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Bitcoin

Operation Wants To Mine 10% of All New Bitcoins 275

Posted by Soulskill from the go-big-or-go-home dept.
An anonymous reader writes: "Mining new Bitcoins is computationally expensive — you can't expect to do much on your standard home computer. Many miners have built custom rigs to mine more efficiently, but it was only a matter of time until somebody went industrial. Dave Carlson's goal is to mine 10% of all new Bitcoins from now on. He's built literally thousands of units. They collectively use 1.4 million BitFury mining chips, which are managed by a bunch of Raspberry Pis. 'The current rigs each contain 16 boards, with each board containing 16 BitFury chips, for a total of 256 mining chips on each rig. Carlson said about 90,000 processor boards have been deployed, which would put the number of rigs at about 5,600. A new board [being designed] will have 756 chips on each rig instead of 256.' Carlson says his company spent $3-5 million to get everything set up. They current generate 7,000 — 8,000 Bitcoins per month, which, at current rates, would be worth over $4 million."
Media

Are DVDs Inconvenient On Purpose? 490

Posted by Soulskill from the couldn't-have-been-an-accident dept.
Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes: "Why do Netflix and a few other companies keep the DVD format alive, when streaming is more convenient for almost all users? The answer is not obvious, but my best theory is that it has to do with what economists call price discrimination. Netflix is still the cheapest legal way to watch a dozen recent releases every month — but only if you're willing to put up with those clunky DVDs." Read on for the rest of Bennett's thoughts.
Microsoft

Microsoft Posts Source Code For MS-DOS and Word For Windows 224

Posted by Soulskill from the historical-sources dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft, along with the Computer History Museum, has posted the source code for MS-DOS 1.1 and 2.0, and Word for Windows 1.1a. It's been a long time coming — DOS 2.0 was released for IBM PCs in 1983, and Word for Windows 1.1a came out in 1990. The museum, with Microsoft's consent, has made the code available for non-commercial use. They've also explained some of the history of this software's development: '[In August, 1980], IBM had already contracted with Microsoft to provide a BASIC interpreter for the PC, so they asked them to investigate also providing the operating system. Microsoft proposed licensing "86-DOS", which had been written by Tim Paterson at Seattle Computer Products (SCP) for their 8086-based computer kit because the 16-bit version of CP/M was late. When SCP signed the licensing deal [7] with Microsoft, they didn't know for sure who the computer manufacturer was. Paterson said "We all had our suspicions that it was IBM that Microsoft was dealing with, but we didn't know for sure." [1] He left SCP to work for Microsoft in 1981. "The first day on the job I walk through the door and 'Hey! It's IBM.'" Microsoft originally licensed 86-DOS in December 1980 for a flat fee of $25,000. By the next summer they recognized the importance of owning it and being able to license it to other companies making IBM-PC clones, so they purchased all rights for an additional $50,000.'"

Comment Help out their dissidents (Score 5, Informative) 102

by Nimey (#46559529) Attached to: Turkey Heightens Twitter Censorship with Mandated IP Blocking

Follow these directions to set up Tor obfuscated bridges and give them a path around the censorship:

https://www.torproject.org/pro... (if you run Debian or Ubuntu)
https://www.torproject.org/pro... (more generic instructions)

More information in this email the Tor project sent out last year, including how to make an unpublished bridge that's harder to censor:
https://lists.torproject.org/p...

Comment Re:Slashdot continues its decline (Score 1) 93

by Nimey (#46547973) Attached to: Speedy Attack Targets Web Servers With Outdated Linux Kernels

If that's what TFA meant then that's what it should have said. As to the summary, instead of "the 2.6 version" (quoting TFA) it should have said something like "many Linux kernels in the 2.6 series", which would at least have not sounded so naively ignorant.

Since TFA didn't bother clearly saying what versions are vulnerable (except, as you assert, in the comments) then it wasn't worthy of a /. post, which is my whole fucking point. English, motherfucker, do you speak it?

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