way since I started out. I get the I/O thing for your work and have written a few routines doing I/O and mmap(), which is not only fast, but dodges some accounting as well, as well as a few things for an X11 pass-through scanner/server. Obviously not the scale of particle physics stuff, but I get the general idea. Thanks.
Particle physics does not use FORTRAN except in very limited places usually associated with theorists who have not yet migrated to C++ which is a small and diminishing number.
Although, C and FORTRAN are not (or were not) implemented/executed identically. I remember way back in the late 1980s - early 1990s, when I was working as a system programmer/administrator at the NASA Langley Research Center, I was asked to port a FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) routine from FORTRAN to C on their Cray-2. [A researcher wanted to stream live wind tunnel data through the Cray instead of forking out $50k for a dedicated processor.] The C version did not perform as well as the FORTRAN version - yes I ported it correctly. I understand that there were different optimization abilities for the two compilers, but I also believe it had to do with one language being "row major" and the other "column major" for arrays (I can't remember which was which) and the FORTRAN memory model was more efficient on the Cray-2. So, use the appropriate tool for the equipment/environment you're using.
Fortran (yes, that's how it's spelt now, not "FORTRAN")
Actually, FORTRAN -- the original -- is an acronym derived from Formula Translating System, so I'm sure all upper case is still also acceptable, unless you have a bug up your butt.
When you go to any place where 'cutting edge' scientific research is going on, strangely the computer language of choice is FORTRAN, the first computer language commonly used, invented in the 1950s.
Perhaps it's still the best tool for the job. Why is that strange? Old(er) doesn't necessarily mean obsolete -- and new(er) doesn't necessarily mean better.
a lot of difficulty when it comes to safely rules being implemented if we don't have a high enough body count
Congress won't really care unless it's rich people getting killed, Wall Street banks getting destroyed or the accidents are FIIMBY -- Fuck It's In My Back Yard -- (thank you The Daily Show for that acronym).
Try turning off a car with keys when the car is in drive.
Mostly doesn't work.
If by "mostly" you mean cars w/automatic transmission, then perhaps. My two cars have manual transmissions and turning the key off shuts off the engine no matter what and I suspect that's true for all cars w/manual transmission. Personally, I can't stand push-button start or automatic transmissions.
In "Krazy Kripples", Christopher Reeve comes to town to promote stem cell research. In order to 'cure' his quadriplegia, he is shown sucking the fluids out of fetuses from a medical bio-hazard container. With each fetus he sucks dry, Reeves becomes healthier and more dependent on them for his developing super human strength.
Just a grey square. So much for the hype.
Youngsters. Back in my day, all we could get was a grey dot, and we were happy to get that.
Every major commercial operating system has either learned/copped or borrowed code from Linux.
Or BSD.
Tape still seems to be a bit more reliable if you want to just put something on the shelf and then spin it up in 5 years, HDDs can be a bit touchy about that.
Ya, I had a SCSI disk (run 24/7 for 7 years, then off for 3 years) that refused to spin up, but "tapping" on the side it with a screwdriver handle during power up fixed that. :-)
Earnest question: if the primary restrictions on an individual's freedom are a direct result of economic circumstances (read: being poor), are laws that promote an equitable distribution of wealth compatible with Neo-Classical Libertarianism?
For example, killing and redistributing the wealth of the ten richest Americans would yield roughly $1000 per American. This would be a dramatic decrease in freedom for ten individuals (perhaps an understatement), but a modest increase in freedom for hundreds of millions of other individuals. How would such a policy be seen in the context of your preferred flavor of Libertarianism?
Altering your example... If people were honest and you could redistribute that money to only the people in actual need (i.e. I don't need that extra $1000 and would pass on accepting it - I have given out about $10k / year to friends in need over the last 8 years, as well as ~$40k total to charity) then you could do more for fewer people, which changes the equation a bit. Some people are in desperate need and/or are simply trapped by their current financial circumstances.
On a related note, I can think of a few rich people we could all do w/o ... Mark Zuckerberg would be at the top of my list
First, they want to provide a personalized web-browsing experience, which isn't possible using do-not-track.
This is one of the phrases and behaviors that annoy me the most about various sites, especially search sites. I search for both personal and work related things, don't want searches tailored to anything other than the specific thing for which I'm searching at that time. I generally don't care what I searched for 24h ago (looking at you Google side-bar).
In a related rant, I can't stand the Google side-bar, Instant and Suggestions and make every attempt to disable and or strip them out (using Proxomitron) though now that Google has switched to HTTPS, that makes things more difficult for me - sigh.
Dear Providers, Don't "help" me unless I ask for it.
Well they're clearly a bunch of moron rednecks ... Stop selling [guns] to idiots with mental problems ...
I see you've clearly stated the problem *and* solution. :-)
Unfortunately, for whatever reason, too many people believe they *need* a gun when, in reality, they don't. And using a gun to protect ones property - or most property - is inappropriate - it's property, it can be replaced. No one deserves to die for just stealing a TV or car. Of course, using a gun to protect yourself or others is another matter - though not from popcorn in a movie theater or loud music at a gas station...
Our real danger is getting stuck on chip-n-pin for the next 20 years. I suspect somebody (Amazon/PayPal/NewCorp) will replace payments entirely with phones by then, though. The old people who use credit cards might still be using chip-n-pin, but they will be a tiny minority.
Okay Smugly, payment by phone is different, but not necessarily better or more secure, convenient, robust ... than a CC. In addition, a phone has a battery, isn't water or crush proof (etc) or nearly as small as a CC. Some people, like me, don't even have a cell phone (because I don't need one), but I have a CC.
I don't think payment by phone will be the panacea you imagine.