Comment Re:compression approach for video chats (Score 3, Informative) 31
Matrox HeadCast in 2001.
Matrox HeadCast in 2001.
No, it doesn't in any way excuse what Clinton did. The point is to call out the hypocrites who had no objections when Bush did something, but loudly complain about Clinton doing the same thing (and vice versa).
Calling out the hypocrites accomplishes exactly nothing--the required solution is to actually PUNISH someone for their bad behavior. It doesn't matter if where you start is a democrat or republican, liberal or conservative, white or black, male or female, etc. until you start actually DOING something about the problem, you will continue to see the same bad behavior.
When we've reduced the entire conversation to "$PERSON did the same thing" "You're a hypocrite" we've ensured that nothing will change.
... they want to get rid of the fookin' pr0ns?
Color-stable archival film with color-stable archival prints in case the film isn't as color-stable as you hope. If you can do a second film conversion using a different type of film that would be good also. If this was for more than 100 years I would also suggest color-separations done on archival black-and-white film.
For audio, do on-film audio, a phonograph record on archival materials, and an analog magnetic tape using a recording mode that was in common use for decades, on archival materials.
In addition, I would supply DVDs on archival material, a rugged DVD player likely to still be playable in 100 years, a printed copy of the manual and a printed copy of the DVD specification, all on archival paper. If space precludes the use of printed manuals, a micfofilm copy is fine, just put it on archival materials.
Answer: Because the government dragged their feet 2-3 decades.
Because 340 million Km is too long for a selfie-stick.
Plus I hear that there's not a single museum on Mars that allows selfie-sticks
... but she hasn't unrolled the transaction yet either.
So, what if I and everyone else who accepts BC for payment said "before we accept your coin, we need to run its complete history against known coin thefts"?
That wouldn't necessarily stop "off-blockchain" transactions like people who trade whole wallets or who "print coins out on paper" and trade them, but it might slow it down if people knew that they might be the one stuck "holding the dirty money."
There is still the problem that this alone won't prevent people from spending stolen BC before it is reported. In order to fix that, you will need some accepted means of "de-valuing" any money that was ever "co-mingled" with "dirty money." People other than the original thief would be forced to absorb the loss but at least once the loss was reported, I could accept your "partly dirty money" after applying a discount to it to reflect the "non-dirty" portion of its value. I wrote a top-level reply to this article outlining this in more detail.
I thought the point of the blockchain was that it recorded every transaction.
I have no idea if it's practical, but in principle, it should be possible to trace the coins from a known point in time, taking into account the "dilution" when they are mixed with other coins.
In other words, if you give me your entire wallet consisting of 1BC that is later determined to be "dirty money" (as declared by the police/a court/whomever) and I put it in my wallet consisting of 9 other BC, my wallet is now "10% contaminated" by the "dirty money."
If I then I give 1BC each to 10 other people who have wallets with 9BC in them, those 10 people each have wallets that are "1% contaminated" by the original "dirty money".
If they each add 90 BC to their wallets, they will each have wallets with 100BC that are now "merely 0.1% contaminated" by the "dirty money."
And so on.
But you will know "where the money went."
As I said, this should be doable in principle. As to whether it is doable in practice I have no idea.
If this kind of tracing is doable in practice, then it can be used to reduce the occurrence of coin theft by reporting thefts to a central authority (or even logging the theft in the block-chain itself) and having people who accept BC as payment treat coins that have been stolen as worthless and treat those that have been co-mingled with stolen coins in "upstream" transactions as having only a "fractional" value based on the "non-dirty" portion of its transaction history.
Yes, there will be thefts but the crook will have to pass the dirty money off on to some innocent/naive party quickly, before the coins are reported stolen. Whoever has the coins or a wallet that was contaminated by having the coins used in an upstream transaction at the time that the theft is reported will typically be stuck with the loss, but from that point on the coins can be used at a "fair" value, based on the value of the non-stolen portion of the money. Depending on the legal frameworks in place and whether the party who gave them the contaminated BC can be identified, they may be totally out of luck or they may be able to recoup the loss from their own counter-party or an insurance company. If they are able t recoup from the counter-party, he will either be stuck with the loss or he may be able to recoup it from the party who gave him contaminated coins or his insurance company, and so on.
Of course, there is the possibility of fraudulently reporting money as stolen. To prevent this, it is doubtful that any reporting system that didn't include some form of accountability for lying would be feasible. I can't think of any way of doing this besides requiring people to reveal their real-life identity and real-world address to the police or other "authority" so that if it turns out they are lying, they can be prosecuted for perjury.
Oh, before you ask, yes, I do realize that this would increase the complexity of handling BC transactions significantly and that alone may make such a system impractical, at least for now.
If you misunderstood my to mean "gold, the relatively inert chemical element used for teeth fillings, expensive paperweights, electrical circuits, and as a financial hedge against inflation" then I take your point.
If you understood me correctly to mean "high quality code" then I don't understand your comment, please elaborate.
... for the mafioso:
* Kill your prospective IT guy before you let him touch your computers, or
* Kill him after you discovered he used his skills to undermine your operation.
Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"