If you recall the start of it...the whole point was to describe the relationship in terms that non-technical people were more likely to be familiar with. It isn't insightful about Unix unless you have no clue why multiple different OSs would be called Unix. It is a metaphor for the history, not the technology.
Wow. Funny I was just thinking of that antarctic explorer who planned to be the first person to the south pole, and instead got to Antarctica in time to meet the expedition who beat him to it on their return trip.
Of course, his expedition ended when they got caught in a storm and all died. Hopefully this guy will not follow in that tradition.
Wrong ministry. Minitrue was in charge of running (and editing) the media. Newspapers etc. They were not the covert or investigative arm. I think the NSA would be part of MiniLove.
I double checked (its been a decade or two since I read it): "The Ministry of Love serves as Oceania's interior ministry. It enforces loyalty and love of Big Brother through fear, a repressive apparatus, and brainwashing. "
Whereas Minitrue: "The Ministry of Truth is involved with news media, entertainment, the fine arts and educational books. Its purpose is to rewrite history to change the facts to fit Party doctrine"
Which lines up with what i remember. Might also be under Minipax.
> 9/11 occured because intelligence folks thought that wire tapping was good enough
Which is odd, I could have sworn it happened because a criminal group that wanted to make big headlines planned something that nobody really should have expected.
There is also with that an implicit (and also incorrect) assumption that 9/11 was some sort of existential threat that we needed to be protected from; when the reality is it was little more than one of the the most brutal tragic publicity stunts ever by a group that had no hope of ever harming us as much as we harm ourselves in response to them....little more than a peanut to an over-active immune response.
I have a hard time calling fusion from impacts with an object moving at a signficant fraction of the speed of light an "interesting effect" of air resistance. However, I do agree it could massively improve DC.
You are likely right but, I think we need to test this. I think we need a hypobaric chamber, a high power rifle, and enough congressmen as to do enough tests to be sure.... 400 or so should be enough for the first round trials.
Depends what you like I guess. About 99.9% of my gaming is single player. Generally, I either like something with a decent story, or a wide open sandbox (leaning more towards sandbox).
That said, one example I was going to toss out, Kerbal Space Program; which has eaten a disproportionate number of hours compared to other recent games; is in fact looking to go multiplayer in the future.
I have tried a few MMOs, and just couldn't maintain interest long. The longest was probably EVE Online, which was quite engrossing with all its possibilities. In the end I think I like the idea of what can be done in an MMO more than I like actually doing it.
That said, juist in the past few days my wife and I picked up Path to Exile (I like that they have staked a line in the sand that it will be free to play and NOT pay to win). As Diablo was her favorite game of all time; and I liked it alot; its a fun one and we are running through as a team.
But, aside from that we don't do a lot of multiplayer even both being gamers. We still haven't even done a Portal 2 Co-op run.
Meh. Thing is, I don't need to upgrade my system except for what I do in windows; for the most part.
I spend the majority of my time on a Linux desktop. Anything serious, is done under Linux. Windows however, I keep around strictly for gaming. That is the issue. The last time I upgraded my system for anything I was doing under Linux; I doubled the RAM. Games have me upgrading video cards or even the whole machine.
This use case does not indicate VMs as the solution.
That said, the latest gen system is a few years old now, and its looking like its going to be fine even for gaming for some time to come. And who knows, with steam on Linux, maybe my final need for windows will finally vanish?
Well if the states start passing such laws, the credit card companies will push for congress to pass one themselves. That is how things seem to work across every industry. First they oppose any and all regulation federally or local. Then a few local areas pass it....and suddenly they are faced with compliance with different codes in different places....and a single federal law starts looking like their best option, so they push for that.
I bet all you really need is 2-3 states to pass their own laws, preferably with slight differences that make compliance painful; then you will get a federal law on short order.
This is one reason I prefer to keep it in the states actually, fragmented laws are a boon for local businesses; as it gives them a huge advantage to a company that only has to deal with their own state's law, vs one that has to comply with different codes in different places.
> It should be perfectly legal, and publicly known, that credit card transaction fees are charged > to the person making the purchase
It should but its actually a complicated problem; mostly due to the way card processing works now.
My knowledge of this comes directly from my Wife, who worked in the POS industry (that is sale and setup of cash registers and assorted paraphernalia) for several years.
Basically, what you see, and I see them around too...mostly at gas stations, is the "two price" scenario, one for cash, one for credit. It may be described as a "cash discount", but I have never seen it called a "credit fee", and part of the problem is...the fees are NOT fixed, they vary from card to card.
So, if Alice and Bob both walk into Carolmart on the same day, of the same year, at the same time and buy the same item, they will both pay the same price. However, if Alice uses her Capital One Card, and Bob uses his Discover.... Carolmart will, in fact, actually be charged two different fees!
That is right, if you have a card with "Cash back" or some "rewards program" they actually charge the retailer who takes the card more to cover the rewards! So if they really were to implement such fees, the fee would depend on what card you use (as well as other factors like how much business the store does).
There is some ability to deny specific cards: this is the very reason "American Express" is commonly not accepted because they have some of the higher fees (ditto for discover). However this breaks down a bit when you factor in how many different cards all work under the VISA or MASTERCARD brands.
Not saying any of this isn't fixable, just that its grown up somewhat complicated and there is a lot of interest in not fixing it or making it more transparent.
My problem with the whole concept is this idea that an ISP should be able to go to a content provider, who isn't their customer, and threaten to degrade their own customers service; which he paid for; if the content provider doesn't pay.
The customer paid for internet access. If he requests content from google, he should get it and get it in a similar timely manner as any other site; and if he doesn't, it really shouldn't be the fault of the very people he is paying for that service from.
Google, in short, already has an (or many) ISP(s) and pays for their internet connection and content movement. Their ISPs have their own connections that they pay for and do the same; as does the Consumer's ISP.
I don't see where they should have a leg to stand on at all here. They advertise Internet Access, that is what it means.
Now if they were arguing for reasonable QOS, stuff like giving priority to port 22 and other operational changes that make the experience better, have at it. However, that doesn't really cover "Your intended content provider didn't pay our blackmail demands".
> I presume no Bitcoin transactions can take place if the local wallet can't perform write operations > on the drive to transfer Bitcoins either in or out.
All you need to be able to do is generate a valid transaction and sign it. Whether you can update the local wallet is not relevant. Actually some of the more secure setups use two wallets; an online one which has no private keys, and an offline one which has them.
In those, the online wallet is used to keep state, and generate valid transactions; which are then taken to the offline system and then signed; then back to the online and transmitted.
In short, bitcoins are not a thing stored in a wallet, they are units of value in a distributed ledger. The wallet just contains the keys that are needed to add new lines to the ledger. In a very real way there is no such thing as a bitcoin. It would be like, if every dollar bill was burned but dollars as a unit continued to exist in bank accounts.
You can transfer them too and fro, you can talk about owning them, but you can't actually point to a specific thing, either virtual or real, that is a dollar....its just an arbitrary unit that obeys specific rules for how entries get updated inside a database.
> Regardless, he is probably currently ordered by the court not to use the confiscated Bitcoins > even if he had the capability through backups or some other means.
This is very true, and as others have pointed out, the FBI already transfered the bitcoins to a new account. So all his private keys are worthless. He has to win at the "can't be seized" game.
I would love to see him win at it, especially since my position has always been that enforcement of drug laws is a crime against humanity.... I doubt it works out; but I would love to see it.
Excuse yourself; then go look up "galvanized" and consider meditating upon what the difference is between "creating something" and "galvanizing new efforts". Generally if you want to dispute a claim that wasn't actually made, its best to not quote
Makes the shilling for the surveillance state far less obvious.
> I held my nose and voted for Obama. What was my option here? Gordon Gecko? You think > whichever boob we put in office isn't going to have these policies?
This. This is how they keep winning and keep the duopoly.
Here is the thing.... in a big tent party the only person who HAS to be listened to is someone willing to walk out of the tent. If you are so afraid of Mitt RMoney that you can't not vote for Obama; then you are marginalized.
It isn't whether the other guy would have the policies, its about the long game. What would Democrats do if Obama lost and Jill Stein or Gary Johnson got enough of a block that they had to attribute part of the loss to it? In the long game it would force the democrats to listen to the people who walked out of their tent.
The thing I find absolutely amazing is he had no emergency backup of his wallets. They could be encrypted, put on a usb stick and buried. Any number of ways he could have retained the ability to regain control of his bitcoins despite seizure of the computers.
How is it destruction of evidence? The evidence is all still there. Maybe, but I don't think they have to resort to that; of course IANAL; I see no reason they couldn't order him not to transfer bitcoins from those addresses, which would put him in violation of an order if he did it.
Can't imagine why the court wouldn't order that, which may be why he is trying to specifically argue up front that they can't be seized.
Ahhhh! However the hard drive is also evidence against him in a criminal trial. This means the contents should be available to him as a matter of discovery. If he has to answer for the contents of the drive, he needs to be able to have the same data they do to defend himself.
I lived with someone who did computer forensics for the defense at a trial. He had to install a lock on the office door for that, and he had many binders of reports. He also was provided images of all computers that were seized. Full images. (complete with malware!)
Its an interesting argument. The wallets are just data; data being used as evidence against him. They are not the bitcoins themselves. I would be surprised if there is any real direct precedent for this. The very files he needs and should be entitled to for the purpose of his defence, also necessarily give him control over the bitcoins....there is no separation between the two.
It will be interesting to see how these arguments go. It may in fact be that bitcoins perform an end run around existing federal law. It certainly will make me laugh if this works.
Exactly. The government should have pardoned itself and expunged his record. Or Pardon the Queen herself if you want to express the appropriate level of shame.
Have to take your word for it I guess, afterall, the inventor already ceased operation so it is very hard to test. However, there is a lot of evidence to suggest you would have been correct; even if he were still alive.
> Every bitcoin has a transaction log associated with it.
Except exchanges don't necessarily need to use bitcoin to trade bitcoin. If you deposit money in a bank, and then wire the funds to another account, and then withdraw them, would you expect to get the same bills back? Of course not! The bank tosses your bills in with the rest and then hands back different ones from the pool.
So if I send bitcoins to an exchange and sell them, then the buyer sells them later, that is 3 transactions (me sending them btc, me selling them, someone else selling them) only one of which must be in the block chain and that one isn't even counted as part of the volume!
So yes, you are right:
> Why not simply "query the database" as it were and analyze the data. This would be a fairly > straightforward procedure for a forensic accountant.
Correct but the database is the private database of the exchange, which then should be correlated with the public block chain, but likely has a lot of information not otherwise in the block chain.
Slashdot Mirror
If you recall the start of it...the whole point was to describe the relationship in terms that non-technical people were more likely to be familiar with. It isn't insightful about Unix unless you have no clue why multiple different OSs would be called Unix. It is a metaphor for the history, not the technology.
It falls down? Sounds like a hypervisor supporting paravirtualization to me.
Wow. Funny I was just thinking of that antarctic explorer who planned to be the first person to the south pole, and instead got to Antarctica in time to meet the expedition who beat him to it on their return trip.
Of course, his expedition ended when they got caught in a storm and all died. Hopefully this guy will not follow in that tradition.
Wrong ministry. Minitrue was in charge of running (and editing) the media. Newspapers etc. They were not the covert or investigative arm. I think the NSA would be part of MiniLove.
I double checked (its been a decade or two since I read it): "The Ministry of Love serves as Oceania's interior ministry. It enforces loyalty and love of Big Brother through fear, a repressive apparatus, and brainwashing. "
Whereas Minitrue: "The Ministry of Truth is involved with news media, entertainment, the fine arts and educational books. Its purpose is to rewrite history to change the facts to fit Party doctrine"
Which lines up with what i remember. Might also be under Minipax.
I was thinking the exact same thing; then I realized, its not true, they must have just spelled infinitesimally wrong.
Were that they were infinitely weaker, that would be wonderful.
> 9/11 occured because intelligence folks thought that wire tapping was good enough
Which is odd, I could have sworn it happened because a criminal group that wanted to make big headlines planned something that nobody really should have expected.
There is also with that an implicit (and also incorrect) assumption that 9/11 was some sort of existential threat that we needed to be protected from; when the reality is it was little more than one of the the most brutal tragic publicity stunts ever by a group that had no hope of ever harming us as much as we harm ourselves in response to them....little more than a peanut to an over-active immune response.
I have a hard time calling fusion from impacts with an object moving at a signficant fraction of the speed of light an "interesting effect" of air resistance. However, I do agree it could massively improve DC.
You are likely right but, I think we need to test this. I think we need a hypobaric chamber, a high power rifle, and enough congressmen as to do enough tests to be sure.... 400 or so should be enough for the first round trials.
Depends, often times it is more effective to throw very small light things....very quickly.
Afterall E = 1/2 mv^2 - better to double the velocity than the mass :)
Depends what you like I guess. About 99.9% of my gaming is single player. Generally, I either like something with a decent story, or a wide open sandbox (leaning more towards sandbox).
That said, one example I was going to toss out, Kerbal Space Program; which has eaten a disproportionate number of hours compared to other recent games; is in fact looking to go multiplayer in the future.
I have tried a few MMOs, and just couldn't maintain interest long. The longest was probably EVE Online, which was quite engrossing with all its possibilities. In the end I think I like the idea of what can be done in an MMO more than I like actually doing it.
That said, juist in the past few days my wife and I picked up Path to Exile (I like that they have staked a line in the sand that it will be free to play and NOT pay to win). As Diablo was her favorite game of all time; and I liked it alot; its a fun one and we are running through as a team.
But, aside from that we don't do a lot of multiplayer even both being gamers. We still haven't even done a Portal 2 Co-op run.
Meh. Thing is, I don't need to upgrade my system except for what I do in windows; for the most part.
I spend the majority of my time on a Linux desktop. Anything serious, is done under Linux. Windows however, I keep around strictly for gaming. That is the issue. The last time I upgraded my system for anything I was doing under Linux; I doubled the RAM. Games have me upgrading video cards or even the whole machine.
This use case does not indicate VMs as the solution.
That said, the latest gen system is a few years old now, and its looking like its going to be fine even for gaming for some time to come. And who knows, with steam on Linux, maybe my final need for windows will finally vanish?
Well if the states start passing such laws, the credit card companies will push for congress to pass one themselves. That is how things seem to work across every industry. First they oppose any and all regulation federally or local. Then a few local areas pass it....and suddenly they are faced with compliance with different codes in different places....and a single federal law starts looking like their best option, so they push for that.
I bet all you really need is 2-3 states to pass their own laws, preferably with slight differences that make compliance painful; then you will get a federal law on short order.
This is one reason I prefer to keep it in the states actually, fragmented laws are a boon for local businesses; as it gives them a huge advantage to a company that only has to deal with their own state's law, vs one that has to comply with different codes in different places.
No no no, wrong definition, try this one: "To stimulate or shock with an electric current."
Makes so much more sense that way doesn't it?
> It should be perfectly legal, and publicly known, that credit card transaction fees are charged
> to the person making the purchase
It should but its actually a complicated problem; mostly due to the way card processing works now.
My knowledge of this comes directly from my Wife, who worked in the POS industry (that is sale and setup of cash registers and assorted paraphernalia) for several years.
Basically, what you see, and I see them around too...mostly at gas stations, is the "two price" scenario, one for cash, one for credit. It may be described as a "cash discount", but I have never seen it called a "credit fee", and part of the problem is...the fees are NOT fixed, they vary from card to card.
So, if Alice and Bob both walk into Carolmart on the same day, of the same year, at the same time and buy the same item, they will both pay the same price. However, if Alice uses her Capital One Card, and Bob uses his Discover.... Carolmart will, in fact, actually be charged two different fees!
That is right, if you have a card with "Cash back" or some "rewards program" they actually charge the retailer who takes the card more to cover the rewards! So if they really were to implement such fees, the fee would depend on what card you use (as well as other factors like how much business the store does).
There is some ability to deny specific cards: this is the very reason "American Express" is commonly not accepted because they have some of the higher fees (ditto for discover). However this breaks down a bit when you factor in how many different cards all work under the VISA or MASTERCARD brands.
Not saying any of this isn't fixable, just that its grown up somewhat complicated and there is a lot of interest in not fixing it or making it more transparent.
I often wonder what these so-called "costs" are.
My problem with the whole concept is this idea that an ISP should be able to go to a content provider, who isn't their customer, and threaten to degrade their own customers service; which he paid for; if the content provider doesn't pay.
The customer paid for internet access. If he requests content from google, he should get it and get it in a similar timely manner as any other site; and if he doesn't, it really shouldn't be the fault of the very people he is paying for that service from.
Google, in short, already has an (or many) ISP(s) and pays for their internet connection and content movement. Their ISPs have their own connections that they pay for and do the same; as does the Consumer's ISP.
I don't see where they should have a leg to stand on at all here. They advertise Internet Access, that is what it means.
Now if they were arguing for reasonable QOS, stuff like giving priority to port 22 and other operational changes that make the experience better, have at it. However, that doesn't really cover "Your intended content provider didn't pay our blackmail demands".
> I presume no Bitcoin transactions can take place if the local wallet can't perform write operations
> on the drive to transfer Bitcoins either in or out.
All you need to be able to do is generate a valid transaction and sign it. Whether you can update the local wallet is not relevant. Actually some of the more secure setups use two wallets; an online one which has no private keys, and an offline one which has them.
In those, the online wallet is used to keep state, and generate valid transactions; which are then taken to the offline system and then signed; then back to the online and transmitted.
In short, bitcoins are not a thing stored in a wallet, they are units of value in a distributed ledger. The wallet just contains the keys that are needed to add new lines to the ledger. In a very real way there is no such thing as a bitcoin. It would be like, if every dollar bill was burned but dollars as a unit continued to exist in bank accounts.
You can transfer them too and fro, you can talk about owning them, but you can't actually point to a specific thing, either virtual or real, that is a dollar....its just an arbitrary unit that obeys specific rules for how entries get updated inside a database.
> Regardless, he is probably currently ordered by the court not to use the confiscated Bitcoins
> even if he had the capability through backups or some other means.
This is very true, and as others have pointed out, the FBI already transfered the bitcoins to a new account. So all his private keys are worthless. He has to win at the "can't be seized" game.
I would love to see him win at it, especially since my position has always been that enforcement of drug laws is a crime against humanity.... I doubt it works out; but I would love to see it.
> Excuse me, but Snowden didn't create anything.
Excuse yourself; then go look up "galvanized" and consider meditating upon what the difference is between "creating something" and "galvanizing new efforts". Generally if you want to dispute a claim that wasn't actually made, its best to not quote
Makes the shilling for the surveillance state far less obvious.
> I held my nose and voted for Obama. What was my option here? Gordon Gecko? You think
> whichever boob we put in office isn't going to have these policies?
This. This is how they keep winning and keep the duopoly.
Here is the thing.... in a big tent party the only person who HAS to be listened to is someone willing to walk out of the tent. If you are so afraid of Mitt RMoney that you can't not vote for Obama; then you are marginalized.
It isn't whether the other guy would have the policies, its about the long game. What would Democrats do if Obama lost and Jill Stein or Gary Johnson got enough of a block that they had to attribute part of the loss to it? In the long game it would force the democrats to listen to the people who walked out of their tent.
The thing I find absolutely amazing is he had no emergency backup of his wallets. They could be encrypted, put on a usb stick and buried. Any number of ways he could have retained the ability to regain control of his bitcoins despite seizure of the computers.
How is it destruction of evidence? The evidence is all still there. Maybe, but I don't think they have to resort to that; of course IANAL; I see no reason they couldn't order him not to transfer bitcoins from those addresses, which would put him in violation of an order if he did it.
Can't imagine why the court wouldn't order that, which may be why he is trying to specifically argue up front that they can't be seized.
Ahhhh! However the hard drive is also evidence against him in a criminal trial. This means the contents should be available to him as a matter of discovery. If he has to answer for the contents of the drive, he needs to be able to have the same data they do to defend himself.
I lived with someone who did computer forensics for the defense at a trial. He had to install a lock on the office door for that, and he had many binders of reports. He also was provided images of all computers that were seized. Full images. (complete with malware!)
Its an interesting argument. The wallets are just data; data being used as evidence against him. They are not the bitcoins themselves. I would be surprised if there is any real direct precedent for this. The very files he needs and should be entitled to for the purpose of his defence, also necessarily give him control over the bitcoins....there is no separation between the two.
It will be interesting to see how these arguments go. It may in fact be that bitcoins perform an end run around existing federal law. It certainly will make me laugh if this works.
Exactly. The government should have pardoned itself and expunged his record. Or Pardon the Queen herself if you want to express the appropriate level of shame.
Have to take your word for it I guess, afterall, the inventor already ceased operation so it is very hard to test. However, there is a lot of evidence to suggest you would have been correct; even if he were still alive.
Pretty sure I didn't do either. I certainly wasn't trying to take the statements of self interested liars seriously.
> Every bitcoin has a transaction log associated with it.
Except exchanges don't necessarily need to use bitcoin to trade bitcoin. If you deposit money in a bank, and then wire the funds to another account, and then withdraw them, would you expect to get the same bills back? Of course not! The bank tosses your bills in with the rest and then hands back different ones from the pool.
So if I send bitcoins to an exchange and sell them, then the buyer sells them later, that is 3 transactions (me sending them btc, me selling them, someone else selling them) only one of which must be in the block chain and that one isn't even counted as part of the volume!
So yes, you are right:
> Why not simply "query the database" as it were and analyze the data. This would be a fairly
> straightforward procedure for a forensic accountant.
Correct but the database is the private database of the exchange, which then should be correlated with the public block chain, but likely has a lot of information not otherwise in the block chain.
-Steve