My how times have changed. I remember tinkering with electronics in high school, and mostly what I have to show for it is a box of random parts and a whole lot of burnt out ICs, including a number of microcontrollers (oh, yeah, and a bachelor's in EE, which is how I learned how to actually use all those parts; there were plenty of burnt out ICs involved there too...).
That is something the courts will have to decide, and the problem is that many developers lack the means to actually fight Lodsys in court. Yes, all it would take is one, but Lodsys is asking for a small fraction of the developers' revenue, and most if not all will either acquiesce or just ditch iOS for a platform that gives them a little more freedom.
Really? Funny, when last I checked, I can write software using whatever programming language I want, and whatever technology is feasible, on my laptop. Nobody tells me what languages I am allowed to use or requires me to use their method of processing purchases. I can even run a different operating system with a completely different design in a virtual machine, if I feel that a different operating system would be better for developing my software.
So where is that dictation you were talking about?
Failing the abolishment of software patents, the lesson here is that the entire iOS development model spelled trouble. You are required to write your software in a particular way, using particular languages and technologies, and you have to distribute it through the App Store and give Apple a cut of your revenue. Developers should have refused such an agreement, and in the future developers should refuse similar agreements (I have no doubt that we will continue to see companies trying to exert such control over developers).
Except that that article addresses nonexistent issues. The EFF is not demanding that Apple indemnify developers against all patent lawsuits, but rather against lawsuits relating to technologies that Apple ships with iOS and which Apple requires developers to use as part of the developer agreement. Additionally, the article claims that doing this would grant legitimacy to the Lodsys patent; but Apple already granted them legitimacy by signing an agreement with Lodsys.
The real lesson here is for developers: don't let someone else dictate to you how you should write your software.
You are assuming here that TI actually cares about hobbyists; clearly they do not and they would rather just make it harder to hack the device than to shift the burden onto exam proctors.
What is being argued is that Siemens did not have enough time to patch this vulnerability and deploy that patch in major installations of these systems. I do not doubt it; the real question is whether or not they are busy deploying a fix, and I would not doubt that they are. Stuxnet is out there being studied by people who would use it to attack US factories, if they could, and I would bet that the US government is putting pressure on Siemens to fix the problem. If within a year, the talk is still being suppressed, we can start talking about conspiracies to control knowledge, but for now I would say it is more an issue of responsible disclosure.
There is a notion in security engineering of responsible disclosure, which is letting a company know about a vulnerability long enough before you present it so as to allow the company to fix it and deploy the fix. I believe that what happened here was that the company complained that they did not have enough time to fix the problem and deploy the fix, and that DHS and the researcher agreed with that conclusion. I do not think this is terribly far fetched, and I doubt that there is a conspiracy to leave vulnerabilities in industrial equipment used here in America, not when the Iranians want to get back at the US and Israel for Stuxnet.
Good point, but what if the apocalypse isn't in the US?
Where else then? Canada? Canadians are avid hunters too, and they have lots of guns in their rural areas. Mexico, South America? Do you think drug lords would have a problem killing zombies, or that the governments fighting those drug lords would not be up to the task?
Maybe the Europeans would have some problems, but even they have military forces that could probably take on the Zombies. In the worst case, they could call on their allies (like the USA) to send in some troops. I bet the US army would make short work of zombies, considering that the rules of engagement are (according to Zombie movies) effectively nil.
what if the zombies are still sophisticated enough to use guns
Then we have something of a problem, but zombies are generally unintelligent so I am not too worried.
A while ago, I remember seeing an article that explained why a zombie apocalypse would never happen. The point that probably made the most sense is this: America has plenty of people with guns, and hunters in America are so effective that we need to pass laws to prevent them from killing off all the wildlife in the country. Zombies would not survive more than a few weeks against the kind of firepower that our hunters possess.
Plus, a Bitcoin bank could not increase the money supply by creating virtual currency, because each bitcoin movement is verified in the peer to peer network. A bank would be unable to send the same Bitcoin to two different people the way they do with dollars now.
As opposed to a bank's ability to create virtual dollars, despite the fact that the bank cannot actually print dollar bills? The verifiability of Bitcoin transfers is irrelevant; someone could always write you a check for some number of Bitcoins, which you could take to a bank and deposit in your account.
somehow you start saying that I claim a run on a Bitcoin bank is impossible.
Perhaps "impossible" is the wrong word; a better term would be "irrelevant." You make the following claim:
a Bitcoin bank could not increase the money supply by creating virtual currency
In such a scenario, a run on the bank would make no difference beyond leaving the bank with no assets or customers. All of the withdrawals would be covered by the bank, in the worst case with a delay while the bank sells assets to get the money needed to cover the withdrawals. This might be bad for the bank itself, but it would not create the sort of crisis that a run on a bank that creates virtual currency would create. The bank might not even be dissolved, since it could theoretically hold Bitcoins derived from the profits of its business (loans, investments, etc.), and after all withdrawals have been satisfied, the bank could go on doing business, albeit with less capital.
When banks create virtual currency, a run on a bank becomes a serious problem, since there are withdrawals that might not be covered. This creates a crisis that spreads throughout the economy, as it literally destroys money (virtual currency).
Now, a Bitcoin bank certainly could create virtual currency, the same as any other bank, and thus a run on a Bitcoin bank would seriously affect the Bitcoin economy. Most countries will take steps to prevent a crisis when they see a run on the banks, but since nobody manages the Bitcoin economy, the crisis would play out and people would find that they lost the money they deposited in the bank. I doubt that Bitcoin could survive such a crisis, since it is pretty easy for people to switch to another currency and they would be pretty likely to do so in the wake of such a catastrophe.
So when you give allowance to children, it is not valid currency because they don't pay taxes?
First of all, children do pay taxes when they spend allowance money, assuming they live a state where there is sales tax. Second of all, the money has value because someone out there needs it to pay their taxes. That shop owner needs to pay taxes, as do the utility companies that provide his store with electricity and water, and the companies that provide his store with goods, and so forth. The value of the currency is not invented or a product of your imagination because there are people out there who need the money to live in this country.
We have places that take forein currency. They can't use that to pay taxes!
The country that issued the currency has to collect taxes too. It is also the case that foreign currency may be backed some other value, like precious metals, or even US dollars. Additionally, some foreign currency is worthless -- nobody accepts Zimbabwe dollars.
Nothing stops a bank from giving a Bitcoin loan. But they cannot loan out more bitcoins than they have. With 'real' US currency, the banks are allowed to loan more than they bring in. This makes money out of thin air. Bitcoins are digitally tracked from mining to current use. I don't see how you could loan out two copies of the same Bitcoin like they do with dollars.
Banks cannot just print their own money; they are allowed to increase the money supply by creating virtual currency, money that only exists in the banks' records. A Bitcoin bank can do the same thing with Bitcoins, if it wants to, and it can do so without the regulation of a government.
I would assume a run on a bank that used Bitcoins would be the same as a run on a bank with dollars.
A run on the bank is only a problem when the bank does not have enough currency to cover all of its account holders' accounts. If you do not believe that such a thing could happen with Bitcoins, then you are claiming that a run on a Bitcoin bank is impossible. Since such a thing is clearly possible, and since Bitcoin banks would be able to create virtual currency, a run on a Bitcoin bank would be a complete disaster. It would, in fact, be even worse than a run on the banks in the USA, since the US government is always ready to take action to prevent a catastrophe, whereas nobody is going to save Bitcoin banks.
Is this international kill the 4th amendment week in the US???
Nothing international about it; this is a domestic effort.
Geez...the police state is gathering steam MUCH faster than I'd expected.
Really? It was not all that long ago that the secret service was trying to imprison people who merely possessed a copy of the BellSouth E911 document. During that same period of the time, the Justice Department was trying to sneak back doors into cryptography products (clipper chip), something that they are still pushing for to this day:
Belief that it has value, the same illusion that makes our USD based economy run:p
Except that to own a house in the United States, you need US dollars -- otherwise you cannot pay taxes, and you will lose your home. Now, why does someone need Bitcoins?
Are you really saying that Bitcoin (or Paypal or Linden Dollars for that matter) would be more valuable to you if someone threatened you into using it? You would pay extra for someone to threaten you with violence?
Essentially, yes, that is what gives government issued currency its value. You own a farm, the government issues currency and tells you to either find a way to get a minimum amount of that currency or you will lose your farm; if you refuse to give up your farm when the tax collectors come, they will arrest you, using the guns that the government issues to them. Suddenly, that currency has value, because you as a farmer need it in order to keep your farm.
What, did you really think that currency has purely imaginary value? Scarcity and need are what create value. Food has value because you need it to live and because it is not easy to find. Land has value because you need it to produce food and because there is a limited amount of it. Money has value because you need it in order to pay taxes and because there is only a finite amount of it in circulation.
The US dollar has value because it is what the US government accepts for tax payment -- essentially, it has value because having no dollars means you cannot pay taxes and must either be a vagabond who lives off the land or a homeless person who begs other people for food. Dollars have value because American citizens need them in order to pay taxes and not go to jail.
Bitcoin, on the other hand. appears to have completely imaginary value. People accept it as payment only because they hope to use the payment to get something with real value from some other person who hopes to do the same thing. It screams "scam" to me.
At least with Bitcoin, there is no method for banks to magically multiply the currency by 2 for each step through the process
What stops a bank from providing a Bitcoin loan? Nothing. If a bank is will to accept Bitcoin deposits, then you will see exactly the sort of situation we have today: banks loaning Bitcoin tokens that have been deposited by their customers. A run on the Bitcoin banks would be a disaster for the Bitcoin economy since there is essentially no Bitcoin regulation, if Bitcoin banks ever come to exist. The only reason it has not happened yet is that Bitcoin is not big enough to attract the attention of bankers.
For example, a religion can say 'don't eat pork' and the followers will avoid pork without questioning
Well, that depends on which religion you are referring to. There has been a lot of debate about the reasons for biblical mandates among Jewish rabbis, and the kosher laws are no exception.
What is interesting about the kosher laws (to me anyway) is that they are mixed in with civil and criminal laws. Just open a bible, and look at what the kosher laws are surrounded by: hygienic laws (read these in the historical context), laws about murderers and rapists, laws about sexual practices, laws concerning military actions, taxes (which we now read as "charity," but involuntary charity is best referred to as a tax), farm maintenance, etc. Mixed in, of course, are laws concerning religious practices: idolatry, animal sacrifices, and other assorted practices.
Well, the simplest explanation I can think of is that religion helped keep societies together for a long time, which helped the members of those societies survive (and thus reproduce). Evolutionary processes can tend toward locally optimal solutions, and I suspect that is what happened with this "religious" section of the brain.
Why jump through so many hoops to get an embeddable language, when you could use the same language to write the "host program" as you use to write scripts for it? Lisp is an example of such a concept: compiled Lisp programs still have the ability to interpret Lisp code, and hence the most sensible scripting language for a programming written in Lisp is Lisp itself. Lisp is not the only language with this property, but it is one of the most prominent examples of such a language.
Slashdot Mirror
My how times have changed. I remember tinkering with electronics in high school, and mostly what I have to show for it is a box of random parts and a whole lot of burnt out ICs, including a number of microcontrollers (oh, yeah, and a bachelor's in EE, which is how I learned how to actually use all those parts; there were plenty of burnt out ICs involved there too...).
That is something the courts will have to decide, and the problem is that many developers lack the means to actually fight Lodsys in court. Yes, all it would take is one, but Lodsys is asking for a small fraction of the developers' revenue, and most if not all will either acquiesce or just ditch iOS for a platform that gives them a little more freedom.
Really? Funny, when last I checked, I can write software using whatever programming language I want, and whatever technology is feasible, on my laptop. Nobody tells me what languages I am allowed to use or requires me to use their method of processing purchases. I can even run a different operating system with a completely different design in a virtual machine, if I feel that a different operating system would be better for developing my software.
So where is that dictation you were talking about?
Failing the abolishment of software patents, the lesson here is that the entire iOS development model spelled trouble. You are required to write your software in a particular way, using particular languages and technologies, and you have to distribute it through the App Store and give Apple a cut of your revenue. Developers should have refused such an agreement, and in the future developers should refuse similar agreements (I have no doubt that we will continue to see companies trying to exert such control over developers).
Except that that article addresses nonexistent issues. The EFF is not demanding that Apple indemnify developers against all patent lawsuits, but rather against lawsuits relating to technologies that Apple ships with iOS and which Apple requires developers to use as part of the developer agreement. Additionally, the article claims that doing this would grant legitimacy to the Lodsys patent; but Apple already granted them legitimacy by signing an agreement with Lodsys.
The real lesson here is for developers: don't let someone else dictate to you how you should write your software.
Why wait? It should already be happening in Asia right now; I imagine it has already made the news.
Too bad that guy on Usenet refused to sign the "You can have all my possessions after the rapture" contract with me.
You are assuming here that TI actually cares about hobbyists; clearly they do not and they would rather just make it harder to hack the device than to shift the burden onto exam proctors.
What is being argued is that Siemens did not have enough time to patch this vulnerability and deploy that patch in major installations of these systems. I do not doubt it; the real question is whether or not they are busy deploying a fix, and I would not doubt that they are. Stuxnet is out there being studied by people who would use it to attack US factories, if they could, and I would bet that the US government is putting pressure on Siemens to fix the problem. If within a year, the talk is still being suppressed, we can start talking about conspiracies to control knowledge, but for now I would say it is more an issue of responsible disclosure.
There is a notion in security engineering of responsible disclosure, which is letting a company know about a vulnerability long enough before you present it so as to allow the company to fix it and deploy the fix. I believe that what happened here was that the company complained that they did not have enough time to fix the problem and deploy the fix, and that DHS and the researcher agreed with that conclusion. I do not think this is terribly far fetched, and I doubt that there is a conspiracy to leave vulnerabilities in industrial equipment used here in America, not when the Iranians want to get back at the US and Israel for Stuxnet.
Good point, but what if the apocalypse isn't in the US?
Where else then? Canada? Canadians are avid hunters too, and they have lots of guns in their rural areas. Mexico, South America? Do you think drug lords would have a problem killing zombies, or that the governments fighting those drug lords would not be up to the task?
Maybe the Europeans would have some problems, but even they have military forces that could probably take on the Zombies. In the worst case, they could call on their allies (like the USA) to send in some troops. I bet the US army would make short work of zombies, considering that the rules of engagement are (according to Zombie movies) effectively nil.
what if the zombies are still sophisticated enough to use guns
Then we have something of a problem, but zombies are generally unintelligent so I am not too worried.
A while ago, I remember seeing an article that explained why a zombie apocalypse would never happen. The point that probably made the most sense is this: America has plenty of people with guns, and hunters in America are so effective that we need to pass laws to prevent them from killing off all the wildlife in the country. Zombies would not survive more than a few weeks against the kind of firepower that our hunters possess.
Plus, a Bitcoin bank could not increase the money supply by creating virtual currency, because each bitcoin movement is verified in the peer to peer network. A bank would be unable to send the same Bitcoin to two different people the way they do with dollars now.
As opposed to a bank's ability to create virtual dollars, despite the fact that the bank cannot actually print dollar bills? The verifiability of Bitcoin transfers is irrelevant; someone could always write you a check for some number of Bitcoins, which you could take to a bank and deposit in your account.
somehow you start saying that I claim a run on a Bitcoin bank is impossible.
Perhaps "impossible" is the wrong word; a better term would be "irrelevant." You make the following claim:
a Bitcoin bank could not increase the money supply by creating virtual currency
In such a scenario, a run on the bank would make no difference beyond leaving the bank with no assets or customers. All of the withdrawals would be covered by the bank, in the worst case with a delay while the bank sells assets to get the money needed to cover the withdrawals. This might be bad for the bank itself, but it would not create the sort of crisis that a run on a bank that creates virtual currency would create. The bank might not even be dissolved, since it could theoretically hold Bitcoins derived from the profits of its business (loans, investments, etc.), and after all withdrawals have been satisfied, the bank could go on doing business, albeit with less capital.
When banks create virtual currency, a run on a bank becomes a serious problem, since there are withdrawals that might not be covered. This creates a crisis that spreads throughout the economy, as it literally destroys money (virtual currency).
Now, a Bitcoin bank certainly could create virtual currency, the same as any other bank, and thus a run on a Bitcoin bank would seriously affect the Bitcoin economy. Most countries will take steps to prevent a crisis when they see a run on the banks, but since nobody manages the Bitcoin economy, the crisis would play out and people would find that they lost the money they deposited in the bank. I doubt that Bitcoin could survive such a crisis, since it is pretty easy for people to switch to another currency and they would be pretty likely to do so in the wake of such a catastrophe.
So when you give allowance to children, it is not valid currency because they don't pay taxes?
First of all, children do pay taxes when they spend allowance money, assuming they live a state where there is sales tax. Second of all, the money has value because someone out there needs it to pay their taxes. That shop owner needs to pay taxes, as do the utility companies that provide his store with electricity and water, and the companies that provide his store with goods, and so forth. The value of the currency is not invented or a product of your imagination because there are people out there who need the money to live in this country.
We have places that take forein currency. They can't use that to pay taxes!
The country that issued the currency has to collect taxes too. It is also the case that foreign currency may be backed some other value, like precious metals, or even US dollars. Additionally, some foreign currency is worthless -- nobody accepts Zimbabwe dollars.
Nothing stops a bank from giving a Bitcoin loan. But they cannot loan out more bitcoins than they have. With 'real' US currency, the banks are allowed to loan more than they bring in. This makes money out of thin air. Bitcoins are digitally tracked from mining to current use. I don't see how you could loan out two copies of the same Bitcoin like they do with dollars.
Banks cannot just print their own money; they are allowed to increase the money supply by creating virtual currency, money that only exists in the banks' records. A Bitcoin bank can do the same thing with Bitcoins, if it wants to, and it can do so without the regulation of a government.
I would assume a run on a bank that used Bitcoins would be the same as a run on a bank with dollars.
A run on the bank is only a problem when the bank does not have enough currency to cover all of its account holders' accounts. If you do not believe that such a thing could happen with Bitcoins, then you are claiming that a run on a Bitcoin bank is impossible. Since such a thing is clearly possible, and since Bitcoin banks would be able to create virtual currency, a run on a Bitcoin bank would be a complete disaster. It would, in fact, be even worse than a run on the banks in the USA, since the US government is always ready to take action to prevent a catastrophe, whereas nobody is going to save Bitcoin banks.
Is this international kill the 4th amendment week in the US???
Nothing international about it; this is a domestic effort.
Geez...the police state is gathering steam MUCH faster than I'd expected.
Really? It was not all that long ago that the secret service was trying to imprison people who merely possessed a copy of the BellSouth E911 document. During that same period of the time, the Justice Department was trying to sneak back doors into cryptography products (clipper chip), something that they are still pushing for to this day:
http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/crypto.html
Belief that it has value, the same illusion that makes our USD based economy run :p
Except that to own a house in the United States, you need US dollars -- otherwise you cannot pay taxes, and you will lose your home. Now, why does someone need Bitcoins?
Are you really saying that Bitcoin (or Paypal or Linden Dollars for that matter) would be more valuable to you if someone threatened you into using it? You would pay extra for someone to threaten you with violence?
Essentially, yes, that is what gives government issued currency its value. You own a farm, the government issues currency and tells you to either find a way to get a minimum amount of that currency or you will lose your farm; if you refuse to give up your farm when the tax collectors come, they will arrest you, using the guns that the government issues to them. Suddenly, that currency has value, because you as a farmer need it in order to keep your farm.
What, did you really think that currency has purely imaginary value? Scarcity and need are what create value. Food has value because you need it to live and because it is not easy to find. Land has value because you need it to produce food and because there is a limited amount of it. Money has value because you need it in order to pay taxes and because there is only a finite amount of it in circulation.
Bitcoin, on the other hand. appears to have completely imaginary value. People accept it as payment only because they hope to use the payment to get something with real value from some other person who hopes to do the same thing. It screams "scam" to me.
At least with Bitcoin, there is no method for banks to magically multiply the currency by 2 for each step through the process
What stops a bank from providing a Bitcoin loan? Nothing. If a bank is will to accept Bitcoin deposits, then you will see exactly the sort of situation we have today: banks loaning Bitcoin tokens that have been deposited by their customers. A run on the Bitcoin banks would be a disaster for the Bitcoin economy since there is essentially no Bitcoin regulation, if Bitcoin banks ever come to exist. The only reason it has not happened yet is that Bitcoin is not big enough to attract the attention of bankers.
can you distinguish between a Slashdotter's reaction to a neat water-cooled quad SLI graphics rig and a picture of Natalie Portman?
I imagine the former will evoke a stronger reaction than the latter.
Is there a good theory or evidence as to why processing religion is/was a selection pressure?
Well, what I have heard is:
For example, a religion can say 'don't eat pork' and the followers will avoid pork without questioning
Well, that depends on which religion you are referring to. There has been a lot of debate about the reasons for biblical mandates among Jewish rabbis, and the kosher laws are no exception.
What is interesting about the kosher laws (to me anyway) is that they are mixed in with civil and criminal laws. Just open a bible, and look at what the kosher laws are surrounded by: hygienic laws (read these in the historical context), laws about murderers and rapists, laws about sexual practices, laws concerning military actions, taxes (which we now read as "charity," but involuntary charity is best referred to as a tax), farm maintenance, etc. Mixed in, of course, are laws concerning religious practices: idolatry, animal sacrifices, and other assorted practices.
Well, the simplest explanation I can think of is that religion helped keep societies together for a long time, which helped the members of those societies survive (and thus reproduce). Evolutionary processes can tend toward locally optimal solutions, and I suspect that is what happened with this "religious" section of the brain.
Or, if it makes more sense, the economy behind it. Which is growing rather rapidly, for the record.
What exactly gives a Bitcoin its value? At least with a dollar, I can pay my taxes and not be imprisoned.
Why jump through so many hoops to get an embeddable language, when you could use the same language to write the "host program" as you use to write scripts for it? Lisp is an example of such a concept: compiled Lisp programs still have the ability to interpret Lisp code, and hence the most sensible scripting language for a programming written in Lisp is Lisp itself. Lisp is not the only language with this property, but it is one of the most prominent examples of such a language.
Apple products are the best things ever, and obviously more secure than everything else. Everyone knows these are never compromised during pwn2own.