And a credit/debit card processor or bank won't do that? :)

This is exactly what BitPay does. They calculate the BTC price of your $ item, collect the BTC, convert that immediately at a known rate to $ and put it in your account.

I found this comment interesting. I'd like to have a discussion with you off-slashdot, but your email is hidden and your domain doesn't resolve. Your whois is anonymized. Contact me. :)

That report has been thoroughly debunked. It contained statistics which were wrong, made up, and even statistics that were right! Also, the statistic was calculated 30 years ago, and the number of people who understand statistics have halved since then!

Given that fracking is a permanent change to the environment that can't be undone, EVER, I'd want to see some pretty compelling evidence that it absolutely can't cause harm, EVER, before being used widely across a bunch of different geologies.

What is to stop the NSA doing a form of DoS attack on these types of services by demanding keys, and giving the services little option but to shut down?

The effect of this is to remove secure competitors from the market and force users onto pre-compromised services.

I wrote a tasteful missive about the dangers of politicians of all creeds, stripes, colors. When it came time to click "submit" I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Modern politics is brought to us by the Seventh Circle of Hell. I laugh so that I do not cry.

The first steps of progress in making things better would be if one party gained some competence, and the other turned off their Petty Hate Machine(tm). You, humble reader, can decide which party is which. Choose the one that makes you happiest and upmod accordingly ;)

A few bitcoin donations helped me make my mortgage payment last month, and I have a little left over. Things are picking up but it's still really tight. I had to have emergency dental surgery (blessed wisdom teeth) too... There is a point that you reach when you're desperate that you still feel the shame of begging, but the need overwhelms it.

I'll just leave this here: 17S6drtGpJXer6qA5V6XhP3snasGWANBjc

My big take-home from this article is they have an "Institute for Information Transmission Problems" - a whole Institute just devoted to resolving poor communication.

They really got their message out!

Well, it was until it got slashdotted!

As an indie filmmaker, I understand the dilemma. Granted, I'm at the low end, and don't get to work with name actors, but the problems stay the same until you have to start worrying about territories and distribution - and this is a dispute about controlling distribution.

If I invest, say, $20,000 of my own money in a project, I need to be reasonably confident about making at least some of that money back or I don't get to make another movie. I don't have a patron or rich lover to fund what I do, so... I have to not make consistent losses.

Facing this reality, the main way I make money is through private showings in indie theaters, selling disks direct, and then when the economic potential of the production seems tapped out, sticking it somewhere accessible so at least it is seen by *people*.

That doesn't really work. I don't know what else to do. I have a couple of really fun hard sci-fi ideas I'd love to develop, but the audience is hard to reach and still get paid enough to just cover my costs... Or I can participate in the conventional distribution system and be SURE of making no money.

Unless there's some rich benefactor or wealthy single lady out there *grins* my really very specialist movies have no chance of being made or seen by a wide audience.

Bittorrent breaks the distribution problem, but doesn't help the money problem.

5 years is the standard warranty on Samsung Pro SSDs like the 840 Pro....

The new Mazda CX-5 in the US gets about 33 mpg on the highway. The new CX-5 in England gets 60mpg combined. Why is the US so far behind production EU models?

The main difference is the US car has a pokey gasoline engine, and the EU version has a turbo diesel with more power and torque.

Draw your own conclusions as to why this situation exists.

The coral reefs off Australia and New Zealand announced their Climate Transition Plans in Adelaide, Thursday. The reefs, known for their outstanding beauty and fragile ecosystems, have decided to move further south. They announced their plans, which involve a 600 mile hike, as Rex Tillerson, the ExxonMobil CEO, announced plans to survey the ground they abandoned each year for new oil and gas fields.

If companies can't patent it, it's hard for them to make a business case for it, so they won't develop it. Since 'space' is transitioning to the corporate domain, it's in the same boat as research on DCA to treat cancer - no company will invest because they can't control the results.

Either way, people are going to die.