Yea, I used to have the worst problems with the nVidia drivers on laptop (Quadro 3000M, hell yea) until I realized that the problems were all caused by my weird dev configurations I was using. When I switched back to the lastest gcc version everything magically worked again. I think the drivers are using some weird configuration of the linker or something (maybe caused by the new linker version released a couple of years ago). So some of the driver problems are caused by the fact that we developers tinker with the compiler settings and recompile kernels which create problems with binary blobs even when part of the driver is recompiled on the fly. So try to create a script that resets the standard gcc toolchain (and one that sets it back to your custom settings) and your nVidia driver problems should go away as long as you remember to reset your toolchain when you install GPU driver updates.

Its called a Paper Wallet and they do exist. Even Mt. Gox used them for their cold storage. Which is one of the reasons why people don't believe the tx malleability theory. I've been following BitCoin quite closely lately and /. is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off on these theory and news about bitcoin. Its been quite disappointing as usually /. has much better comments on tech subjects. There are 3 reasonable theories:

• Insiders (due to Theft or Incompetence or bad market positions)
• US Govt seized the cold wallet keys
• Lost cold wallet keys

On February was the largest day in BitCoin history for coin days destroyed. Basically, someone moved a large cache of Bitcoins that hadn't be moved in years (ie the Mt. Gox cold storage). Whoever has those coins knows what happened at Mt Gox but I doubt they got those coins via the TX Mal bug (maybe a small amount was stolen but not anywhere close to ~700,000 BTC). I'll let you guys figure out what actually happened but my guess is the Govt has the cold wallets and have a gag order on Mt. Gox. Using taint tools it should be possible to figure out what happened to all of those coins. If they never moved, its likely the US Govt. has them. If they move and split in complex ways, it more likely that an insider is trying to launder the BTC.

You must be kidding? VS C++ (I use it every day) is easily the worst C++ compiler there is. Hell, Borland compilers from the late 90s still have better C++ standards support than VS C++ today!

This doesn't compile in VC C++

int main(char* argv[]) {

printf("hello world\n");

int c = 0;

return c;

}

but this does...

int main(char* argv[]) {

int c = 0;

printf("hello world\n");

return c;

}

One quick add to that link, they estimate that miners are spending 90% of their mining income on power for their rigs. This ignores ASIC miners where only about 5-10% of the value of the Bitcoins mined gets spent on power (on average, I'm using CA power in the USA so my power rates are probably higher than miners in other parts of the world). Also, ASIC miners are probably 60% miners by hashrate, at least currently and will be more like 95% in the next year. So basically take all the values in that article and divide by 10. Other than that, its pretty accurate. And before you get all hot and bothered about mining again, all the Bitcoin mostly goes to buy the ASIC miners to keep up with the quickly growing mining industry. Take a look at the difficultly charts before buying anything, its a tough business.

You are, its that Bitcoin is far weirder than you seem to understand. Consider for a second what a Bitcoin is...theoretically it is an international currency (that hopefully will be stable one day) that is inherently deflationary. What does that mean to normal people? That a Bitcoin wallet is a swiss bank account they can carry around and control themselves. This is because the new supply of Bitcoin is constantly decreasing so the price of Bitcoins to other currencies should rise over time. This emulates the interest that savings accounts would usually pay. It can also transfer money internationally in a safe way in 1/1000th the time the banks do it. And it solves all sorts of problems with micro-payments. For instance, a coke machine that takes non-paper money (ie CC, Debt Card, other electronic payment etc) isn't really economically viable without Bitcoin. With Bitcoin you could make a machine with a QR code on the front and when you want a coke you send a small amount of Bitcoin to the wallet indicated by the QR code. Now I know this isn't practical due to the time it takes to verify a Bitcoin transaction but you get the idea. Whoever can shrink that transaction time will get very rich.

2/3rds of the world's people currently don't have a stable local currency in which they can save for the future. So Bitcoin enables anyone with a cell phone to have a Swiss Bank Account that they can convert into the local fiat currency each day to insulate them from hyperinflation. Think about how that might someday change how people in the 3rd world live. For the first time, thinking and planning for the future would be rewarded instead of next year's government deciding that all their savings are actually worthless now.

Now I realize that currently the price of Bitcoin is volatile as hell. I understand that currently its a risky investment plaything of traders. But having a stable pool of traders to stabilize conversion rates to other currencies is necessary requirement for any type of currency. And over time the price should stabilize as more players come to the table. The real worry is that the banks figure out that Bitcoin actually competes with their retail banking business. If they ever figure that out, they'll outlaw Bitcoin in a heartbeat. This is the only real risk to Bitcoin based businesses, traders and economies. Hopefully the powers that be will be asleep at the switch on this one. They were for most other business changes that software brought about. Look at the music industry, 14 years after Napster, they still make a fraction of what they made when Napster was around. And yet they still are filing lawsuits against their own customers.

And even in this case, almost nobody uses that composition editor and when they do, its easier to fall back to full code as the composition nodes are so horribly complicated that if you do understand how they work its just easier to write code and do it that way instead. Basically, visual representations of logic and formal language are so poorly suited to the task that they are never used even when you try to find an isolated use case for them. Until visual representation can represent formal language as well formal language, this is a waste of time. The only use is for laying out GUI widgets and that's because GUI widgets are already a visual language. And even then it takes mountains of code to make the widgets, and hook them up to actions on the data model (and whatever else the application does).

And that would matter if electric cars used power at the same efficiency as an IC powered cars. Since that's not true and Electrics use less than 1/3 the power per mile as a traditional gas powered car then everyone in the US could switch to electric cars tomorrow, everyone charge them at night and our current grid could handle the capacity with the most complex transition being installing 240V plugs in every garage. And since every part of this infrastructure is already commercial available for prices that most middle class people can afford, its quite practical from any point of view. But I guess you want to keep using IC for the next 20 years while we develop a hydrogen infrastructure from scratch?

I was going to mod you down but then you had to go and make that comment about teardrop tattoos. Those mean you killed someone in prison and are not about their friends/hommies. Bangers pour out 40s and graffitti names to remember their homies.

What was that about liberals who don't know about the real world again?

PS Programs like SNAP, WIC and EBT generally reduce crime and you fools just cut it. Hope you have a good home security system...cause you might be meeting some of these fine upstanding citizens in the near future if you get your way too much longer...

I really wish people would quit lying about the Volt. At least don't talk about something you don't know about. The Volt basically has a gas generator in it that powers the car when the 40m battery life runs out. So my volt has about a 380 mile range on 16.5 kwh of battery and 9 gallons of gas.

And my Volt, which has the same performance as your Boxster does 250 MPG at half the price of your import. This VW is Volt with poor performance. Nothing to see here folks, move along.

Wow, good argument. BTW, my office mate was at Netscape when Javascript was created. The author of Javascript has since apologized for creating Javascript. In his defense, it was only ever intended to run one line bits of logic inside of a web page. Ideas like functions actually had to be added later as the idea of using Javascript for a general purpose language came after the language was designed, not before. See how this leads to problems?

Javascript isn't and shouldn't be used as a general purpose language, EVER! It has uses but very few in general and they probably all have to do with browsers and DOMs.

Um, since math has existed? Compilers double as automated code error checkers. Or maybe you like checking your code's syntax by hand?

Javascript forces clients to execute general logic. This is a security issue no matter what. I'm sure you have some solution to this issue, but I assure you that there are ways around your solution (and anyone else's solution).

Javascript is single threaded, this is OK for writing web apps, sometimes. But not always and its a huge hole in a general purpose language.

You finally make a good point. +1 for you.

Take it from me, you know NOTHING about data persistence no matter how much you think you do. Relational Algebra is the basic math governing manipulating, querying and storing data as tuples. It governs MongoDB (and other NoSQL tools) too, just that the authors of those systems basically lopped off all the hard parts of the relational algebra and implemented just the easy bits. And they did those parts quite poorly when compared to traditional RDBMSes.

NoSQL was an attempt to re-invent a very complex wheel that 1) already worked, and 2) the often didn't let you do things that were bad ideas (even if you didn't realize they were bad ideas at the time). SQL isn't perfect, but more people know it than HTML and Javascript combined. And the systems that implement SQL have reputations (and a history) of not losing data (well, as long as the hardware works) and allowing very large datasets to be queried. And before someone says something dumb like "Web Scale", Sharded DBs store and query some very large datasets. Only when you have datasets the size of google's do you have to implement your own. And they made BigTable so fast by not implementing things that DBs need but they didn't (like data consistency and joins). It might be nice for a RDBMS to allow you to choose to not use table locks or do other things to make these trade-offs. But RDBMSes evolved in a world where throwing hardware at problems was always a valid strategy and it probably still is and will be into the foreseeable future.

You got a point there. However, it seems that lately this rule isn't understood by those that parrot it.

Where do you work? I want to short some stock...

Guess keeping your data around and intact isn't a high priority for you. Those "big data" systems you mention aren't ACID compliant. Hope you never have to find out just how foolish you Hadoop folk are being.

I work for a "big data" company too...but we are a bit different than most (streaming SQL), not trying to replace DBs and data warehouses as this going to get someone fired when they learn the hard way what ACID is.

Please, for the love of all that is holy tell me you are joking. Nothing about the Tea party is rational and their having a "seat at the table" is what caused this non-sense in the first place. Their type of thinking is what caused this mess over the last 30 years and they behave like spoiled children even when they get their way. Unless we get rid of some military spending, we can't maintain our current debt load. And going after "entitlements" is basically stealing from the poor (SS is getting back your own money, not getting it from someone else). Most of our debt is from military spending, not from entitlements unless the FICA line on my paycheck is something else. We can't keep spending $700B a year on defense (that's about $2.3K per person each year) and keep not taxing the wealthy. Pick one and we'll talk. Until then they will continue to be the same people who didn't realize that teabagging is a sexual term and not a source of serious political thought or even adults.