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Comment Won't be bought by any manufacturer (Score 1, Insightful) 181

Manufacturers make money by selling stuff, repeatedly. The fact that you buy a bottle of ketchup and that you cannot use every last drop of it is your problem, not the manufacturers. In fact, if you could use more of what you bought then you would buy less of it and that means in economic terms that (a) consumer gets more product, (b) manufacturer gets less revenue *and* more costs as they now need to coat the inside of the bottle. It may have its uses, but absolutely not in the FMCG (Faast Moving Consumer Goods) segment

Comment The most annoying thing... (Score 1) 39

I was hacked, and I found out when Spotify told me my music was playing in "Luke's Van". These guys had been listening to gangsta rap by the truckload. The worst thing is that my Discover Weekly recommendations are all screwed; this was the single feature I liked the most about my account - good music recommendations. An email to and response from Spotify customer support says that there's nothing they can do about resetting my tastes. Thanks Spotify - I now hope google or Amazon comes and eats your cake

Comment Re:Now we have an answer to the 20TB backup questi (Score 2) 335

Dropbox still has one key feature that Google Drive can't figure out: incremental updates. That means that small changes in big files do not require the entire file to be uploaded again. IN your case, a large Truecrypt continuer will change frequently (or parts thereof). Dropbox won't blink an eye when it does delta change updates. Google Drive will upload the WHOLE thing once again. If you're using truecrypt, dropbox is your only practical choice.

Comment The economist missed the point (Score 1) 537

What the economist doesn't consider in his argument that "currency is a tool of the state" is that states cannot control currency; take the USD usage outside of the US. In many countries there is an official currency that is in reality superseded by USD (Cuba, many African countries, etc). The local governments hate it but they can't do anything about it because citizens trust more us greenbacks than they do in worthless local currency. When volatility of bitcoin goes down (as it will when there will be more regular transactions and people using the currency) there will inevitably be people trusting more in bit coins than Ina government printing ever more debt and printing ever more notes (essentially debt to consumers). Bitcoin wins

Comment Re:Terrible summary (Score 1) 124

Ok, I could have made this a little more explicit.

For something like iMessage, where the client and the server are trusted, but not the communication channel you could very well (for example) input your user name and password on the client, have the client generate hashes of the username and login, sign said hashes with the sever's public key and send them over to the server.

That's one step better than cleartext auth wrapped with SSL but, as someone else remarked, a SRP (or even DH) exchange is pretty straightforward and pretty robust.

Comment Re: Model S vs Hummer (Score 2) 627

I think you know just enough about physics to make a dangerous conclusion. Following a collision, Either car will go in reverse direction only if there is any kinetic energy left from the impact. The whole point of the much tasked about crumple zones is to absorb the energy from the impact and prevent the cars from behaving like bouncing balls. There is sufficient energy absorption capacity in either car to avoid your scenario. Take for instance a Hummer running dead into a wall at medium speed; it would bounce off the wall very far. The reason is because ask the energy is absorbed in the impact. The Tesla had enough of a crumple zone (much more than any other car) to avoid a scenario where three is excess energy that would push the car back. What really kills people are either (a) G forces from an impact (and having a car like a Hummer with little or no energy absorption creates higher impact G forces) or (b) cabin deformation that injures the passengers. The Tesla scores high on impact absorption and deformation resistance and is therefore the safer car.

Comment Too volatile compared to what? (Score 1) 692

When measured against USD, maybe it seems to be. The reality is that it isn't the denomination currency for many goods and services, yet.
Once a piece of bread starts being listed for 0.01 Bitcoin no matter the exchange rate, then where is the volatility you refer to?

What happens when people start getting paid for a set amount of work or services in Bitcoins? Would that seem volatile to you then?
Exchange rates have always existed and always will. People used to pay with grain in ancient times. What do you think happened to prices of grain when there was a storm or a bad crop? Do you think it was less volatile? Did that mean people didn't use it as currency anymore?

Mr Forbes, with all due respect, your argument is simplistic. Currencies have value and exist because people believe in them. for any national currency, you are basically running credit risk against the national bank that they could ultimately refuse to exchange your Local Currency against another currency. With Bitcoin there is no central agency against which you have exposure to, you are exposed to each single individual using Bitcoins and all the people that are willing to buy them. Your risk is basically that no-one will buy your Bitcoin in exchange for a service or another currency/asset.

United Kingdom

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: IPTV service in the UK? 1

OlivierB writes: Dear Slashdotters,
I am moving to a new house in the UK. The house will have very fast broadband but there is only one TV/Cable aerial to plug into which is also very inconveniently located in the property. The Cable TV provider can move it for a high fee, but the biggest issue is that there channel packages are just too expensive and not appealing to me. Ideally I would like access to the UK Freeview channels, and maybe a few extras such as Discovery Channel, Eurosport etc. All of this content would be available via IPTV which I could watch from a HTPC or simple set-top boxes. Do any slashdotters have any ideas they can share with me?

Comment Re:I don't want a linux based "software system" (Score 4, Informative) 181

the article is not that long so you could have at least skimmed through it. The Tesla guy makes a key point in saying that Linux runs the entertainment system and dahsboard (google maps, speedo, etc.). The cars propulsion system (i.e. what runs the motors, battery, brakes, etc..) is completely separate. The linux front-end can crash completely and the car will continue to drive just fine. RTFA

Comment Re:But no Jailbreak for Blackberry NFC Phones (Score 3, Informative) 60

Completely agree
I have a Blackberry purchased SIM free (i..e without contract) and that I happen to use on Vodafone in the UK.
Turns out that the Podcast app's auto-download and syncing function is disabled by Vodafone!

WTF? My phone and my money; I pay for 1GB of data it should be my choice if I want to use all of that on Care Bears podcasts for all I know.

I love my BB but RIM is just bending over backwards to carrier requests. The Storm was also a half-assed attempt at a touchscreen phone from a Vodafone request as they had missed out on the iPhone (o2 was exclusive at the time).

RIM grew half a testi with the playbook's bridge function, but the operators gave them a black-eye and decided not to sell the tablet.

Rim needs to realize that customers buy phones now, no longer just corporate purchase departments.
I don't give a rat which network my phone's on, but I care about my terminal.

I am your client RIM, listen to *me*, I'm your customer, the carrier's not your customer.

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