Even if no bitcoins are lost, there are still problems. Whenever you have a fixed quantity of something, there's a real danger of deflation; if more and more people start using bitcoin, the demand for bitcoins will go up and up, the price of bitcoins will go up and up, and this provides a strong incentive for current bitcoin holders to simply hoard their bitcoins rather than use them -- further reducing supply and jacking up the price. This is all econ 101 stuff.

Deflation isn't a problem per se, as long as the rate of deflation is (roughly) constant. However, there is no guarantee of a constant rate of deflation with bitcoins; I doubt it would happen.

Deflation may sound like a good thing (yay, my money is getting more valuable!), but try holding a debt with non-constant deflation; the value of that debt will unpredictably go up and up... Uncontrolled deflation has problems just like uncontrolled inflation.

Say what you will about the Federal Reserve, but at least in principle, it's nice having someone trying to keep inflation/deflation in check (or at least at a constant rate).

Yes, some languages do things better than others, but there's more to languages than that. A good question is how well the language meets its goals.

http://xkcd.com/1306/

Some languages are simply more clean, have a more consistent syntax, etc. then others. For example, both Fortran 77 and 90 are aimed at numerical computation, but 77 has a weird syntax made for punch cards and other oddities; 90 is just better. (Flame on!)

Yawn, It all feels the same to me below 0F.

-Madison, WI (-18F during commute)

It's anything but a buzzword; it's a big research area with many academics working on it from all angles. However, you're right that it's nowhere near ready. As of a couple years ago, people had managed to factor 15 using a quantum computer; there are probably better records now, but it's tricky business.

The issue is that it's hard to make things both act quantum (being in controlled superpositions of more than one state) and be connected to other things. For example, atoms floating in a vacuum can act quantum for a long time, but they're hard to couple together. On the other end of the spectrum, superconducting qubits (made like microchips) are easy to couple together, but they don't act quantum for long.

Progress is being made, but it's a slow process. Short of some unforeseen breakthrough, it'll take a while to get a big quantum computer working, even though a lot of smart people are working on it.

Errrr...

(I couldn't copy and paste from the pdf, and apparently I can't type either. FWIW, IARPA is the intelligence agencies' equivalent to DARPA, which is probably better known around here.)

Government intelligence agencies have been involved in quantum computing research for ages. Just look at the funding agencies listed at the end of a typical research paper:

http://web.physics.ucsb.edu/~martinisgroup/papers/Wenner2013.pdf

Is it a surprise that they're doing work in house as well?

Hell even, Northrop Grumman (and possibly other big defense contractors) is trying to build quantum computers too, and it's not because they need quantum computers to design airplanes...

Do the new Mac Pros have an impressive design? Yes.
Do power users need a tiny machine? No.
Do power users want external thunderbolt devices for everything not crammed into the case? I doubt it; I certainly wouldn't.

The old Mac Pro case (and the G5 case it's based on) are nice designs. The new Mac Pro design is cool, but unnecessary at best. I'd rather have a tower with space for internal drives, PCI Express slots, etc. All Apple had to do was upgrade the damn processor and motherboard in the old Mac Pro, and everything would be fine.

(Granted, I'm no longer an Apple user; I just roll my own desktops and put linux on them. Now, back to Newegg to look at high-end parts I can't really afford...)

It's odd that proponents of the free market (with its "invisible hand") can reject evolution -- suggesting that only intelligent design (or straight up creationism) can explain how life got this way. The market and evolution are both amazing examples of "survival of the fittest"; why not accept the same mechanism/explanation for both?

IAAPGS

FWIW, while Cell and Nature are both owned by private companies, Science is run by a non-profit (the American Association for the Advancement of Science), and articles in science are made freely available two years after publication.

Having read his manifesto, I don't think his issue with with corporate publishers per se. His issue is with the culture of judging the quality of work by the prestige of the journal it was published in. That allows journals to further exploit the process; they have a large incentive to publish flashy research rather than quality research, because flashy research gets more citations -- thus making the journal more prestigious.

While I agree this is a flawed system, I'm not convinced that open-access journals are the solution; there are already more prestigious open access journals -- like Physical Review X and the New Journal of Physics (both of which are run by non-profits with prestigious, closed-access journals).

To some extent, you need both flash and quality research. I'm sure someone could do quality research on the physics of navel lint trapping, but pretty much no one would care; the research isn't interesting, and it wouldn't be worth the effort to peer review. So, for better or worse, I don't think the flashy factor will or should totally go away, although I agree it should be reduced.

That said, I am a fan of open-access journals, but I need something to publish first. I guess I should get back to research and stop wasting time with Slashdot posts....

There's nothing wrong with not knowing something important; the sin is not lifting a finger to find the fact out -- e.g. people seemingly incapable of typing a name into wikipedia and reading the first paragraph (and then whining about it in the comments instead in hopes someone will spoon-feed it to them). Those are the people who need to get lost.

I should add that this is definitely the best shot we have at dealing with software patents.

It's clear that, because of corporate interests, the legislative branch won't really fix things. (Although it sounds like a few congresscritters have their heads screwed on straight, they're definitely in the minority.)

The executive branch doesn't have the authority to fix things, and it probably wouldn't even if it could. (See the current FFC chair.)

The judicial branch is the least corruptible branch of the federal government; the important judges have life appointments, so they don't have to run for reelection, and they're not total morons either -- unlike many politicians. (Say what you will about lawyers and law school, but graduating from Harvard, Yale, or Columbia law school is a valid not-a-total-moron test.)

Here's to hoping...

I'd give them somewhat more credit than that. They definitely made the right call in Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics (ruling that genes couldn't be patented), even though they had no knowledge about biology.

The fact that they're willing to hear this case makes me somewhat optimistic; if they truly didn't understand or care about software patents, they wouldn't have gotten involved. The worst they can do is maintain the status quo, which is what would happen if they didn't intervene.

This isn't a question, but I wanted to note that Slashdot linked to her work back in January 2005 (the Minty MP3 player -- a DIY MP3 player in an altoids tin) -- before her company existed and had $10M a year in sales:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/05/01/15/1828200/build-your-own-mp3-player

That was a real eye-opener for me. I previously had no idea that a hobbyist could make something like that; I figured it was only the domain of giant companies with huge teams of engineers.

Anyhow, I've been playing with microcontrollers ever since. Thank you Limor!

If you really want to do heavy lifting, you can't beat Fortran. Just stay away from Fortran 77; it's a hot mess. Fortran 90 and later are much easier to use, and they're supported by the main compilers: gfortran and ifortran.

ifortran is Intel's Fortran compiler. It's the fastest out there, and it runs on Windows and Linux. Furthermore, you can get it as a free download for some types of academic use. (Search around intel's website -- it's hard to find.) That said, I usually use gfortran -- which is free and open source -- on linux. See http://www.polyhedron.com/compare0html for a compiler comparison.

If you use Fortran, it's very easy to use OpenMP to do multiprocessing and make use of all those cores. OpenMP is supported by the main compilers.

If you're doing lighter work, SciPy/NumPy works fine; I use it a fair amount if maximum performance isn't essential. However, I can't speak to its multiprocessing ability.

Look at the pictures in TFA; these aren't phone touchpads. You shouldn't be losing your center with these.