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Comment Non-partisan fail (Score 1) 106

I'm really happy to not see much partisanship here but because I hear it elsewhere a lot, I'd just like to get in ahead of the "party P was doing great but then party Q screwed it all up" argument.

Australian internet was not great but just OK before any of this NBN nonsense. Then along came the politicians with an appetite for takeover. The first of them had a big vision of top-down design, "everyone" gets fibre of some flavour (this isn't quite true but is largely accurate for the sake of argument), accompanied by economic growth fantasies like "now all the lawyers and doctors and researchers can move to the country but it'll totally work because they can send each other GB data files all day long!) all the while being totally ignorant of time and cost. Both of these had blown out before the change of Government.

Then the Government did change and costs had to be reined in. So suddenly anyone who had (relatively expensive) HFC internet would not see any improvement and instead be rebranded into a NBN success story. (Indeed, the end-user experience of cable has mostly declined with more drop-outs and less back-haul.) Most people have better than before DSL, but still some kind of (somewhat flaky) synchronous DSL to a "node" somewhere within a kilometer or two of the house. So now we're tens of billions in the hole and everyone's internet is largely similar to before.

Meanwhile 5G mobile telephony is amazing, and some crazy billionaire is planning an even more audacious disruption.

Comment Moving on from Lenovo (Score 2) 80

I was an IBM/Lenovo fanboy until three things happened:
1. My X1 Carbon Gen4 was not as good as usually expected. Also some important parts were not up to spec in comparison to similar products from competitors (e.g. CPU was lower spec).
2. Eventually support was needed, and it stank. I had paid for premium support, yet it took about a month to get a keyboard fixed. This fix was also not good enough. (New parts noticeably lower quality than the original.)
3. I was given a reasonably modern Dell when I started a new job. It is amazing. Up to spec. Light. Resilient. Decent keyboard. Now the sticker price is very high, but when the Lenovo finally keels over I will consider a high priced Dell.

Comment Easy $10mil (Score 1) 479

Get the government out of education by privatising/deregulating, allowing competitors to fight to offer the best quality education at the lowest prices.

A government feeding and clothing your children is not a sign of a prosperous society but a sign of poverty and control. Why then do you want them (mis)educating all children?

Iphone

Apple Removes Gay Cure App From App Store 917

recoiledsnake writes "Apple has removed the Gay Cure app after the pressure on Apple to remove the app started to snowball, culminating in an online petition initiated by Change.org which collected over 140,000 online signatures from people who wanted the app removed. Searching for the app now yields zero search results and Exodus International President Alan Chambers tweeted the following on Tuesday night. 'It's official, the @ExodusInl App is no longer in the @AppStore. Incredibly disappointing. Watch out, it could happen to you. #freedom' Gay Cure isn't the first app Apple has removed for touting an anti-homosexual philosophy. Apple back in November removed an app called the Manhattan Declaration which advocated the dignity of marriage as the union of one man and one woman." I don't think Apple should have banned it: they should have just packaged it with an app to cure bigotry.

Comment Re:In other words (Score 2) 517

FIAT currency tends to be *backed* by something, like an economy, like USA or European Union or even China. What is this backed by?

Wrong. An economy is not a backing. It does encourage confidence that the notes of debt may be exhanged of goods or services in the future, but a backing is a guarantee (e.g. hard assets) and an economy is not a guarantee.

FIAT currency tends to be *backed* by something

WRONG! Fiat currencies may or may not be backed by something: fiat means mandated by law. Coincidentally, fiat currencies are almost never backed by anything. (Why would this be the case I wonder?)

Currency is IOU notes that devalue over time. It is not a hard asset, like coal or copper

Money, and not currency, should be:

  • Easily divisible
  • Fungible
  • Easily verified
  • A store of value

Your currency might be IOU notes that devalue over time, but this does not have to be the case. Gresham's law is often paraphrased as, "Bad money drives out good." Good money is out there, and smart people are storing their wealth in something other than government mandated and systemically devalued currency. You can keep collecting something that the government can counterfeit apparently without consequence to itself, but definitely with consequence to its citizens.

Back to Bitcoin: it may provide all of the qualities of money listed above (the only item in question is a store of value). If you look back to the early colonies of what is now the United States of America you will see that fiat currencies worked -- because their supply was limited and they held their value. In this way, because Bitcoin is guaranteed to have a limited supply, they could be the only modern example of an unbacked currency (fiat or non-fiat) to be a safe store of value.

So basically, this is like "collector items", not currency. A very scare "resource", if you can call it that. You get 50 BTC after few months, meaning that basically you've just spent $50 in electricity to get your "free" money.

It is often said that a Bitcoin is a store of work which is incorrect. It may take work to "mine" one (your mention of electricity consumption) but the value of a Bitcoin is not a function of the input: it is a function of its rarity and its usefulness (supply and demand). The cost of "mining" Bitcoins is not irrelevant, but is simply an expense in an individuals decision to enter the market for Bitcoins.

Anyway, another fad "currency". Might as well collect "ISK in eveonline" or "gold nuggets in WoW" - same thing.

These do not have guarantees on their supply. Also, they have little usefulness outside the virtual world. Bitcoins may not have a well demonstrated usefulness, but it does meet the requirements for general commerce in the real world. There is already a functioning economy trading in Bitcoin (albeit small) and the fact that its value is 1 USD today means that it will be much higher in the future as the economy supporting Bitcoin grows (and as the US declines *ducks*).

Lesson: your "money" is really currency; Bitcoin may indeed be money. Also, this is all before exploring the additional benefits of Bitcoin: anonymity of transactions (if chosen) and the inability of any individual (or government) to control or exploit the supply.

Comment Pussy magnet (Score 1) 181

If you thought he got a lot of pussy now, just wait until he's on the silver screen, running from the Department of Defense like Harrison Ford in Patriot Games; chasing leads and evading trained killers like Liam Neeson in Taken; his loose hair moving around his face like Johnny Depp!

Image

Walmart Stores Get CCTV-Enabled, Breathalyzin' Wine Vending Machines 135

Select Pennsylvania Walmarts have found a way to work around the law prohibiting alcohol sales in grocery stores. It turns out the shortsighted legislature forgot to make it illegal to sell wine from a vending machine: "as long as the user is asked to take a breathalyzer test, swipe their state issued ID or Driver License, and then show their mug to a state official sitting somewhere in Harrisburg, who is keeping an eye on the proceedings via CCTV." I'm surprised nobody thought of this sooner.
Facebook

Facebook's Zuckerberg To Give Away Half His Cash 450

Stoobalou writes "Facebook co-founders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz are among the latest batch of 17 billionaires who have promised to give away at least half of their fortunes, after signing up to a philanthropic campaign led by Microsoft founder Bill Gates 3.0 and celebrity investor Warren Buffett. By signing up to The Giving Pledge, the mega-rich make a vague promise — sorry, 'moral commitment' — to give away more than half of their fortune at some point during their lifetime."
Google

The Android Invasion Cometh; Is Resistance Futile? 410

DeviceGuru writes "Last month, we learned from Gartner that Android will probably be the number-two worldwide mobile OS this year, and may lead the pack by 2014. With Android's growing use as the OS embedded in phones, in tablets, in set-top boxes, and in LCD HDTVs, it seems like the Linux-based OS could end up dominating the entire non-PC consumer device operating system space. What do Slashdot readers think: Is resistance futile?"
Privacy

Motorcyclist Wins Taping Case Against State Police 485

stevegee58 writes "Slashdot readers may recall the case of a Maryland motorcyclist (Anthony Graber) arrested and charged with wiretapping violations (a felony) when he recorded his interaction with a Maryland State Trooper. Today, Judge Emory A. Pitt threw out the wiretapping charges against Graber, leaving only his traffic violations to be decided on his October 12 trial date. 'The judge ruled that Maryland's wire tap law allows recording of both voice and sound in areas where privacy cannot be expected. He ruled that a police officer on a traffic stop has no expectation of privacy.' A happy day for freedom-loving Marylanders and Americans in general."
Space

United Nations Names Ambassador To Aliens 306

Shag writes "Although searches for extraterrestrial intelligence have thus far come up empty-handed, the United Nations appears to be preparing for eventual 'first contact.' Many media outlets are carrying the story that Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist who heads the UN's Office for Outer Space Affairs in Vienna — already charged with things like keeping track of satellites to prevent Kessler Syndrome and coordinating the international response to any earth-impacting asteroids — will be the first person to meet with aliens if they do show up." Update: 09/27 16:42 GMT by S : Looks like this one's too good to be true — in an email to The Guardian, Othman said, "It sounds really cool but I have to deny it."
Sci-Fi

Churchill Accused of Sealing UFO Files, Fearing Public Panic 615

Newly released secret files show that Winston Churchill ordered a cover-up of an alleged encounter between a UFO and a RAF bomber because he feared public panic. From the article: "Mr Churchill is reported to have made a declaration to the effect of the following: 'This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic among the general population and destroy one's belief in the Church.'"

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