Thanks your post make it clear, and I will be able to explain bit coins to people who are even less tech savvy than I am.
Basically the way bitcoin does away with "trusted middle map" is by making the bank ledger public. Instead of one trusted bank validating the entries and confirming your bank balance, the entire ledger is public. Multiple entities check the ledger and confirm your bank balance. You don't need the trusted middle man any more. All this cryptography is to make sure the ledger is not forged or fraudulent entries are not added. The cryptography is not meant to protect the identity of the accounts nor to promise anonymity.
So bitcoins are totally transparent. If David the drug dealer accepted bit coins from Alice the drug user, there is a record of bit coins from Alice ending up in the wallet of David. This record exists and will exist for ever. Multiple agencies around the world will confirm, "yes Alice gave David bit coins, before this transaction and after that transaction". If this transaction has already happened, it is carved in stone and it can never be erased by any body.
But Alice and David are bit coin wallets, they only exist in the bit coin universe as unique entities. Who David and Alice are in real life is not known to the bit coin universe. But wherever the bit coin universe interfaces with real life these connections can be detected using standard police and forensic techniques.
Let us say David gets caught, his bit coin wallet is connected to David Actualperson, 1234, broadway, anytown, usa 23456. If David was dumb enough to maintain any kind of record like "bitcoin from Alice wallet - deliver drugs to Alice Actualwoman, apt 123, 4567, 8th street" Alice can be linked to that bitcoin wallet. (Remember David was dumb enough to choose drug dealing as a career, so he might actually be leaving behind lots of clues). As more and more Actualpersons get connected to bitcoin wallets the anonymity will completely breakdown.
You are from Australia. I am from Pennsylvania. Where farmers sold mineral rights to mining companies, thinking, "Let them burrow underground and mine the coal, I will continue to farm on the surface". The courts ruled the mining companies can use any method to get to the "their" coal, including stripping away the top soil, do open cast mining, dump all the excavated tilings all over the property and leave a 20 to 60 feet deep hole where the farm used to be. The farmers are expected to be eternally grateful to the coal company for giving them a huge swimming pool a gratis.
This is my understanding of the validating process of the bit coins:
Bitcoin blocks are Sha checksums of transactions digitally signed. Blocks have the check sum of the previous block in the chain. Bitcoins contain complete transaction record going all the way back to the original bitcoin that started that chain of transactions. But if Alice buys drugs from Bob and given a bit coin forever there is a transaction recorded that Alice gave so many bitcoins to Bob. The transactions are between cyber entities and it is difficult to decode the block, find the cyber identity and then link it to a real identity. But all claims of anonymity is based on the level of difficulty in decoding the blocks to get the cyber accounts and linking them to real life. Not based on any notion of mathematical impossibility or secrecy.
At the back of the coupon that gets them the free pizza, it is written in very faint lettering, in the same font used to list ingredients in the raman noodle soup, the following, "By redeeming this coupon I hereby forego all claims I have against Chevron and accept the pizza as the full and fair compensation for all the damages that might have been caused to me by Chevron, its associates, its lobbyists, its banksters and/or its legislators, including all damages already caused, all damages that could be caused in the future, in this life, (and in the next seven reincarnations if I am a Hindu or a Buddhist)".
There lawyers are really really clever.
A matrix of 8 x 8 rectangular buttons...
on
A New Car UI
·
· Score: 1
True story from a friend who worked in a airplane company. They were designing the UI for a helicopter. The first mock-up was by a bunch of nerdy engineers, who designed a matrix of 64 buttons, arranged in a 8 x 8 matrix, each with a word printed on it and lit from below. The called the test pilot. He took one look at it, then got up wordlessly and rummaged around the conference room till he found a some stiff card board (a three ring binder or a clip board). In all seriousness he said, "cut this cardboard to fit exactly on top of those buttons and paint it black and cover it completely" and walked out.
It will likely be impossible to ever confirm this but I believe the dramatic reduction in crime rates can be attributed to reduction of lead in the environment.
It is difficult to confirm, but lead was phased out of alcohol on different dates in different parts of the country. By looking at the on time sequence of phase out with the time sequence of onset of crime rate reduction, we could see if there is any correlation. And Rick Nevin did look. He found a correlation. Leaded gasoline was a significant cause for the crime. (Just stay away from the home page. Unless you are ready for a sudden on slaught of geocities meets blogger kind of traumatic experience.)
http://www.ricknevin.com/uploa...http://www.ricknevin.com/uploa...
We used to have the best criminals. Top of the class. Valentine's day massacre, drive by shootings, great train robberies, stage coach heists... But as it happens in all industry we have moved up the supply chain, do only high value crimes in USA now. Banksters privatizing profits, socializing the costs, cut back on maintenance of chemical storage tanks to take home the profit, declare bankruptcy when the storage tanks leak, leaving the municipality to clean up the water supply... They out sourced all the low value crime to third world countries.
It is inevitable, third world technology would reach a critical mass and then overtake the West. Now the brutal dog-eat-dog competition in the third world has created really tough breed of criminals and now they are the cutting edge in criminal behavior.
We say telescope and imagine the stunning photographs made by 20th century telescopes, or even space telescopes and laugh at the ignorami of the Church who refused to see the evidence for Heliocentric theory. But back in the days of Galileo the images had severe spherical aberration, chromatic fringing and other artifacts. Even when they point to terrestrial objects the image is upside down. Many people had serious doubts about whether what they see through the telescope was real or it is some kind of illusion created by the devil. They did not even have a clear idea of how vision worked. They had some weird notion that eyes emit some kind of rays that allow you to perceive objects, but could not explain why the "rays" from our eyes do not work without ambient light. Remember they actually and really believed in trans-substantiation, they really really thought the bread and wine given in the communion actually becomes the blood and flesh of the Christ. There were serious arguments about whether or not the Christ and the Holy Ghost were made of the same material but different form, or different material or whether or not it is right to even call what they are made of as material.
Of course the real trouble for Galileo was probably some kind of personal feud with the Pope, some sidekicks of the Pope exaggerating the "insults" hurled by Galileo towards the Pope, etc. But the Church then was not really plugging its ears with fingers shouting "la-la-la I don't hear nothing" like the present day Creationists are doing when evolution is taught in biology classes.
You are well outside one or two sigma plus minus mean of the car driving population. 95% of the gasoline/diesel vehicles do not meet your requirements. Among all the vehicles burning liquid fossil fuels you have found this GMC Yukon to fit your bill. Electric vehicles, if they ever do, will show up in your market segment very very late.
Wasn't there someone who left a big mac on the kitchen table and planned to take a photo a day as some kind of art project? And the damn thing did not go bad for months? Or was it a hoax or urban legend?
How bad that pizza must be if even microbes don't like its taste!
With an ICE? For most the people most the time the solution is just to bring a few jerry cans, why permanently waste so much space on a bigger gas tank. That's probably why the people with 10-15 gallons extra keep it outside the car too.
Yeah, people do crazy things. The control tower of the Kulalumpur airport caught fire, TWICE. Turns out petrol is more expensive at some places compared to other places in Malasia. One air traffic controller was commuting by motorcycle from slightly distant part. He was buying and storing extra petrol in simple jerry cans under his workstation in the bloody control tower! Yeah, I am not surprised people keep jerry cans of fuel inside the car.
If the savings is enough, you could rent a conversion van. Me and my brother for a week long trip through Canada and New York rented a conversion van. Had seven bucket seats, large (for those days) DVD, mini cooler/fridge, nice nooks and cubbies all over. Presently electrics do not break even with gas easily. But that is based on electricity priced the same day or night. I don't see how long they can continue to do that. Almost all the large customers are on peak demand pricing, utilities have idle capacity at night. Cheaper electricity prices at night is going to be inevitable. That is when the equation is going to change. Think about it, if the MPG of your heavy duty truck suddenly doubles, but the range becomes just 50 miles, will the money saved in gas pay for a conversion van rental once or twice a year?
Not all rentals are beat up. Recently I needed a loaner when my car went to the body shop. Got a brand new Dodge Charger with some insane 290 HP engine. From enterprise. If there is a demand for heavy duty truck rental, the free market will supply it. If there is significant difference in cost per mile between using heavy duty gas truck and using electric truck, the demand will be created. Not every body is insensitive to price, like you.
Towable range extenders allow you to take advantage of the existing gasoline/diesel infrastructure immediately. We know how to measure gasoline. Battery charge measuring is not very reliable. The franchise owner has to charge a battery over several hours, before renting it out again. TREs can be turned around and rented to the next customer immediately. This allows for franchises with less capital investment.
There is no need for every one of us to haul an IC engine all the time. 90% of the trips of 90% of the population can be met with existing battery vehicles. Add a mix of towable range extenders (some time in the future one might be towing a battery pack instead of a genset), car rentals a-la netflix model (fixed monthly fees to rent gasoline cars as when they are needed), zip cars etc to cover 60% of the remaining.
We could switch 90 to 95% of the personal cars to electricity, feeding off the grid, with the potential to switch to renewable sources eventually. Getting renewable energy into transportation sector is the holy grail. That is what going to break the oil addiction.
A Saudi Arabian oil minister said, stone age ended, not because we ran out of stones. We hope to end the oil age with half the oil that ever existed left in the ground.
We have reasonably priced mid range battery cars having a range of 50 miles (winter with full heat 70mph) to 100 miles (sprint/fall no a/c, no heat, daytime, 50mph). If we have good Towable Range Extenders, basically gensets on wheels, this would help us switch to electric cars. Already I see (Lotus?) making integrated engine+genset in the same block, designed for constant rpm electricity generation. Many enthusiasts are creating these thingamajiggers with balsa wood baling wire and duct tape. It is time for some standards body like SAE to define standard connectors, tow packages, and electronic communication protocols etc so that we could mix and match these range extenders. I see some people owning them and most people renting them when they need them. Ideally close to highway entrances you should see franchises renting out TREs, may even in highway service plazas.
The electric utility companies have so much excess capacity at night, mostly idling or off line. If they could come up with special meters and sell electricity cheaply overnight, the break-even point calculations vis-a-vis gas cars will shift dramatically. The utility companies will get a piece of the transportation energy market, currently shared only between oil companies. That is the motivation for the utilities. We need to set dog against dog, thief against thief and coal burning utilities against oil companies.
I wish someone with the charisma of Elon or pig headedness of Jobs would make the top honchos of these organizations and companies to pay attention.
It is cost effective and quite competitive to bring broadband to the street corner pillar boxes or the neighbourhoods for telephone companies. It is the "last mile", often fraction of a mile, that connects individual homes and wiring inside the homes that is prohibitively expensive for the new entrant. That is the real barrier to entry. But as WiFi spec improves, the last mile could be done over the air. Already this technique of mostly wire, but end nodes connected over the air is proving to be very cost effective in most third world rural areas. I have seen regular home phones connecting to the local cell tower in Bangalore some 10 or 15 years ago.
Verizon is spending tons of money upgrading last mile to optic fiber. AT&T is already pitching cell tower to home connections. Companies who would be adversely affected if cable companies get too powerful in controlling the distribution channels will fund competitors.
But, in the end, instead of a monopoly we might end up with a duopoly or at the most three choices for home to internet connections. Still I hope this merger does not go through. Cable monopolies could do plenty of damage before viable competition emerges.
You can create as many derivatives as you want. Absolutely. no limits (so punny, ha haa) as long as the function is continuous there. Of course after a certain number of times it will be zero for polynomials..
Oh, you don't mean this derivative. Of course you can make derivatives, and all profits you make are yours. And all the losses will be paid out by the tax payers. wait, you aren't talking about that derivative either.
You can create derivative works, but the dolts from RIAA and MPAA take a dim view and claim copyright infringement on anything and everything, like for example looking at the Atlantic Ocean without proper license. Not the derivative either?
Man, if your derivative something obscure like building git specific distribution or ubuntu running under mono under cygwin X server or something, go ahead and derive it. No one will notice.
Remember the famous mathematics prof told his colleagues (an engineering prof and a physics prof), "Should have both the mistress and the wife. The wife thinks I'm with the mistress and the mistress thinks I'm with the wife, and I can go the department to get some work done"?
Many people find refuge in work. Else they endure a constant stream of "load/unload the dishwasher", "take out the garbage", "fold the laundry", "walk the dog", "do the taxes", "get some exercise",...They fire up the VPN, log in and have some gibberish looking text on screen, having mastered the art of sleeping with eyes open while sitting in a chair, (thanks to endless meetings with PHBs) they just relax. Once you learn to fake sincerity, you got it made...
'Ultimately, the allure of trolling may be too strong for sadists, who presumably have limited opportunities to express their sadistic interests in a socially-desirable manner.'
All we need to do is to create opportunities for the sadists to torture people in real life, and they will leave our precious internet alone.
All it took was couple of regular guys to take the bait and post a couple of replies, and the trolls get another lease of life, almost like cockroaches getting one lick at the spilled grain of sugar and living for the next six months. Now the trolls get their own academic study and serious professors in horn rimmed glasses and slightly rumpled suits with food stains are going to discuss the trolls... No point in pleading "don't feed the trolls". They have just achieved immortality.
Now they have logs of you visiting their web sites and some day they will blame their security breach on you, calling you a disgruntled ex emaployee hacker. Stay as far away from them as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyways check out the original paper if you don't believe me
I believe you. I am just beginning to understand bitcoins.
Basically the way bitcoin does away with "trusted middle map" is by making the bank ledger public. Instead of one trusted bank validating the entries and confirming your bank balance, the entire ledger is public. Multiple entities check the ledger and confirm your bank balance. You don't need the trusted middle man any more. All this cryptography is to make sure the ledger is not forged or fraudulent entries are not added. The cryptography is not meant to protect the identity of the accounts nor to promise anonymity.
So bitcoins are totally transparent. If David the drug dealer accepted bit coins from Alice the drug user, there is a record of bit coins from Alice ending up in the wallet of David. This record exists and will exist for ever. Multiple agencies around the world will confirm, "yes Alice gave David bit coins, before this transaction and after that transaction". If this transaction has already happened, it is carved in stone and it can never be erased by any body.
But Alice and David are bit coin wallets, they only exist in the bit coin universe as unique entities. Who David and Alice are in real life is not known to the bit coin universe. But wherever the bit coin universe interfaces with real life these connections can be detected using standard police and forensic techniques.
Let us say David gets caught, his bit coin wallet is connected to David Actualperson, 1234, broadway, anytown, usa 23456. If David was dumb enough to maintain any kind of record like "bitcoin from Alice wallet - deliver drugs to Alice Actualwoman, apt 123, 4567, 8th street" Alice can be linked to that bitcoin wallet. (Remember David was dumb enough to choose drug dealing as a career, so he might actually be leaving behind lots of clues). As more and more Actualpersons get connected to bitcoin wallets the anonymity will completely breakdown.
You are from Australia. I am from Pennsylvania. Where farmers sold mineral rights to mining companies, thinking, "Let them burrow underground and mine the coal, I will continue to farm on the surface". The courts ruled the mining companies can use any method to get to the "their" coal, including stripping away the top soil, do open cast mining, dump all the excavated tilings all over the property and leave a 20 to 60 feet deep hole where the farm used to be. The farmers are expected to be eternally grateful to the coal company for giving them a huge swimming pool a gratis.
Bitcoin blocks are Sha checksums of transactions digitally signed. Blocks have the check sum of the previous block in the chain. Bitcoins contain complete transaction record going all the way back to the original bitcoin that started that chain of transactions. But if Alice buys drugs from Bob and given a bit coin forever there is a transaction recorded that Alice gave so many bitcoins to Bob. The transactions are between cyber entities and it is difficult to decode the block, find the cyber identity and then link it to a real identity. But all claims of anonymity is based on the level of difficulty in decoding the blocks to get the cyber accounts and linking them to real life. Not based on any notion of mathematical impossibility or secrecy.
Is it anywhere close to being right?
Someone thought no one would take seriously an arrest warrant for failing to return a video to a defunct video store.
There lawyers are really really clever.
True story from a friend who worked in a airplane company. They were designing the UI for a helicopter. The first mock-up was by a bunch of nerdy engineers, who designed a matrix of 64 buttons, arranged in a 8 x 8 matrix, each with a word printed on it and lit from below. The called the test pilot. He took one look at it, then got up wordlessly and rummaged around the conference room till he found a some stiff card board (a three ring binder or a clip board). In all seriousness he said, "cut this cardboard to fit exactly on top of those buttons and paint it black and cover it completely" and walked out.
It will likely be impossible to ever confirm this but I believe the dramatic reduction in crime rates can be attributed to reduction of lead in the environment.
It is difficult to confirm, but lead was phased out of alcohol on different dates in different parts of the country. By looking at the on time sequence of phase out with the time sequence of onset of crime rate reduction, we could see if there is any correlation. And Rick Nevin did look. He found a correlation. Leaded gasoline was a significant cause for the crime. (Just stay away from the home page. Unless you are ready for a sudden on slaught of geocities meets blogger kind of traumatic experience.) http://www.ricknevin.com/uploa... http://www.ricknevin.com/uploa...
It is inevitable, third world technology would reach a critical mass and then overtake the West. Now the brutal dog-eat-dog competition in the third world has created really tough breed of criminals and now they are the cutting edge in criminal behavior.
Of course the real trouble for Galileo was probably some kind of personal feud with the Pope, some sidekicks of the Pope exaggerating the "insults" hurled by Galileo towards the Pope, etc. But the Church then was not really plugging its ears with fingers shouting "la-la-la I don't hear nothing" like the present day Creationists are doing when evolution is taught in biology classes.
You are well outside one or two sigma plus minus mean of the car driving population. 95% of the gasoline/diesel vehicles do not meet your requirements. Among all the vehicles burning liquid fossil fuels you have found this GMC Yukon to fit your bill. Electric vehicles, if they ever do, will show up in your market segment very very late.
How bad that pizza must be if even microbes don't like its taste!
With an ICE? For most the people most the time the solution is just to bring a few jerry cans, why permanently waste so much space on a bigger gas tank. That's probably why the people with 10-15 gallons extra keep it outside the car too.
Yeah, people do crazy things. The control tower of the Kulalumpur airport caught fire, TWICE. Turns out petrol is more expensive at some places compared to other places in Malasia. One air traffic controller was commuting by motorcycle from slightly distant part. He was buying and storing extra petrol in simple jerry cans under his workstation in the bloody control tower! Yeah, I am not surprised people keep jerry cans of fuel inside the car.
If the savings is enough, you could rent a conversion van. Me and my brother for a week long trip through Canada and New York rented a conversion van. Had seven bucket seats, large (for those days) DVD, mini cooler/fridge, nice nooks and cubbies all over. Presently electrics do not break even with gas easily. But that is based on electricity priced the same day or night. I don't see how long they can continue to do that. Almost all the large customers are on peak demand pricing, utilities have idle capacity at night. Cheaper electricity prices at night is going to be inevitable. That is when the equation is going to change. Think about it, if the MPG of your heavy duty truck suddenly doubles, but the range becomes just 50 miles, will the money saved in gas pay for a conversion van rental once or twice a year?
Not all rentals are beat up. Recently I needed a loaner when my car went to the body shop. Got a brand new Dodge Charger with some insane 290 HP engine. From enterprise. If there is a demand for heavy duty truck rental, the free market will supply it. If there is significant difference in cost per mile between using heavy duty gas truck and using electric truck, the demand will be created. Not every body is insensitive to price, like you.
There is no need for every one of us to haul an IC engine all the time. 90% of the trips of 90% of the population can be met with existing battery vehicles. Add a mix of towable range extenders (some time in the future one might be towing a battery pack instead of a genset), car rentals a-la netflix model (fixed monthly fees to rent gasoline cars as when they are needed), zip cars etc to cover 60% of the remaining.
We could switch 90 to 95% of the personal cars to electricity, feeding off the grid, with the potential to switch to renewable sources eventually. Getting renewable energy into transportation sector is the holy grail. That is what going to break the oil addiction.
A Saudi Arabian oil minister said, stone age ended, not because we ran out of stones. We hope to end the oil age with half the oil that ever existed left in the ground.
The electric utility companies have so much excess capacity at night, mostly idling or off line. If they could come up with special meters and sell electricity cheaply overnight, the break-even point calculations vis-a-vis gas cars will shift dramatically. The utility companies will get a piece of the transportation energy market, currently shared only between oil companies. That is the motivation for the utilities. We need to set dog against dog, thief against thief and coal burning utilities against oil companies.
I wish someone with the charisma of Elon or pig headedness of Jobs would make the top honchos of these organizations and companies to pay attention.
Verizon is spending tons of money upgrading last mile to optic fiber. AT&T is already pitching cell tower to home connections. Companies who would be adversely affected if cable companies get too powerful in controlling the distribution channels will fund competitors.
But, in the end, instead of a monopoly we might end up with a duopoly or at the most three choices for home to internet connections. Still I hope this merger does not go through. Cable monopolies could do plenty of damage before viable competition emerges.
Really? ooops.
Oh, you don't mean this derivative. Of course you can make derivatives, and all profits you make are yours. And all the losses will be paid out by the tax payers. wait, you aren't talking about that derivative either.
You can create derivative works, but the dolts from RIAA and MPAA take a dim view and claim copyright infringement on anything and everything, like for example looking at the Atlantic Ocean without proper license. Not the derivative either?
Man, if your derivative something obscure like building git specific distribution or ubuntu running under mono under cygwin X server or something, go ahead and derive it. No one will notice.
expecting a slashdotter to chime in, "I am an AI-driven human clone you insensitive clod" any time now.
Many people find refuge in work. Else they endure a constant stream of "load/unload the dishwasher", "take out the garbage", "fold the laundry", "walk the dog", "do the taxes", "get some exercise", ...They fire up the VPN, log in and have some gibberish looking text on screen, having mastered the art of sleeping with eyes open while sitting in a chair, (thanks to endless meetings with PHBs) they just relax. Once you learn to fake sincerity, you got it made...
'Ultimately, the allure of trolling may be too strong for sadists, who presumably have limited opportunities to express their sadistic interests in a socially-desirable manner.'
All we need to do is to create opportunities for the sadists to torture people in real life, and they will leave our precious internet alone.
All it took was couple of regular guys to take the bait and post a couple of replies, and the trolls get another lease of life, almost like cockroaches getting one lick at the spilled grain of sugar and living for the next six months. Now the trolls get their own academic study and serious professors in horn rimmed glasses and slightly rumpled suits with food stains are going to discuss the trolls... No point in pleading "don't feed the trolls". They have just achieved immortality.
Now they have logs of you visiting their web sites and some day they will blame their security breach on you, calling you a disgruntled ex emaployee hacker. Stay as far away from them as possible.