We have done this for years here in Europe. Typically they are called hacklabs. Often they may be squatted houses converted into social centres, or a funded space (like a hackerspace) with people living on site.
A large factory with ~20 hackers living and working on projects. People would come and go as they please, and we held several hackathons there like the 2007 Crystal Space hackfest:
This is the reason I develop Bitcoin. We desperately need a funding method to help keep the internet alive, but all the current "solutions" are easily corruptible (see PayPal/Visa/MasterCard and Wikileaks) *and* have a ton of friction involved - think of all the hoops needed for a sub-$1 payment - most just don't bother and go fuckit.
Once we inject the slightest flow of frictionless money into creative works on the internet, it will fuel a boom in media and free culture (including free software). Donation driven distributed patronage now becomes the norm and allows the consumers to connect with the producers on a more personal level, even becoming producers themselves.
In the online poker world, there is the possibility to send funds between sites. Because of this there is a rich community of people sending funds among each other, betting on StarCraft games, selling poker skins, posts with rewards for the best answer and so on. It's like when there's a tiny bit of money, there is a minature boom of activity and producitivity in that area. To borrow an analogy: in the highest poker play money games, nobody cares how they play and just click random buttons. But in the lowest *real money* games for 1c/2c, shit becomes serious. People start folding hands and thinking strategy. The leap in skill level is enormous, and only grows exponentially as you go up in poker stakes. Despite being a tiny injection of funds, people start playing to win, not playing out of boredom (mindlessly clicking anything or going allin every hand). Suddenly there is money on the table and the stakes have been raised.
I see the same thing happening with digital culture as Bitcoin becomes a real possibility in the future.
There's speculation that their accepting of Bitcoin inadvertantly categorised them as a gambling website. Bitcoin is popular for gambling sites now because of the lack of restrictions for such sites to exist compared with normal gambling sites which can take days to deposit and many hoops to jump through. It does not seem malicious or incompetent that this mistake happened.
Seriously when are they going to remake this game? As a long term fan of old school RPGs like Chrono Trigger, Breath of Fire 3, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Suikoden,... Final Fantasy 7 was an epochal and defining moment in the whole history of video games!
It has been consistently voted as the best game of all time. The characters were stunning each deserving of games in their own right, and experienced large character arcs. The story was amazing and well ahead of any film or book I have ever seen/read. The story of FF7 can be understood on multiple levels and there are dozens of themes that are introduced throughout the game, left hanging while more are introduced and then wrapped up later.
The end of disk 1 was the saddest moment I have ever felt playing a video game. Quite how the story built up that relationship and that the unexpected twist was gut wrenching.
FF7 is a skillful masterpiece. The new generation needs this classic in an updated format. It's a shame that games are not timeless like books. They really do age fast.
Two of the features I'm waiting on are class level non-static initialisers and templated typedefs. I've heard Microsof's C++ compiler has better C++11 support but I've never tried it.
Beware that MingW has a bug so std::thread is disabled. I've heard mingw-w64 works better. You might want to also try boost::thread (same library essentially, except std::thread has move semantics).
I've been using the C++11 for 6 months now in my own project (libbitcoin) and the new features and syntax really make your code sharper, clearer and better. C++ is no longer that unsafe language if you know how to code in it properly - you never really have to do any manual memory management if you use shared pointers.
constexpr allowed me to create compile time constants that are the function of a bunch of complicated expressions. Sure, I could just put the result in the code, but by using constexpr (a far more expressive metaprogramming utility than templates) I can document where those constants came from by using code. Neat huh!
Using variadic templates, I was able to write decorators that can be applied to any function. I simply wrap my functions with this class and then its operator() will be called before calling the passed in function object (which I can define using lambdas or std::bind now:)
auto means I no longer have to type std::vector>::iterator in every for loop. Likewise for (const transaction& tx: block.transactions) is much more terse and clearer.
The new features to the standard library are brilliant. Threading has never been easier: std::thread t(foo, x, y); will call foo(x, y) in a new thread. When I decide to finish the threads and then join them I call: t.join();... Simple.
As libbitcoin is highly asynchronous, I don't like to use exceptions (which thread does it originate in? where does it get caught?.etc). C++11 now provides the header which defines std::error_code(). An error_code object can be tested as a boolean (to see whether the error is set or not) or compared against an enum value (which you define). They also have an error message (which if you defined the enum value it is set to, you can also set the message), and also you can group different error code values into broader categories! Really useful for asynchronous programming.
std::atomic for a thread-safe counter (useful when you have multiple thread paths executing and want to see when they all finished - increment your counter by one after each path completes) and std::atomic for a thread-safe flag.... That's off the top of my head. There are dozens of many small things like this. C++ was always my 'native' language, but now it's truly my home.
3 years ago I damaged my elbow. I went to see the hospital, and the nurse being too busy to hear my full story hurried me along telling me it was sprained. I knew what a sprained elbow felt like and this wasn't it, but I shrugged my shoulders and assumed it would get better. It's been aching on and off over the last few years.
A physician on the bitcoin forums was offering medical advice for a bitcoin. I typed up my full story and sent it to him. He wrote me back a long response that quite literally scared the crap out of me into seeing a doctor. I took his write-up to my General Practioner and she right away knew what was wrong and referred me to all the relevant specialists.
That guy on the bitcoin forums literally saved me from crippling injury in a few years time. Had I not spoke to him, it may have been too late before I got it checked out. I always kept putting it off since I'm so busy and it didn't seem like a big deal.
Do not stand for this flagrant abuse of our farcical democracy!
Megaupload has been forcibly closed by the FBI. In a sickening undermining of the people’s will, they are making an example out of an historic, legitimate, useful and well-known website. This is a prophetic glimmer of the coming war against pure free speech- the internet.
This happened once before. Here in the UK, the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) is a censoring system for the internet. In 1996, the Metropolitan Police started requesting the banning of illegal content by ISPs in the UK. With veiled sly threats they asked that ISPs engage in ‘self-enforcement’ rather than forcing them to enforce the law on them.
Most of the ISPs complied except Demon internet. Demon was a British ISP that contributed to the Open Source community, ran several IRC servers and were pioneers of their time. They objected on the grounds of it being “unacceptable censorship”. A few days later, a tabloid expose appeared in the Observer newspaper alleging that the director of Demon was supplying paedophiles with photographs of children being sexually abused.
Then the police let it be known that during that summer, they were planning a crack-down on an unspecified ISP as a test-case (translation: making an example of them). Between the threats and pressure, the IWF was formed- a supposedly voluntary organisation but in fact a fake-charity and a quango. The IWF is a disgraceful secretive group with an awful corrupt history and no public oversight.
Now we see the same tactic has been used against Megaupload. They are using the threat of violence to coerce companies, how the British police did to create their own laws. The SOPA legislation did not go their way, so they have resulted to immoral tactics of repression.
From ACTA which is decided behind closed European chambers, the DEA which was pushed through undemocratically at alarming speed before elections, evil La Hadopi and now SOPA/PIPA in the US, there is nowhere to run. The nepotists are determined to push through these legislation. At all costs. This is not about piracy- it never was and will not do a thing. It is about control.
We have built a tool. For all their false talk of democracy we have for the first time in history reached this epochal moment. Self determination. If they truly believed in democracy, we could have a direct-democracy tomorrow. The tools exist. Instead we see this flagrant deception. It has become acceptable for politicians to cater to the greatest common denominator. We let them off the hook on the truth like Cameron pretending to be pro-NHS or Obama pretending to be Christian because it is for voters. Since when did it become acceptable to lie! Now today we see this limp-wristed hand wringing by the US president about how he will veto SOPA. Oh shut up.
Was it Gordan Brown who said that voting levels were dangerously low in the below-30s because youngsters today are apolitical. He wanted mandatory attendance for voters. No, we are not apolitical, we are sick of your lies and deceit. This generation is probably more political than any generation in history. In the 80s, only 5% of people in the US were members of organisations. In the 90s, 70% of Americans belonged to some kind of organisation. People are mobilising and prescient of issues.
Libel law is atrociously bad in the UK. Payouts are 10 times greater than in main-land Europe and you get a situation where billionaires use law firms like Carter-Ruck to keep news publishers (which are poor) in court and bleed them dry. Time magazine did an undercover piece of reporting and was sued for libel. They won the case but it ended up costing them $1 million. That’s effectively a fine of $1 million for undercover journalism.
Of course when the law is broken, what do we do? Make more laws! That is why California has brought in anti-SLAPP legislation.
Patent law is so stupid and I won’t even go there.
Do not stand for this flagrant abuse of our farcical democracy!
Megaupload has been forcibly closed by the FBI. In a sickening undermining of the people’s will, they are making an example out of an historic, legitimate, useful and well-known website. This is a prophetic glimmer of the coming war against pure free speech- the internet.
This happened once before. Here in the UK, the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) is a censoring system for the internet. In 1996, the Metropolitan Police started requesting the banning of illegal content by ISPs in the UK. With veiled sly threats they asked that ISPs engage in ‘self-enforcement’ rather than forcing them to enforce the law on them.
Most of the ISPs complied except Demon internet. Demon was a British ISP that contributed to the Open Source community, ran several IRC servers and were pioneers of their time. They objected on the grounds of it being “unacceptable censorship”. A few days later, a tabloid expose appeared in the Observer newspaper alleging that the director of Demon was supplying paedophiles with photographs of children being sexually abused.
Then the police let it be known that during that summer, they were planning a crack-down on an unspecified ISP as a test-case (translation: making an example of them). Between the threats and pressure, the IWF was formed- a supposedly voluntary organisation but in fact a fake-charity and a quango. The IWF is a disgraceful secretive group with an awful corrupt history and no public oversight.
Now we see the same tactic has been used against Megaupload. They are using the threat of violence to coerce companies, how the British police did to create their own laws. The SOPA legislation did not go their way, so they have resulted to immoral tactics of repression.
From ACTA which is decided behind closed European chambers, the DEA which was pushed through undemocratically at alarming speed before elections, evil La Hadopi and now SOPA/PIPA in the US, there is nowhere to run. The nepotists are determined to push through these legislation. At all costs. This is not about piracy- it never was and will not do a thing. It is about control.
We have built a tool. For all their false talk of democracy we have for the first time in history reached this epochal moment. Self determination. If they truly believed in democracy, we could have a direct-democracy tomorrow. The tools exist. Instead we see this flagrant deception. It has become acceptable for politicians to cater to the greatest common denominator. We let them off the hook on the truth like Cameron pretending to be pro-NHS or Obama pretending to be Christian because it is for voters. Since when did it become acceptable to lie! Now today we see this limp-wristed hand wringing by the US president about how he will veto SOPA. Oh shut up.
Was it Gordan Brown who said that voting levels were dangerously low in the below-30s because youngsters today are apolitical. He wanted mandatory attendance for voters. No, we are not apolitical, we are sick of your lies and deceit. This generation is probably more political than any generation in history. In the 80s, only 5% of people in the US were members of organisations. In the 90s, 70% of Americans belonged to some kind of organisation. People are mobilising and prescient of issues.
Libel law is atrociously bad in the UK. Payouts are 10 times greater than in main-land Europe and you get a situation where billionaires use law firms like Carter-Ruck to keep news publishers (which are poor) in court and bleed them dry. Time magazine did an undercover piece of reporting and was sued for libel. They won the case but it ended up costing them $1 million. That’s effectively a fine of $1 million for undercover journalism.
Of course when the law is broken, what do we do? Make more laws! That is why California has brought in anti-SLAPP legislation.
Patent law is so stupid and I won’t even go there.
Do not stand for this flagrant abuse of our farcical democracy!
Megaupload has been forcibly closed by the FBI. In a sickening undermining of the people’s will, they are making an example out of an historic, legitimate, useful and well-known website. This is a prophetic glimmer of the coming war against pure free speech- the internet.
This happened once before. Here in the UK, the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) is a censoring system for the internet. In 1996, the Metropolitan Police started requesting the banning of illegal content by ISPs in the UK. With veiled sly threats they asked that ISPs engage in ‘self-enforcement’ rather than forcing them to enforce the law on them.
Most of the ISPs complied except Demon internet. Demon was a British ISP that contributed to the Open Source community, ran several IRC servers and were pioneers of their time. They objected on the grounds of it being “unacceptable censorship”. A few days later, a tabloid expose appeared in the Observer newspaper alleging that the director of Demon was supplying paedophiles with photographs of children being sexually abused.
Then the police let it be known that during that summer, they were planning a crack-down on an unspecified ISP as a test-case (translation: making an example of them). Between the threats and pressure, the IWF was formed- a supposedly voluntary organisation but in fact a fake-charity and a quango. The IWF is a disgraceful secretive group with an awful corrupt history and no public oversight.
Now we see the same tactic has been used against Megaupload. They are using the threat of violence to coerce companies, how the British police did to create their own laws. The SOPA legislation did not go their way, so they have resulted to immoral tactics of repression.
From ACTA which is decided behind closed European chambers, the DEA which was pushed through undemocratically at alarming speed before elections, evil La Hadopi and now SOPA/PIPA in the US, there is nowhere to run. The nepotists are determined to push through these legislation. At all costs. This is not about piracy- it never was and will not do a thing. It is about control.
We have built a tool. For all their false talk of democracy we have for the first time in history reached this epochal moment. Self determination. If they truly believed in democracy, we could have a direct-democracy tomorrow. The tools exist. Instead we see this flagrant deception. It has become acceptable for politicians to cater to the greatest common denominator. We let them off the hook on the truth like Cameron pretending to be pro-NHS or Obama pretending to be Christian because it is for voters. Since when did it become acceptable to lie! Now today we see this limp-wristed hand wringing by the US president about how he will veto SOPA. Oh shut up.
Was it Gordan Brown who said that voting levels were dangerously low in the below-30s because youngsters today are apolitical. He wanted mandatory attendance for voters. No, we are not apolitical, we are sick of your lies and deceit. This generation is probably more political than any generation in history. In the 80s, only 5% of people in the US were members of organisations. In the 90s, 70% of Americans belonged to some kind of organisation. People are mobilising and prescient of issues.
Libel law is atrociously bad in the UK. Payouts are 10 times greater than in main-land Europe and you get a situation where billionaires use law firms like Carter-Ruck to keep news publishers (which are poor) in court and bleed them dry. Time magazine did an undercover piece of reporting and was sued for libel. They won the case but it ended up costing them $1 million. That’s effectively a fine of $1 million for undercover journalism.
Of course when the law is broken, what do we do? Make more laws! That is why California has brought in anti-SLAPP legislation.
Patent law is so stupid and I won’t even go there.
How does this differ to the key-value Berkeley DB key-value store which is around 10 years old, free software, widely used and tested, full ACID compliance AND it's owned by Oracle.
That's it. Keep fanning the flames of the internet hate machine. Test our boundaries before we inevitably snap. Don't let yourselves be boxed and pushed around like the cattle they want you to be! This is our time, our future when for the first time we have found a way to define ourselves as artisans, industrialists, scientists and visionaries. For when the time has come and greed has taken over, dictators will die and people live. A sick machine that you have to throw yourself under the wheels and get ground up in the gears because unless you are free you are just raw material for a rube goldberg machine, an apparatus of silly superstition and institutions that function without knowing why.
Why do they keep trying to pull this shit. Fuck off the internet. You didn't build it, stop trying to legislate it. People that don't know how it works are trying to make the rules for the world's most incredible tool. A liberating, intense network of peoples worldwide with their own world, monetary system, machines and customs.
Pirate! Don't buy or pay a single cent. Pirate everything and give everyone stacks of free copies as presents for big occasions. Rip movies, burn CDs, spread the wealth about. Fact is the big content industries are totally corrupt. Anything to punish or hurt them is good. Shout about computer freedom. Smoke weed. Be disruptive. Boycott retarded laws. Let them know they aren't welcome. Consign them to irrelevancy by civil disobedience and online sit-ins.
The term mining comes from the fact that bitcoins are analogous to gold. When creating a new bitcoin, it isn't something you can mint out of the air- it's more apt to say you're searching for the bitcoin that already exists from a mathematical problem set (i.e you're mining for a bitcoin that already exists).
Another term is coinbase generation. Unfortunately these terms give a lot of confusion wrt mining and are a misnomer. It's more apt to call it validation. These validators (miners) are processing and confirming transactions. For this valuable service of securing the network they are awarded a reward- the generated/mined bitcoins.
They haven't invented anything new so don't get excited about wipeout ships and hoverboards just yet. The problem is the immense amount of energy to keep the superconductor cooled.
OK, I hold an Iranian passport and have been in and out of Iran many times.
People in Iran do not like Ahmadinejad. One of the many insults is to call him a monkey because he is a half-wit. Same as how George Bush got the monkey insults.
Nothing to do with race. Just that he's a simple fool in charge of an entire country.
>Greedy misanthropist that sold shiny gadgets with sweatshop labor dies and is praised by millions.
>Creator of the most widely used programming language of all time and pioneer of Unix, both arguably a significant contributing factor to the success of every modern tech company, dies and not a single newspaper cares.
Inventor of C and UNIX. 4chan has a sticky for him. That's the extent of media coverage I could find.
A real legend of technology has died and nobody will even understand what he did.
And here we have an example of why dumb regulations make everyone suffer. The poker market basically consists of 4 major companies- PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Ultimate Bet/Absolute Poker, and Cake Poker. Together they control 90% of the market, charge huge fees (rake - a high stakes pro friend of mine earned $100k last year and paid $50k in rake to the sites), are marred by scandals and have crappy software that is years old with terrible security flaws (like using xor encryption for traffic).
There's a market for an online poker site, but because of shoddy laws regulating a game of skill between consenting parties, it is near impossible to setup a poker site. We were going to do this before by making a bitcoin poker site but the lawyer wanted a $20 million retainer. The scandals are due to the huge initial cost to opening a poker site that enables these 4 sites to retain a cartel with artificially high prices in the poker world.
Don't blame the bazaar. Blame the regulations on your social life and freedom to choose how to spend your cash.
And this is why we need bitcoin. All hail the bitcoin and the wonderous things people will create. Imagine all those people playing counterstrike or World of Warcraft all day long for nothing. Now imagine is they could compete with each other for cash. A new digital economy with professional video game players. Or imagine funding your favourite free software projects, artists or Wikileaks.
And who says we need roads all over the planet? They're truly a scourge on the environment. Maybe we don't need roads to go right up to people's houses- they could drive and park to a spot and then walk 15 mins to their house. Either that or get public transport.
The current mess with cities is due to government over-regulation. Urban planners agree that suburbanism (suburban means less than urban FYI) is ugly. It was Jane Jacobs who asked "Are we building cities for cars of for people?" If the free market doesn't pay for it then maybe you should think that maybe it isn't needed.
Your internet argument is moot given that people can lay their own wires or easily route around using satellite dishes.
Slashdot Mirror
We have done this for years here in Europe. Typically they are called hacklabs. Often they may be squatted houses converted into social centres, or a funded space (like a hackerspace) with people living on site.
Here's a photo of one from 2004:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/genjix/2169785087/in/photostream
A large factory with ~20 hackers living and working on projects. People would come and go as they please, and we held several hackathons there like the 2007 Crystal Space hackfest:
http://crystalspace3d.org/main/La_Fibra_hackfest_report
This has been going on for decades throughout major cities in Europe such as London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Spain, Italy, Austria and Prague.
In the UK, co-habitating partners are entitled to the same rights as if they were married.
This is the reason I develop Bitcoin. We desperately need a funding method to help keep the internet alive, but all the current "solutions" are easily corruptible (see PayPal/Visa/MasterCard and Wikileaks) *and* have a ton of friction involved - think of all the hoops needed for a sub-$1 payment - most just don't bother and go fuckit.
Once we inject the slightest flow of frictionless money into creative works on the internet, it will fuel a boom in media and free culture (including free software). Donation driven distributed patronage now becomes the norm and allows the consumers to connect with the producers on a more personal level, even becoming producers themselves.
In the online poker world, there is the possibility to send funds between sites. Because of this there is a rich community of people sending funds among each other, betting on StarCraft games, selling poker skins, posts with rewards for the best answer and so on. It's like when there's a tiny bit of money, there is a minature boom of activity and producitivity in that area. To borrow an analogy: in the highest poker play money games, nobody cares how they play and just click random buttons. But in the lowest *real money* games for 1c/2c, shit becomes serious. People start folding hands and thinking strategy. The leap in skill level is enormous, and only grows exponentially as you go up in poker stakes. Despite being a tiny injection of funds, people start playing to win, not playing out of boredom (mindlessly clicking anything or going allin every hand). Suddenly there is money on the table and the stakes have been raised.
I see the same thing happening with digital culture as Bitcoin becomes a real possibility in the future.
There's speculation that their accepting of Bitcoin inadvertantly categorised them as a gambling website. Bitcoin is popular for gambling sites now because of the lack of restrictions for such sites to exist compared with normal gambling sites which can take days to deposit and many hoops to jump through. It does not seem malicious or incompetent that this mistake happened.
Seriously when are they going to remake this game? As a long term fan of old school RPGs like Chrono Trigger, Breath of Fire 3, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Suikoden, ... Final Fantasy 7 was an epochal and defining moment in the whole history of video games!
It has been consistently voted as the best game of all time. The characters were stunning each deserving of games in their own right, and experienced large character arcs. The story was amazing and well ahead of any film or book I have ever seen/read. The story of FF7 can be understood on multiple levels and there are dozens of themes that are introduced throughout the game, left hanging while more are introduced and then wrapped up later.
The end of disk 1 was the saddest moment I have ever felt playing a video game. Quite how the story built up that relationship and that the unexpected twist was gut wrenching.
FF7 is a skillful masterpiece. The new generation needs this classic in an updated format. It's a shame that games are not timeless like books. They really do age fast.
That's arithmetic not math!
> What C++ compiler are you using?
g++ 4.6 - standard in Ubuntu
Two of the features I'm waiting on are class level non-static initialisers and templated typedefs. I've heard Microsof's C++ compiler has better C++11 support but I've never tried it.
Beware that MingW has a bug so std::thread is disabled. I've heard mingw-w64 works better. You might want to also try boost::thread (same library essentially, except std::thread has move semantics).
damn my angle brackets got blanked out.
[system_error] for std::error_code
std::atomic[size_t] for thread-safe counter
std::atomic[bool] for thread-safe flag
I've been using the C++11 for 6 months now in my own project (libbitcoin) and the new features and syntax really make your code sharper, clearer and better. C++ is no longer that unsafe language if you know how to code in it properly - you never really have to do any manual memory management if you use shared pointers.
constexpr allowed me to create compile time constants that are the function of a bunch of complicated expressions. Sure, I could just put the result in the code, but by using constexpr (a far more expressive metaprogramming utility than templates) I can document where those constants came from by using code. Neat huh!
Using variadic templates, I was able to write decorators that can be applied to any function. I simply wrap my functions with this class and then its operator() will be called before calling the passed in function object (which I can define using lambdas or std::bind now :)
auto means I no longer have to type std::vector>::iterator in every for loop. Likewise for (const transaction& tx: block.transactions) is much more terse and clearer.
The new features to the standard library are brilliant. Threading has never been easier: std::thread t(foo, x, y); will call foo(x, y) in a new thread. When I decide to finish the threads and then join them I call: t.join(); ... Simple.
As libbitcoin is highly asynchronous, I don't like to use exceptions (which thread does it originate in? where does it get caught? .etc). C++11 now provides the header which defines std::error_code(). An error_code object can be tested as a boolean (to see whether the error is set or not) or compared against an enum value (which you define). They also have an error message (which if you defined the enum value it is set to, you can also set the message), and also you can group different error code values into broader categories! Really useful for asynchronous programming.
std::atomic for a thread-safe counter (useful when you have multiple thread paths executing and want to see when they all finished - increment your counter by one after each path completes) and std::atomic for a thread-safe flag. ... That's off the top of my head. There are dozens of many small things like this. C++ was always my 'native' language, but now it's truly my home.
3 years ago I damaged my elbow. I went to see the hospital, and the nurse being too busy to hear my full story hurried me along telling me it was sprained. I knew what a sprained elbow felt like and this wasn't it, but I shrugged my shoulders and assumed it would get better. It's been aching on and off over the last few years.
A physician on the bitcoin forums was offering medical advice for a bitcoin. I typed up my full story and sent it to him. He wrote me back a long response that quite literally scared the crap out of me into seeing a doctor. I took his write-up to my General Practioner and she right away knew what was wrong and referred me to all the relevant specialists.
That guy on the bitcoin forums literally saved me from crippling injury in a few years time. Had I not spoke to him, it may have been too late before I got it checked out. I always kept putting it off since I'm so busy and it didn't seem like a big deal.
Thank you bitcoin forum guy.
Do not stand for this flagrant abuse of our farcical democracy!
Megaupload has been forcibly closed by the FBI. In a sickening undermining of the people’s will, they are making an example out of an historic, legitimate, useful and well-known website. This is a prophetic glimmer of the coming war against pure free speech- the internet.
This happened once before. Here in the UK, the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) is a censoring system for the internet. In 1996, the Metropolitan Police started requesting the banning of illegal content by ISPs in the UK. With veiled sly threats they asked that ISPs engage in ‘self-enforcement’ rather than forcing them to enforce the law on them.
Most of the ISPs complied except Demon internet. Demon was a British ISP that contributed to the Open Source community, ran several IRC servers and were pioneers of their time. They objected on the grounds of it being “unacceptable censorship”. A few days later, a tabloid expose appeared in the Observer newspaper alleging that the director of Demon was supplying paedophiles with photographs of children being sexually abused.
Then the police let it be known that during that summer, they were planning a crack-down on an unspecified ISP as a test-case (translation: making an example of them). Between the threats and pressure, the IWF was formed- a supposedly voluntary organisation but in fact a fake-charity and a quango. The IWF is a disgraceful secretive group with an awful corrupt history and no public oversight.
Now we see the same tactic has been used against Megaupload. They are using the threat of violence to coerce companies, how the British police did to create their own laws. The SOPA legislation did not go their way, so they have resulted to immoral tactics of repression.
From ACTA which is decided behind closed European chambers, the DEA which was pushed through undemocratically at alarming speed before elections, evil La Hadopi and now SOPA/PIPA in the US, there is nowhere to run. The nepotists are determined to push through these legislation. At all costs. This is not about piracy- it never was and will not do a thing. It is about control.
We have built a tool. For all their false talk of democracy we have for the first time in history reached this epochal moment. Self determination. If they truly believed in democracy, we could have a direct-democracy tomorrow. The tools exist. Instead we see this flagrant deception. It has become acceptable for politicians to cater to the greatest common denominator. We let them off the hook on the truth like Cameron pretending to be pro-NHS or Obama pretending to be Christian because it is for voters. Since when did it become acceptable to lie! Now today we see this limp-wristed hand wringing by the US president about how he will veto SOPA. Oh shut up.
Was it Gordan Brown who said that voting levels were dangerously low in the below-30s because youngsters today are apolitical. He wanted mandatory attendance for voters. No, we are not apolitical, we are sick of your lies and deceit. This generation is probably more political than any generation in history. In the 80s, only 5% of people in the US were members of organisations. In the 90s, 70% of Americans belonged to some kind of organisation. People are mobilising and prescient of issues.
Libel law is atrociously bad in the UK. Payouts are 10 times greater than in main-land Europe and you get a situation where billionaires use law firms like Carter-Ruck to keep news publishers (which are poor) in court and bleed them dry. Time magazine did an undercover piece of reporting and was sued for libel. They won the case but it ended up costing them $1 million. That’s effectively a fine of $1 million for undercover journalism.
Of course when the law is broken, what do we do? Make more laws! That is why California has brought in anti-SLAPP legislation.
Patent law is so stupid and I won’t even go there.
Copyright is fascist. I find it revolting that
Do not stand for this flagrant abuse of our farcical democracy!
Megaupload has been forcibly closed by the FBI. In a sickening undermining of the people’s will, they are making an example out of an historic, legitimate, useful and well-known website. This is a prophetic glimmer of the coming war against pure free speech- the internet.
This happened once before. Here in the UK, the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) is a censoring system for the internet. In 1996, the Metropolitan Police started requesting the banning of illegal content by ISPs in the UK. With veiled sly threats they asked that ISPs engage in ‘self-enforcement’ rather than forcing them to enforce the law on them.
Most of the ISPs complied except Demon internet. Demon was a British ISP that contributed to the Open Source community, ran several IRC servers and were pioneers of their time. They objected on the grounds of it being “unacceptable censorship”. A few days later, a tabloid expose appeared in the Observer newspaper alleging that the director of Demon was supplying paedophiles with photographs of children being sexually abused.
Then the police let it be known that during that summer, they were planning a crack-down on an unspecified ISP as a test-case (translation: making an example of them). Between the threats and pressure, the IWF was formed- a supposedly voluntary organisation but in fact a fake-charity and a quango. The IWF is a disgraceful secretive group with an awful corrupt history and no public oversight.
Now we see the same tactic has been used against Megaupload. They are using the threat of violence to coerce companies, how the British police did to create their own laws. The SOPA legislation did not go their way, so they have resulted to immoral tactics of repression.
From ACTA which is decided behind closed European chambers, the DEA which was pushed through undemocratically at alarming speed before elections, evil La Hadopi and now SOPA/PIPA in the US, there is nowhere to run. The nepotists are determined to push through these legislation. At all costs. This is not about piracy- it never was and will not do a thing. It is about control.
We have built a tool. For all their false talk of democracy we have for the first time in history reached this epochal moment. Self determination. If they truly believed in democracy, we could have a direct-democracy tomorrow. The tools exist. Instead we see this flagrant deception. It has become acceptable for politicians to cater to the greatest common denominator. We let them off the hook on the truth like Cameron pretending to be pro-NHS or Obama pretending to be Christian because it is for voters. Since when did it become acceptable to lie! Now today we see this limp-wristed hand wringing by the US president about how he will veto SOPA. Oh shut up.
Was it Gordan Brown who said that voting levels were dangerously low in the below-30s because youngsters today are apolitical. He wanted mandatory attendance for voters. No, we are not apolitical, we are sick of your lies and deceit. This generation is probably more political than any generation in history. In the 80s, only 5% of people in the US were members of organisations. In the 90s, 70% of Americans belonged to some kind of organisation. People are mobilising and prescient of issues.
Libel law is atrociously bad in the UK. Payouts are 10 times greater than in main-land Europe and you get a situation where billionaires use law firms like Carter-Ruck to keep news publishers (which are poor) in court and bleed them dry. Time magazine did an undercover piece of reporting and was sued for libel. They won the case but it ended up costing them $1 million. That’s effectively a fine of $1 million for undercover journalism.
Of course when the law is broken, what do we do? Make more laws! That is why California has brought in anti-SLAPP legislation.
Patent law is so stupid and I won’t even go there.
Copyright is fascist. I find it revolting that
Do not stand for this flagrant abuse of our farcical democracy!
Megaupload has been forcibly closed by the FBI. In a sickening undermining of the people’s will, they are making an example out of an historic, legitimate, useful and well-known website. This is a prophetic glimmer of the coming war against pure free speech- the internet.
This happened once before. Here in the UK, the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) is a censoring system for the internet. In 1996, the Metropolitan Police started requesting the banning of illegal content by ISPs in the UK. With veiled sly threats they asked that ISPs engage in ‘self-enforcement’ rather than forcing them to enforce the law on them.
Most of the ISPs complied except Demon internet. Demon was a British ISP that contributed to the Open Source community, ran several IRC servers and were pioneers of their time. They objected on the grounds of it being “unacceptable censorship”. A few days later, a tabloid expose appeared in the Observer newspaper alleging that the director of Demon was supplying paedophiles with photographs of children being sexually abused.
Then the police let it be known that during that summer, they were planning a crack-down on an unspecified ISP as a test-case (translation: making an example of them). Between the threats and pressure, the IWF was formed- a supposedly voluntary organisation but in fact a fake-charity and a quango. The IWF is a disgraceful secretive group with an awful corrupt history and no public oversight.
Now we see the same tactic has been used against Megaupload. They are using the threat of violence to coerce companies, how the British police did to create their own laws. The SOPA legislation did not go their way, so they have resulted to immoral tactics of repression.
From ACTA which is decided behind closed European chambers, the DEA which was pushed through undemocratically at alarming speed before elections, evil La Hadopi and now SOPA/PIPA in the US, there is nowhere to run. The nepotists are determined to push through these legislation. At all costs. This is not about piracy- it never was and will not do a thing. It is about control.
We have built a tool. For all their false talk of democracy we have for the first time in history reached this epochal moment. Self determination. If they truly believed in democracy, we could have a direct-democracy tomorrow. The tools exist. Instead we see this flagrant deception. It has become acceptable for politicians to cater to the greatest common denominator. We let them off the hook on the truth like Cameron pretending to be pro-NHS or Obama pretending to be Christian because it is for voters. Since when did it become acceptable to lie! Now today we see this limp-wristed hand wringing by the US president about how he will veto SOPA. Oh shut up.
Was it Gordan Brown who said that voting levels were dangerously low in the below-30s because youngsters today are apolitical. He wanted mandatory attendance for voters. No, we are not apolitical, we are sick of your lies and deceit. This generation is probably more political than any generation in history. In the 80s, only 5% of people in the US were members of organisations. In the 90s, 70% of Americans belonged to some kind of organisation. People are mobilising and prescient of issues.
Libel law is atrociously bad in the UK. Payouts are 10 times greater than in main-land Europe and you get a situation where billionaires use law firms like Carter-Ruck to keep news publishers (which are poor) in court and bleed them dry. Time magazine did an undercover piece of reporting and was sued for libel. They won the case but it ended up costing them $1 million. That’s effectively a fine of $1 million for undercover journalism.
Of course when the law is broken, what do we do? Make more laws! That is why California has brought in anti-SLAPP legislation.
Patent law is so stupid and I won’t even go there.
Copyright is fascist. I find it revolting that
How does this differ to the key-value Berkeley DB key-value store which is around 10 years old, free software, widely used and tested, full ACID compliance AND it's owned by Oracle.
The Internet, Wikipedia, Linux, Bittorrent, Firefox, Wikileaks, Bitcoin, Creative Commons, Netbooks, LAMP, ...
That's it. Keep fanning the flames of the internet hate machine. Test our boundaries before we inevitably snap. Don't let yourselves be boxed and pushed around like the cattle they want you to be! This is our time, our future when for the first time we have found a way to define ourselves as artisans, industrialists, scientists and visionaries. For when the time has come and greed has taken over, dictators will die and people live. A sick machine that you have to throw yourself under the wheels and get ground up in the gears because unless you are free you are just raw material for a rube goldberg machine, an apparatus of silly superstition and institutions that function without knowing why.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_bERAf5KAg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=citzRjwk-sQ
Why do they keep trying to pull this shit. Fuck off the internet. You didn't build it, stop trying to legislate it. People that don't know how it works are trying to make the rules for the world's most incredible tool. A liberating, intense network of peoples worldwide with their own world, monetary system, machines and customs.
Pirate! Don't buy or pay a single cent. Pirate everything and give everyone stacks of free copies as presents for big occasions. Rip movies, burn CDs, spread the wealth about. Fact is the big content industries are totally corrupt. Anything to punish or hurt them is good. Shout about computer freedom. Smoke weed. Be disruptive. Boycott retarded laws. Let them know they aren't welcome. Consign them to irrelevancy by civil disobedience and online sit-ins.
The term mining comes from the fact that bitcoins are analogous to gold. When creating a new bitcoin, it isn't something you can mint out of the air- it's more apt to say you're searching for the bitcoin that already exists from a mathematical problem set (i.e you're mining for a bitcoin that already exists).
Another term is coinbase generation. Unfortunately these terms give a lot of confusion wrt mining and are a misnomer. It's more apt to call it validation. These validators (miners) are processing and confirming transactions. For this valuable service of securing the network they are awarded a reward- the generated/mined bitcoins.
This has been around since the time of Carl Sagan. For a much better explanation of what is happening (and the science behind it), see this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeS_U9qFg7Y&feature=player_embedded
They haven't invented anything new so don't get excited about wipeout ships and hoverboards just yet. The problem is the immense amount of energy to keep the superconductor cooled.
OK, I hold an Iranian passport and have been in and out of Iran many times.
People in Iran do not like Ahmadinejad. One of the many insults is to call him a monkey because he is a half-wit. Same as how George Bush got the monkey insults.
Nothing to do with race. Just that he's a simple fool in charge of an entire country.
g++ 4.5
C++0x is getting there slowly.
>Greedy misanthropist that sold shiny gadgets with sweatshop labor dies and is praised by millions.
>Creator of the most widely used programming language of all time and pioneer of Unix, both arguably a significant contributing factor to the success of every modern tech company, dies and not a single newspaper cares.
Inventor of C and UNIX. 4chan has a sticky for him. That's the extent of media coverage I could find.
A real legend of technology has died and nobody will even understand what he did.
exit(0);
And here we have an example of why dumb regulations make everyone suffer. The poker market basically consists of 4 major companies- PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Ultimate Bet/Absolute Poker, and Cake Poker. Together they control 90% of the market, charge huge fees (rake - a high stakes pro friend of mine earned $100k last year and paid $50k in rake to the sites), are marred by scandals and have crappy software that is years old with terrible security flaws (like using xor encryption for traffic).
There's a market for an online poker site, but because of shoddy laws regulating a game of skill between consenting parties, it is near impossible to setup a poker site. We were going to do this before by making a bitcoin poker site but the lawyer wanted a $20 million retainer. The scandals are due to the huge initial cost to opening a poker site that enables these 4 sites to retain a cartel with artificially high prices in the poker world.
Don't blame the bazaar. Blame the regulations on your social life and freedom to choose how to spend your cash.
And this is why we need bitcoin. All hail the bitcoin and the wonderous things people will create. Imagine all those people playing counterstrike or World of Warcraft all day long for nothing. Now imagine is they could compete with each other for cash. A new digital economy with professional video game players. Or imagine funding your favourite free software projects, artists or Wikileaks.
The Internet, Wikileaks, Linux, Wikipedia, Bitcoin, ... Pick one.
Blaa blaa and if women dress provocatively then they are to blame for getting raped.
Nice one shifting the blame away from the perpetrator.
And who says we need roads all over the planet? They're truly a scourge on the environment. Maybe we don't need roads to go right up to people's houses- they could drive and park to a spot and then walk 15 mins to their house. Either that or get public transport.
The current mess with cities is due to government over-regulation. Urban planners agree that suburbanism (suburban means less than urban FYI) is ugly. It was Jane Jacobs who asked "Are we building cities for cars of for people?" If the free market doesn't pay for it then maybe you should think that maybe it isn't needed.
Your internet argument is moot given that people can lay their own wires or easily route around using satellite dishes.