What the economist doesn't consider in his argument that "currency is a tool of the state" is that states cannot control currency; take the USD usage outside of the US. In many countries there is an official currency that is in reality superseded by USD (Cuba, many African countries, etc). The local governments hate it but they can't do anything about it because citizens trust more us greenbacks than they do in worthless local currency. When volatility of bitcoin goes down (as it will when there will be more regular transactions and people using the currency) there will inevitably be people trusting more in bit coins than Ina government printing ever more debt and printing ever more notes (essentially debt to consumers). Bitcoin wins

You're right. The task manager was hovering around 100%, and but I forgot there was another chrome window running in the background

The most incredible thing is the speed at which it runs: 11.5 MIPS.

My desktop dual-core Xeon W3503@2.40Ghz barely manages 40 MIPS in Chrome.

The iPhone 5s is crazy fast by most standards

Ok, I could have made this a little more explicit.

For something like iMessage, where the client and the server are trusted, but not the communication channel you could very well (for example) input your user name and password on the client, have the client generate hashes of the username and login, sign said hashes with the sever's public key and send them over to the server.

That's one step better than cleartext auth wrapped with SSL but, as someone else remarked, a SRP (or even DH) exchange is pretty straightforward and pretty robust.

The username and password are sent in clear text in the SSL tunnel. So no, people at Starbucks won't get your username and password.

What this suggests is that iMessage should only be sending a hash of the username and password to Apple Servers without ever sending those things even within a SSL tunnel.

Regarding the Hummer, it wouldn't bounce very far, sorry for the typo

I think you know just enough about physics to make a dangerous conclusion. Following a collision, Either car will go in reverse direction only if there is any kinetic energy left from the impact. The whole point of the much tasked about crumple zones is to absorb the energy from the impact and prevent the cars from behaving like bouncing balls. There is sufficient energy absorption capacity in either car to avoid your scenario. Take for instance a Hummer running dead into a wall at medium speed; it would bounce off the wall very far. The reason is because ask the energy is absorbed in the impact. The Tesla had enough of a crumple zone (much more than any other car) to avoid a scenario where three is excess energy that would push the car back. What really kills people are either (a) G forces from an impact (and having a car like a Hummer with little or no energy absorption creates higher impact G forces) or (b) cabin deformation that injures the passengers. The Tesla scores high on impact absorption and deformation resistance and is therefore the safer car.

When measured against USD, maybe it seems to be. The reality is that it isn't the denomination currency for many goods and services, yet.
Once a piece of bread starts being listed for 0.01 Bitcoin no matter the exchange rate, then where is the volatility you refer to?

What happens when people start getting paid for a set amount of work or services in Bitcoins? Would that seem volatile to you then?
Exchange rates have always existed and always will. People used to pay with grain in ancient times. What do you think happened to prices of grain when there was a storm or a bad crop? Do you think it was less volatile? Did that mean people didn't use it as currency anymore?

Mr Forbes, with all due respect, your argument is simplistic. Currencies have value and exist because people believe in them. for any national currency, you are basically running credit risk against the national bank that they could ultimately refuse to exchange your Local Currency against another currency. With Bitcoin there is no central agency against which you have exposure to, you are exposed to each single individual using Bitcoins and all the people that are willing to buy them. Your risk is basically that no-one will buy your Bitcoin in exchange for a service or another currency/asset.

the article is not that long so you could have at least skimmed through it. The Tesla guy makes a key point in saying that Linux runs the entertainment system and dahsboard (google maps, speedo, etc.). The cars propulsion system (i.e. what runs the motors, battery, brakes, etc..) is completely separate. The linux front-end can crash completely and the car will continue to drive just fine. RTFA

Completely agree
I have a Blackberry purchased SIM free (i..e without contract) and that I happen to use on Vodafone in the UK.
Turns out that the Podcast app's auto-download and syncing function is disabled by Vodafone!

WTF? My phone and my money; I pay for 1GB of data it should be my choice if I want to use all of that on Care Bears podcasts for all I know.

I love my BB but RIM is just bending over backwards to carrier requests. The Storm was also a half-assed attempt at a touchscreen phone from a Vodafone request as they had missed out on the iPhone (o2 was exclusive at the time).

RIM grew half a testi with the playbook's bridge function, but the operators gave them a black-eye and decided not to sell the tablet.

Rim needs to realize that customers buy phones now, no longer just corporate purchase departments.
I don't give a rat which network my phone's on, but I care about my terminal.

I am your client RIM, listen to *me*, I'm your customer, the carrier's not your customer.

I know that there are countries in Europe that have lower VAT rates for computers, as opposed to game consoles.
I suspect that by adding the Linux option to their PS3s, Sony was able to switch to the reduced VAT level, as hence bag more profits for the same retail price.

This may have been revoked/no longer valid/overturned/whatever recently and hence Sony has no further incentive to offer this feature.
Could also be that being classified as a computer made the console eligible for government subsidies to buy "computers" (such as in the UK the Home Access Program - http://www.becta.org.uk/homeaccess)

The reality is that cracking word passed passwords is even simpler than what you are pointing to, even in cases where special punctuation has been used mid word. No need for crazy wizardry, simple Markov chains technique tell you that there is a probability of using a given character after another. You just need to work your way through the decision tree in descending order with some algorithm. For instance, In English language there is a y% probability that a "n" character follows a "e" character etc. If you know which languages are spoken by the person who chose the password you can already zoom in very quickly

Your words should fit perfectly here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-purchase_rationalization

in TFA there is no mention of Citigroup looking to buy Redhat; just a mention that a Citigroup stock analyst upgraded his target share price to $17 and kept the recommendation to "hold".
Once again everybody on ./ has gone and commented on how Oracle culture would be compared to Citigroup's whereas that's not even the point..
Sheesh people, the linked article is probably under 250 words. Could you not have given it a read? Did it not strike you as something strange that a bank would want to buy a software vendor?